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Bolivian ambassador to Iran says ‘soft coup’ staged to topple anti-US president

12, November 2019

Bolivian ambassador to Iran says ‘soft coup’ staged to topple anti-US president 0

Bolivian Ambassador to Tehran has told Press TV that the ongoing coup in her country is a “soft” one backed by foreign governments who wanted to see the anti-US president, Evo Morales, overthrown.

“Evidently it is a coup d’état that has been going on for a long time, but has been completed after the October elections,” the ambassador said in an interview with Press TV on Monday evening.

After the October elections, she said, the opposition – knowing that it could lose the election – had basically started to say that there was a fraud in this election and ask for a second round for the elections, and then ask for the resignation of President Morales

She said the opposition has clearly been planning the coup from a long time ago with strong support from foreign countries – including the support for the opposition leader,

The ambassador noted that the ongoing coup is of a kind different from the one in 1970s when the army and military equipment were deployed in the streets and many people were killed. “It is a soft coup to change the president who is not aligned with the interests of the US.”

PressTV-Latin American allies of Morales slam ‘coup’ in Bolivia

President Morales has established sovereignty in Bolivia, ending the “robbery” of the country’s resources by transnational corporations and the oligarchy, the ambassador noted.

“This is a coup that finishes with the resignation of our president, serving these foreign objectives,” she added.

The envoy’s comments came after Latin America’s leftist governments and prominent politicians denounced the opposition-led “coup d’état” in Bolivia against the government of Evo Morales, who was forced to step down as president under pressure from the army amid violent post-election protests.

Morales — Latin America’s longest-serving president — was declared the winner of Bolivia’s October 20 presidential election.

The opposition, however, rejected the outcome and said there had been fraud in the election process. That sparked violent street protests, which left three people dead and hundreds more wounded, in what the Morales government called a coup bid.

Source: Presstv

The Butcher of Yaounde is in Paris

11, November 2019

The Butcher of Yaounde is in Paris 0

French Cameroun dictator popularly known as “the monarch” and his wife Chantal Biya arrived France on Sunday 10 November 2019 to attend the Paris Peace Forum, scheduled to hold from 11 to 13 November 2019.

The French surrogate shied away from the Russia-Africa Summit that held at Sochi but is already in the French capital Paris barely a few weeks after he attended the Global Fund’s Sixth Replenishment Conference to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, from 9 to 10 October 2019 in Lyon, France.

French authorities are indeed conscious of the primordial role the butcher of Yaoundé is playing in the CEMAC region in guaranteeing France’s grip on the natural resources of the countries within the sub Saharan region.

State media reported that Biya landed at the Bouget airport in Paris at about 6 pm and was received by the French Cameroun’s Ambassador to France Alfred NGUINI. The 86 year old leader later on checked in at his hotel of residence in the First District of Paris, where he was greeted by huge demonstration staged by French speaking Cameroonians who demanded an arrest warrant for the failed leader.

The Paris Peace Forum is an occasion for world leaders to reflect on global issues related to peace, climate change, human and social development in view of identifying solutions that can foster harmonious development strategies. The opening ceremony will take place on Tuesday 12 November 2019.

Written by Camcordnews with files from the French Cameroun presidency of the republic

France: President Macron inaugurates monument in honour of French soldiers killed overseas

11, November 2019

France: President Macron inaugurates monument in honour of French soldiers killed overseas 0

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to inaugurate on Monday a monument in memory of hundreds of French soldiers who have died in foreign operations since 1963. Watch his speech live on FRANCE 24. 

The monument, a bronze sculpture of six soldiers, five men and a woman wearing caps or berets and solemnly carrying an invisible coffin, will be unveiled at the André Citroën Park in the 15th arrondissement (district) of Paris.

Engraved on the wall beside the sculpture are the names of 549 soldiers, including two women, killed in 17 overseas military operations. Of these, 141 died in Lebanon, 129 in Chad, 85 in Afghanistan and 78 in the former Yugoslavia.

“The monument has three objectives: First, to send a message to our troops that France recognises their commitment to the nation, which sometimes entails making the ultimate sacrifice; it’s a place for families to gather; and finally, it’s meant to show the French people how defending liberty involve external military operations that demand total commitment,” Deputy Defence Minister Geneviève Darrieussecq was quoted as saying on Monday by French daily ‘Le Figaro’.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)
 

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Patrick Ekema’s Wife is in Total Confusion

11, November 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Patrick Ekema’s Wife is in Total Confusion 0

Katherine Ekema, the wife of the former Mayor of Buea, Patrick Ekema, is in total confusion in the United States. Ms. Ekema who is living in Minnesota in the United States is faced with two major challenging situations.

