Headline News

8, March 2020

Coronavirus outbreak: Italy locks down regions in north, quarantines 16mn ⁰

Italy has placed entire areas — including the financial capital, Milan — under forced quarantine in an attempt to contain an already widespread outbreak of the new coronavirus.

The new measures, announced by Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte early on Sunday and taking immediate effect, imposed a lockdown on Lombardy, Italy’s northern rich region, as well as 14 provinces in four other of the country’s 19 regions. Some of the major cities included are Milan, Venice, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Reggio Emilia and Rimini.

“We are facing an emergency, a national emergency. We have been applying precautionary measures from the beginning and we are facing the situation with awareness and without underestimating it,” Conte said in a televised speech as he announced the draconian measures.

The measures included the closure of all museums, cultural centers, cinemas, theaters, and other public venues and events in the affected areas, impacting a total of 16 million people in the country of 60 million.

“We want to guarantee the health of our citizens. We understand that all these measures will create inconveniences… But this is a time when we must take responsibility for ourselves. We need to understand that all of us need to adhere to the measures. We need to protect our own health, the health of our dear ones,” the Italian prime minister added.

The decree also banned city commute within the designated areas other than for emergencies or “essential work reasons.”

“There will be no movement in or out of these areas, or within them, unless for proven, work-related reasons, emergencies or health reasons,” Conte said.

Italy’s Civil Protection Agency announced in a statement that the number of coronavirus cases in the country reached 5,883 on Saturday, the biggest daily rise since the epidemic began just over two weeks ago.

Angelo Borrelli, the head of the agency, also told a news conference that the number of fatalities had risen to 233 people, up by 36.

Italy is now the country with the highest deaths after China, where the virus first emerged.

WHO: World not taking coronavirus seriously enough

The measures taken by the Italian government on Sunday are similar to those adopted in China’s central Hubei Province, whose nearly 60-million-strong population has been kept under quarantine since late January.

The total number of the people diagnosed with the coronavirus, known as COVID-19, has passed 100,000 worldwide, while 3,500 people have lost their lives across 95 countries and territories.

China quarantine hotel collapse claims six lives

Meanwhile, six people were confirmed dead on Sunday following the collapse of a hotel used as a coronavirus quarantine facility in the eastern Chinese city of Quanzhou.

The Chinese Ministry of Emergency Management said rescuers had also retrieved 38 survivors from the rubble — with five in critical or serious condition — out of the 71 people initially trapped in the building.

The hotel’s first floor had been under renovation before the collapse of the building in the coastal city on Saturday evening.

Over 3,600 released from quarantine in North Korea: Reports

Also on Sunday, media reports said North Korea had released some 3,650 people quarantined over the new coronavirus after imposing strict restrictions and closing its borders in order to prevent the outbreak.

The individuals had been kept under quarantine in Kangwon and Chagang provinces, North Korea’s state radio reported, according to Yonhap news agency.

North Korea’s official KCNA news agency also announced on Friday that 221 out of the 380 foreigners who were under “strict medical monitoring” had been discharged from isolation.

Pyongyang has banned tourists and suspended international trains and flights to and from the country.

Maldives reports first coronavirus cases

In a related development, the Maldives reported its first two cases of the coronavirus infection on Sunday.

Local authorities said the two infected individuals — both of them staffers at a Kuredu Island resort facility — had tested positive late on Saturday and were suspected to have contracted the disease from an Italian tourist who had also tested positive after returning to his home country.

The Maldives restricted movement on Kuredu and several other resort islands.

Ali Waheed, the tourism minister of the country, said the two individuals had been quarantined.

“The period for the temporary restrictions will be decided by the medical teams. Right now, we have identified people who were in contact with the patients and they are in self-isolation along with secondary contacts. At this time we can say that these individuals will be monitored for 14 days,” he added.

The Maldives had already suspended direct air links with China, the epicenter of the virus.

Source: Presstv

7, March 2020

Cameroon’s language war ⁰

President Paul Biya of Cameroon is, in many ways, your bog-standard African “authoritarian ruler”, or, as diplomats don’t say, “dictator”. He has held on to power for almost forty years and is now in his seventh term as head of state, the oldest and longest-standing ruler in Africa. In 1983, as sole candidate, he won 99.98 per cent of the votes. He followed the example of other one-party states in the 1990s, allowing opposition parties to emerge and simply rigging subsequent elections.

At present, his troops are committing atrocities against an embattled English-speaking minority. They are rampaging through English-speaking villages in a French-speaking country whose economy is de facto controlled by French companies (over a hundred in almost all sectors including off-shore oil).

