21, September 2018
Genocide in Southern Cameroons: Help me to understand! 0
The unending gory pictures from Southern Cameroons for the past two years for me is stretching my understanding to its limit. Yes, Southern Cameroonians had the “temerity”, as always, to rise up against long years of marginalisation and second-class citizenship. Yes, they went down on the streets to protest, an inalienable right of all citizens in any country that lays claim to civilised governance. Yes, they took up arms to defend themselves when the government response to their protests was excessive use of military force. But no, I do not understand the extent to which a government can come down so hard on its citizens.
Someone help me understand how for two years running, a government worth its name can be mercilessly mowing down its citizens in silence. Defenceless boys and girls are being quietly decimated on our streets and in our homes (the latest case of Njikwa is telling). How has it become normal to sit idly by and watch our kith and kin being killed in total indifference? How normal has it become for a whole part of the country to be bleeding while we look the other way? The economy of the region has ground to a screeching halt. Our children can no longer school, for want of security. I read with horror the various communiqués from schools in the Southern Zone requesting parents to come collect their children from school. How long shall this sacrifice continue while a so-called President is more absorbed by elections than by peace and security in a territory we “hired” him to protect? What government sits quiet for two years while the country is being torn apart? What government watches idly as the country slides irreversibly into chaos?
Our farms have been abandoned. Businesses have crumbled. Unemployment is now rising at an alarming rate. The people have lost their sources of livelihood. Starvation is staring this region straight in the face and before long, the region will be needing real humanitarian assistance, South Soudan-style, not the contrived humanitarian assistance which the same government has used to con people out of their meagre resources. Granted, the authorities in the country have never been known for their sense of forward thinking, either out of sheer incompetence or poor planning. But, it does not take a degree in economics to anticipate the impending doom. It will come and when it does, it will be ugly.
Please, help me to understand how the notion of dialogue became a foreign and strange notion in Cameroon. Help me to understand how it became difficult for the government to talk to its citizens. Someone please explain to me how empathy and sympathy exited from our national space.
Please, help to understand, as I am lost, perplexed and frankly frightened. I am frightened because the people we thought were human beings capable of reasoning and empathy have, sadly, turned out to be cold-blooded killers. I can bet my bottom franc that had it not been for social media, the scale of the genocide would have been more horrendous.
I am scared because within the country, we have sympathizers and enablers of this ongoing genocide, while the international community is deafeningly quiet in its complicity… We have heard the usual ineffectual noises from international organisations and other “brotherly” countries. Beyond these cliché statements, radio silence. While the killing machine turns and gathers more momentum. And, it is getting worse. We will get up one day and realise that our villages and towns have become veritable ghost towns…
I am still seeking answers…
Shey Kukih Mansah
21, September 2018
US sanctions China for buying Russian jets, missiles 0
The United States expanded its sanctions war against Russia to China on Thursday, announcing punitive measures against a Chinese military organization for buying Russian fighter jets and missiles.
Stepping up pressure on Moscow over its “malign activities,” the US State Department said it was placing financial sanctions on the Equipment Development Department of the Chinese Ministry of Defense, and its top administrator, for its recent purchase of Russian Sukhoi Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 surface-to-air missiles.
Officials said it was the first time a third country has been punished under the CAATSA sanctions legislation for dealing with Russia, and signaled the Trump administration’s will to risk relations with other countries in its campaign against Moscow.
They also said that the US could consider similar action against other countries taking delivery of Russian fighter jets and missiles. US ally Turkey is currently talking with Moscow about an S400 deal.
“The ultimate target of these sanctions is Russia,” a senior administration official told journalists, insisting on anonymity.
“CAATSA sanctions in this context are not intended to undermine the defense capabilities of any particular country. They are aimed at imposing costs on Russia in response to its malign activities.”
CAATSA, or the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, was passed in 2017 as a tool that gives the Trump administration more ways to target Russia, Iran and North Korea with economic and political sanctions.
With regard to Russia, CAATSA arises from the country’s “aggression in Ukraine, annexation of Crimea, cyber intrusions and attacks, interference in the 2016 elections, and other malign activities,” the State Department said.
The legislation allows the government to take action against those companies and individuals who have been placed on the CAATSA blacklist.
EDD and its director Li Shangfu became targets after taking delivery over the past year of the jets and missiles from Rosoboronexport, Russia’s main arms export entity already on the CAATSA blacklist for its support of the Assad regime in Syria.
Targeting Russian ‘big ticket’ arms deals
At the same time, the State Department also announced it was placing 33 Russian intelligence and military-linked actors on its sanctions blacklist under the CAATSA rules.
All of them — defense related firms, officers of the GRU military intelligence agency, and people associated with the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency disinformation group — have been on previous US sanctions lists and 28 of them have already been indicted by Russia election meddling investigator Robert Mueller.
“We will continue to vigorously implement CAATSA and urge all countries to curtail relationships with Russia’s defense and intelligence sectors, both of which are linked to malign activities worldwide,” the State Department said.
The sanctions freeze any of EDD’s and Li’s assets in US jurisdictions.
They also restrict EDD’s access to global financial markets by blocking foreign exchange transactions under US jurisdiction or any transactions in the US financial system.
The senior official stressed that CAATSA is not going to be implemented across the board, but that the US was choosing Russia’s sale of “bigger ticket items” of “new, fancy, qualitatively significant stuff” that could have a “security impact” on the United States.
“The CAATSA was not intended to take down the economy of third party countries. It’s intended to impose appropriate pressures on Russia in response to Russian malign acts,” the official said.
The official declined to answer if the US would take similar action if Russia delivers S400 missiles to other countries such as Turkey, which is in talks to buy them.
However, he said, “You can be confident that we have spent an enormous amount of time talking about prospective purchases of things such as S-400s and Sukhois with people all around the world who may have been interested in such things and some who may still be.”
“We have made it very clear to them that these — that systems like the S-400 are a system of key concern with potential CAATSA implications.”
(AFP)