For years, Katherine Ekema and his reckless husband, Patrick Ekema, had been using the Buea City Council account as their personal ATM. Patrick Ekema had shipped his wife and five children to the United States as threats by the Ambazonian fighters increased by the day, especially as Patrick Ekema himself became a millstone stone around the necks of local traders who were also being called upon by the Ambazonian fighters to respect calls for ghost towns.

The unpopular mayor, who died of a massive heart attack a few weeks ago, used to underwrite his family’s reckless lifestyle from Buea, though his monthly salary was only USD600. Having a huge family in the United States requires significant amounts of resources, and this could be very challenging for someone with a paltry salary like Patrick Ekema. It is even worse as his family did not have access to any financial assistance from the American government. The Ekemas have just recently sought asylum and do not have work permits.

Besides housing and feeding the family in the United States, Patrick Ekema also had to finance the studies of the first two children in a community college. These children were paying foreign student fees and only God alone knew where Patrick Ekema was getting all the money to finance their studies. The Buea City Council certainly must audit its records if it really wants to know the extent to which Patrick Ekema had looted its coffers.

The next issue is Katherine’s trip to Buea to bury her notorious and reckless husband who died of a massive heart attack in another lady’s house in Douala. Katherine does not have papers in the United States. She has just sought asylum, claiming that her life and that of her five children were at risk. The American immigration systems allows any and everybody to seek asylum, but Americans also have agents who will have to verify the veracity of her claim.

Research officers at the U.S. embassy in Yaounde have already established a report on her case. They know her husband was a brutal administrator who worked in the interest of the dictatorial regime in Yaounde. She cannot be talking of persecution by a system that gave her more privileges than any ordinary Cameroonian could have.

While obtaining papers remains a tough challenge for her, her immediate problem now is to go home and giver her husband a befitting burial. Without proper travel documents she cannot leave the United States. Even with proper documents, she might not travel to Cameroon without consequences. Landing in Cameroon will simply imply that she has invalidated her asylum claim and has opted not to return to the United States.

Our source in Minnesota has said that she is trying to obtain guarantees from the Cameroon government that she would be able to return to the U.S. if she went home to bury her husband. But the beleaguered Yaounde government does not control American immigration policy. The American rule is clear. If she leaves, she will not return as her trip out of America will be a death sentence to her asylum claim.  

Patrick Ekema has not only died, he has brought untold hardship onto his family. He has also taken with him, the ATM that used to ensure a good life for his family. The free and easy money that was available to Katherine and her five children has melted. The massive heart attack that brought down Patrick Ekema has also damaged Katherine’s hopes for a beautiful easy life.

She will now start thinking of getting a job in the U.S. and her best bet will be heading to MacDonald’s where she will be sure of a minimum wage. But a minimum wage in the U.S. will not enable her to grant her children a decent life. She must start thinking of returning to school to give herself better chances at life.

Her former status as the wife of a mayor has simply stopped to exist. She must come down her fake pedestal to face life the way it should be faced. She must come down her ivory tower if she really wants to sort things out for her children. If she is still stuck in her past mentality, then she is willing to prolong her confusion and agony.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai at the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Global Headquarters in the United Kingdom

Australia: Cardinal Pell’s appeal decision set for Wednesday

11, November 2019

Australia: Cardinal Pell’s appeal decision set for Wednesday 0

Disgraced Catholic Cardinal George Pell will learn Wednesday whether Australia’s High Court will hear an appeal against his child sex abuse convictions, the last possible avenue to clear his name.

Pell, a former Vatican treasurer, is serving a six-year sentence for sexually assaulting two choirboys in a Melbourne cathedral in the 1990s.

A High Court spokesman told AFP on Monday that Australia’s most senior judges will hand down their decision in Canberra on Wednesday on whether to consider Pell’s case.

It comes just over two months after the 78-year-old filed an application for leave to appeal with the court.

He lost a previous attempt to overturn the convictions in Victoria state’s Court of Appeal in August, a landmark decision that saw the judges split in a 2-1 verdict.

That division — which saw two judges back the jury’s verdict and the dissenting judge side with Pell — is at the forefront of his latest bid to overturn the convictions.