Cameroon has a civil war on its hands. Anglophone grievances came to a head in 2016, when the Francophone-dominated regime imposed French-speaking judges on Anglophone courts and Francophone teachers in Anglophone schools. Swiss and Commonwealth representatives have tried to mediate but President Biya thinks he can solve his problem militarily and has told both, in no uncertain terms, to go away.

Until 1960, there were two Cameroons. The larger territory was governed by France using the French legal and education systems and language. But in the smaller south and west territories, English common law took precedence, with English judges and English school exams. The present conflict dates back to decolonisation in 1961, when a UN-backed independence referendum offered the Anglophones the choice between joining Nigeria or joining French Cameroon. Thus 20 per cent of the population were not even offered the option of self-determination.

Under President Biya, the Francophone-dominated government, based in the capital of Yaoundé, has marginalised the mainly Anglophone northwest and southwest regions. Only one of 36 cabinet posts is held by an Anglophone. Since 2017, despite the constitution guaranteeing human rights, reputable human rights organisations have recorded the repeated use of force against Anglophone demonstrations. Journalists are arrested and tortured. Government troops, notably the Rapid Intervention Force, have been burning down English-speaking villages, with the result that 656,000 people have fled, between 35,000-50,000 of them into Nigerian refugee camps. Meanwhile, secessionist militias have become increasingly violent. Banditry is rampant. Civilians — including Catholic priests — have been kidnapped, some tortured. Catholic-run schools and clinics have closed, with 800,000 children deprived of schooling. Casualties on both sides have mounted: some 2,000-5,000 have been killed in the violence.

By October 2019, Biya was talking about a “major national dialogue”, but the Anglophone leadership was by now flying under the flag of a “Government Council of Ambazonia’, its name for the two secessionist regions. A paper promise of “special status” on the Quebec model for the two Anglophone regions was refused; few Anglophone leaders were willing to attend the talks while the repression continued, and “special status” left real power centred on the largely Francophone capital, Yaoundé. Biya is France’s man. He is housing 350,000 refugees from the Central African Republic and Nigeria, while deploying Cameroonian troops to fight Boko Haram. He is useful.

But what is France’s role? France never really left Cameroon. It has never shed a certain chauvinistic pride in the merits of its language, so Cameroon with a majority speaking French is an asset. The French Foreign Legion is dotted around the region.

I remember a high-level exercise in “entente cordiale” on Africa in the early 1990s when John Major was Prime Minister. It was held in one of the grand reception rooms of the Quai d’Orsay, resplendent with the decorative arts of the Second Empire, the ornate home of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The British delegation comprised the FCO, Dfid and international developmental NGOs. We were duly impressed. The French fielded staff from quite different government directorates, notably their intelligence services and military plus a lonely anthropologist. That also spoke reams.

An international group of Catholic bishops, brought together by the Toronto-based — non-partisan — Global Campaign for Peace and Justice in Cameroon, has recently signed an open letter to President Biya. They call on the president to join Swiss-led negotiations to address Anglophone concerns and claims. Increased international pressure is necessary if this is ever to happen. But Biya rejects what he claims is foreign interference in a domestic issue, insisting on a “home-grown peace initiative only”.

As the bishops wrote: “When the international community ignores escalating atrocities of the kind happening in Cameroon, it often ends up paying a massive bill. Sooner or later, we must fund refugee camps and peacekeepers, host negotiations, accommodate thousands of migrants seeking asylum, and then help rebuild shattered nations. It makes more sense to use diplomacy to stop the violence at an early stage, finding a political solution to a political problem through inclusive peace negotiations”.

Europe, including Britain, remains distracted by Brexit, but the US has begun to apply pressure, distancing itself from the Biya regime by reducing military aid and removing favourable trade status. It is time for another visit to the Quai d’Orsay and for a little more entente cordiale.

Source: The article.com

7, March 2020

Ambazonia Crisis: 150 Cameroonian Women Transferred After Protesting ICE Custody in the US ⁰

150 women from Cameroon who have been imprisoned for months in a for-profit ICE detention center in Texas have been transferred to other remote immigration jails, in apparent retaliation for their protests over indefinite detention and dangerous conditions.

In a letter sent to the advocacy group Grassroots Leadership last month headlined “A Cry for Help,” the Cameroonian women complained of medical neglect at the T. Don Hutto immigration jail, writing, “Some of our sisters are sick and not being well treated. Others are running mad due to trauma and stress. … The medical department is very rude to us, they tell us we’re pretending to be sick even when someone is in serious pain.”

The Cameroonian asylum seekers also say they’re being discriminated against, writing, “Almost all the white women we came in with and even others who came after us have been released on parole and bond but we’ve been denied both parole and bond.” Advocates fear the women now face possible deportation in retaliation for speaking out against the conditions in T. Don Hutto. The facility has for years been plagued by allegations of abuse.

Source: Democracynow.org

7, March 2020

Yaounde Calls for Increased Hygiene Measures After First Coronavirus Case ⁰

Cameroon confirmed the central African state’s first case of COVID-19 on its territory Friday. Officials say it was discovered in a French citizen who arrived in Cameroon on Feb. 24.

Cameroon Health Minister Manaouda Malachie says the 58-year-old man was immediately placed in solitary confinement in a special hospital in. Malachie credited surveillance measures put in place by Cameroon after COVID-19 appeared in China with detecting the case and called on Cameroon’s population to be calm.

He said shortly after it was suspected the man was a carrier of the virus, he was immediately confined to avoid contact with others. Malachie said health officials started tracing the people the infected man contacted from the airport of departure through the plane’s arrival in Cameroon, as well as taxis or cars he used. They also disinfected places he visited.

Malachie said this wasn’t the first case in which COVID-19 was suspected, but previous cases were found to be negative after thorough investigations.

Malachie called on citizens to be calm and vigilant, saying that medical staff in the country has been advised on how to handle coronavirus cases.

But news of the first coronavirus in Cameroon has scared people. Some rushed to hospitals and pharmacies to ask for advice or buy medical facemasks.

Forty-three-year-old Isaac Dufe, who bought three masks for his wife and two-year-old baby, said he doesn’t have confidence that the Cameroon government will be able to control the virus’s spread should many more people be found with it.

“Cases of diseases have been recorded in this country, for instance, a case like cholera,” he said. “When there is an outbreak of cholera, in many situations in claims a lot of lives. But now we are talking about a very complicated disease like Coronavirus, so I am so scared that if adequate health measures are not taken, then the situation might be very difficult in Cameroon.”

Phanuel Habimana, a World Health Organization representative for Cameroon, said it is following up on the case. He says Cameroonians should not panic, but must make sure they respect basic hygiene norms.

“Cameroonians should remain calm,” Habimana said. “Cameroonians should not rush to pharmacies to try to get masks. Cameroonians should abide to the measures that the minister [of health] has been repeatedly mentioning. Personal hygiene, washing hands several times a day, when someone is coughing, cover the mouth and nose with handkerchiefs and also make sure that people do not get in contact closely with people who are suspected to be sick.”

Last January, Cameroon health officials announced they had improved checkpoints around airports as they feared the virus could be brought into the country by travelers from China and other countries.

Health Minister Malachie said as part of epidemiological surveillance, measures had been put in place to prevent any possible importation of the deadly virus, which he said was an epidemic that causes diseases in mammals and birds and that in humans, the virus causes respiratory infections, which are typically mild but, in rare cases, can be lethal.

Symptoms include running nose, headache, cough, sore throat, fever and the feeling of being unwell. B There is no vaccine for this virus and the only way to protect oneself is through prevention, health officials in Cameroon say.

Source: VOA

7, March 2020

Biya regime to hold postponed vote in Southern Cameroons on March 22 ⁰

Cameroon will hold a legislative election in parts of the country’s conflict-ravaged English-speaking regions on March 22 after the first attempt last month was annulled, the presidency said Friday.

Voting in 11 electoral districts in the anglophone North-West and South-West would be “convened on Sunday, March 22 in order to continue the election of MPs to the National Assembly,” a decree signed by President Paul Biya said.

The two anglophone regions have been rocked by deadly violence as armed separatists campaign for independence from the rest of Cameroon, which is majority French-speaking.

Separatist fighters had called on people in the two regions not to take part in nationwide municipal and legislative elections on February 9, issuing threats to anyone who planned to vote.

Clashes between the separatists and the army multiplied, according to several NGOs, though only one incident — in the North-West region — was reported on election day.

Cameroon’s constitutional council said on February 25 that the vote would have to be rerun in several parts of the two anglophone regions.

Results from the election released late last month showed Biya’s party retaining an absolute majority, winning 139 out of 167 seats on a turnout of almost 46 percent. Opposition candidates won only 16 seats, with the remainder going to allies of the ruling party.

The March 22 vote will determine who holds 13 outstanding seats.

The conflict in the Central African country’s English-speaking regions has killed more than 3,000 people and displaced nearly 700,000 in less than three years.