The long-running case has pitted the most senior convicted Catholic child molester against a former choirboy now in his 30s, who two of the appeal judges found to be “very compelling” and someone who “was clearly not a liar, was not a fantasist and was a witness of truth”.

The third judge, however, found the victim’s account “contained discrepancies” and there was a “significant possibility” Pell did not commit the offences.

Pell’s legal team argued in their written submission to the High Court that the majority judges applied an “erroneous judicial method” in upholding the jury’s verdict that reversed the onus of proof onto him, an argument roundly rejected by prosecutors.

The court will not hear oral submissions from the parties before handing down its decision, which the spokesman said was not unusual.

Pell and his supporters have staunchly maintained he did not commit the crimes, which came to light after one of the victims went to police when the other died of a drug overdose in 2014.

During Pell’s trial under a court-ordered veil of secrecy, the Vatican gradually removed him from top Church bodies with little explanation.

Shortly after his conviction, Pell was removed from the so-called C9 Council of Cardinals that are effectively the Pope’s cabinet and inner circle of advisers.

The Vatican says it will avoid launching an investigation into his conduct until after all legal avenues are exhausted.

Source: AFP

Southern Cameroons Crisis: French Cameroun troops withdraw from positions in Mamfe following deadly attack

11, November 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: French Cameroun troops withdraw from positions in Mamfe following deadly attack 0

Cameroon government forces loyal to the regime in Yaoundé have withdrawn from their isolated positions at the banks of the Manyu River exposed to Ambazonia Restoration Forces attacks. The troops including elements of the French Cameroun gendarmerie have now regroup in stronger places in Mamfe town after the very deadly attack from the Manyu Ghost Warriors.

This decision reportedly ordered from Yaoundé has already been implemented throughout the Manyu County and Cameroon Intelligence Report understands other withdrawals from Ekok in Eyumojock and Tinta in Akwaya will follow soonest.

French Cameroun troops deployed to Manyu, suffered an attack recently that claimed the lives of 5 soldiers according to Cameroun government sources in Mamfe.

A statement from the Ambazonia Security Council that confirmed the attack hinted that it was carried out by what the Southern Cameroons Homeland Security Department codenamed as The Seals Team 2 of Manyu RFs aka Ghost Warriors.

The mayor of Mamfe John Ayuk Takunchong who recently held a public meeting grouping okader riders and boasted that the Manyu County was under the command and control of the Yaoundé regime has moved his family to an unknown destination in Douala.

By Rita Akana

Scores of mass graves of Southern Cameroonians killed by Biya exist in Menchum, Manyu and Ndian

11, November 2019

Scores of mass graves of Southern Cameroonians killed by Biya exist in Menchum, Manyu and Ndian 0

The Interim Government says there are several mass graves in three Southern Cameroons Counties with remains of scores of innocent Ambazonia civilians killed by the French Cameroun army deployed to Southern Cameroons.

Vice President Dabney Yerima, told Cameroon Concord News Group correspondent in Germany late on Sunday that the forest and massive grass field areas in Menchum, Manyu and Ndian are harboring mass graves. The Ambazonia exiled leader noted that any peace process with French Cameroun would require an internationally supervised process of the exhumation of the mass graves.

Comrade Dabney Yerima added that the Ambazonia Interim Government is working with Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces in Ground Zero to establish the locations of other mass graves in Mezam, Lebialem and Bui Counties.

The victims whose bodies were found in mass graves in Menchum, Bui and Manyu were killed by Cameroon government troops under the direct supervision of President Paul Biya.  

The jailed Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe told the Paris-based Jeune Afrique that some 20,000 Southern Cameroons civilians have been systematically executed by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime. Hundreds were purportedly taken from Kumba, the chief city in the Meme County to rural areas like Ekiliwindi and Konye, where they were killed and buried en masse.

The Biya genocidal campaign is on-going and involves several phases ever since the beginning of the Southern Cameroons resistance. Vice President Dabney Yerima has appealed to religious leaders and local witnesses to help the Ambazonia Interim Government uncover graves containing bodies of Southern Cameroonians killed by troops loyal to the regime in Yaoundé.

By Asu Isong with additional reporting from Sama Ernest

Bolivian president Evo Morales announces resignation

11, November 2019

Bolivian president Evo Morales announces resignation 0

Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his resignation Sunday, caving in following three weeks of sometimes-violent protests over his disputed re-election after the army and police withdrew their backing.

“I resign my post as president,” the leftist Morales said in a televised address, capping a day of fast-moving events in which several ministers and senior officials quit as support for Latin America’s longest-serving president crumbled.

The streets of La Paz immediately exploded in celebration, as jubilant Bolivians set off firecrackers and waved the country’s red, yellow and green flag.

Morales, 60 and in power since 2006, was declared the winner of the October 20 presidential election a narrow margin, giving him a controversial fourth term.

But the opposition said there was fraud in the vote count and three weeks of street protests ensued, during which three people died and hundreds were injured.

The Organization of American States carried out an audit of the election and on Sunday reported irregularities in just about every aspect that it examined: the technology used, the chain of custody of ballots, the integrity of the count, and statistical projections.

As chanting Bolivians kept up demonstrations in the street, Morales called new elections, but this was apparently not enough to calm the uproar, and the commanders of the armed forces and the police joined the calls for the president’s resignation.

PressTV-Bolivia's Morales calls new vote in outstanding concession

Violence continued Sunday as a caravan of buses taking opposition supporters to La Paz was attacked, leaving three people injured, including one by gunfire.

To make the announcement that he was stepping down, Morales traveled by plane to the coca-growing Chimore region of central Bolivia, the cradle of his career in politics.

It was there in the 1980s that Bolivia’s first indigenous president made his name as a combative union leader defending farmers who grow coca, which in the Bolivian countryside is used for medicinal and other purposes. It is also the raw material for making cocaine. 
He was accompanied by vice president Alvaro Garcia Linera, who also resigned.

On social media, Bolivians speculated that Morales might leave the country, perhaps going to Argentina, which just elected a center-left government.

(Source: AFP)

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Biya sets Feb. 9, 2020 for parliamentary and municipal polls

11, November 2019

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Biya sets Feb. 9, 2020 for parliamentary and municipal polls 0

Cameroon will hold its legislative and municipal elections on February 9, 2020, according to a presidential decree announced on Sunday.

The last legislative polls was held in 2013 for five-year terms.

President Paul Biya who was re-elected in 2018 has twice postponed the elections.

The 2018 presidential election stoked a political crisis in this Central African nation, where Biya has ruled for 37 years.

Opposition leader Maurice Kamto was imprisoned along with some of his supporters for denouncing electoral fraud through marches.

Since his release in October, Kamto’s attempts to hold public meetings have not been approved by authorities.

His Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon has said the party had requested certain preconditions be met, like a revision of the electoral code.

The main opposition party in Parliament , the Social Democratic Front failed to comment on its participation in the 2020 legislative polls when reached by AFP.

AFP

Bolivia: President Morales calls new vote in outstanding concession

10, November 2019

Bolivia: President Morales calls new vote in outstanding concession 0

Bolivia’s President Evo Morales has called a new presidential election in an outstanding concession, as the opposition in the Latin American country has disputed the results of the recent election that the incumbent has won.

In a TV address on Sunday, Morales said he would “call for new national elections, which, by voting, allow the Bolivian people to democratically elect new authorities.”

The announcement came after the Organization of American States (OAS) — which was tasked with doing a count audit after the opposition claimed the previous poll was fraudulent — released a preliminary report saying the election must be re-run due to irregularities.

“The first round of the election held on October 20 must be annulled and the electoral process must begin again, with the first round taking place as soon as there are new conditions that give new guarantees for it to take place, including a newly composed electoral body,” the organization said.

Electoral authorities announced that Morales secured an outright win in the first round of the presidential election on October 20, while his rival and the head of the Civic Community opposition party, Carlos Mesa, refused to recognize the results of the vote.

Opposition parties claimed that there had been irregularities in the vote-counting process, and the Bolivian president accused the opposition of trying to overthrow him.

The new announcement by Morales came after he called on Saturday for “urgent” negotiations with the opposition amid reports that the country’s police and security forces had joined anti-government protesters.

Morales, who spoke at a press conference in the Bolivian capital of La Paz, called for a round-table discussion with the four political parties represented in the country’s assembly.

The Bolivian military said in a statement the same day that it wouldn’t confront the demonstrators in the weeks-long standoff over Bolivia’s disputed election.

Three people have died and hundreds injured in often violent protests since Morales claimed a fourth consecutive term in the election.

The president came to power in 2006 as Bolivia’s first indigenous leader and has won his previous three terms with solid majorities.

Morales won last month’s vote with a lead of over 10 points against Mesa, his nearest rival. The victory was marred by a near 24-hour halt in the count, which, when resumed, showed a sharp shift in Morales’ favor.

Source: Presstv

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