Source: AFP

7, March 2020

French Cameroun political icon Adamou Ndam Njoya dies aged 77 ⁰

Dr Adamou Ndam Njoya one of French Cameroun’s refined academics is no more. The onetime Minister of National Education and president of the International Organization for Islamic Studies who also moonlighted as leader of the Cameroon Democratic Union, CDU passed away in Yaounde.

Local media recently revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer in 2018 and reportedly spent several months receiving treatment in the Republic of South Africa.

The pro Anglophone politician and lawyer was born on the 8^th of May 1942. He served as Minister of National Education from 1977 to 1980. He founded the Cameroon Democratic Union Party in 1991 and successfully won the mayor ship of Foumban. He was also elected MP for the Noun Division.

Dr Adamou Ndam Njoya had a strong and productive relation with Ni John Fru Ndi of the Social Democratic Front and both men unsuccessfully ran as presidential candidates in the 1992 historic presidential elections.

Like many common French Cameroun politician, he recently handed over the Foumban council to his wife, Patricia Ndam Njoya, who won the mayoral and legislative elections on February 9th 2020.

By Rita Akana with additional reporting from Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow

6, March 2020

Yaounde records first case of Coronavirus ⁰

The first case of Coronavirus has been recorded in Cameroon. The Minister of Public Health confirmed the information earlier today.

According to the minister, a case of Coronavirus was confirmed at the Centre Pasteur laboratory in Yaoundé after a sampling carried out Thursday at the Cathedral Clinic on a French citizen who arrived in Cameroon since February 24.

“The Minister of Public Health, announced the confirmation of a case of Corvid-19, on Cameroonian territory. It is a 58-year-old French citizen who arrived in Yaounde on February 24, 2020″, says the press release of Dr. Manaouda Malachie.

“He has been placed in isolation in the care centre of the Yaounde Central Hospital for appropriate care,” the statement said.

Contacted by telephone, a doctor from the central hospital who requested anonymity confirmed that the patient had been placed in isolation.

By Rita Akana

6, March 2020

Former CIA intel officer says Coronavirus was produced in a laboratory ⁰

A former American counter-terrorism specialist and military intelligence officer of the CIA has said that the “Coronavirus did not occur naturally through mutation but rather was produced in a laboratory, possibly as a biological warfare agent.”

Since the novel coronavirus outbreak began in China last December, it has infected more than 90,000 people globally and killed more than 3,000. The majority of cases and deaths remain in mainland China.

The death toll from the coronavirus in Iran, which has one of the highest numbers outside China, stood at 107, Health Ministry spokesman Kianush Jahanpur said Thursday.

“Several reports suggest that there are components of the virus that are related to HIV that could not have occurred naturally. If it is correct that the virus had either been developed or even produced to be weaponized it would further suggest that its escape from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab and into the animal and human population could have been accidental. Technicians who work in such environments are aware that “leaks” from laboratories occur frequently,” Philip Giraldi wrote in an article published by the Strategic Culture Foundation on Thursday.

“There is, of course and inevitably, another theory. There has been some speculation that as the Trump Administration has been constantly raising the issue of growing Chinese global competitiveness as a direct threat to American national security and economic dominance, it might be possible that Washington has created and unleashed the virus in a bid to bring Beijing’s growing economy and military might down a few notches. It is, to be sure, hard to believe that even the Trump White House would do something so reckless, but there are precedents for that type of behavior,” he said.

“In 2005-9 the American and Israeli governments secretly developed a computer virus called Stuxnet, which was intended to damage the control and operating systems of Iranian computers being used in that country’s nuclear research program. Admittedly Stuxnet was intended to damage computers, not to infect or kill human beings, but concerns that it would propagate and move to infect computers outside Iran proved to be accurate as it spread to thousands of PCs outside Iran, in countries as far flung as China, Germany, Kazakhstan and Indonesia,” he added.

“If one even considers it possible that the United States had a hand in creating the coronavirus at what remains of its once extensive biological weapons research center in Ft Detrick Maryland, it is very likely that Israel was a partner in the project. Helping to develop the virus would also explain how Israeli scientists have been able to claim success at creating a vaccine so quickly, possibly because the virus and a treatment for it were developed simultaneously,” he noted.

Israeli scientists have claimed to be close to developing a vaccine for coronavirus that could be available in about 90 days, saying they have developed an effective vaccine against avian coronavirus Infectious Bronchitis Virus (IBV), which is to be adapted soon and create a human vaccine against COVID-19.

Source: Presstv

6, March 2020

Olympic qualifier: Late winner gives Cameroon a 3-2 win over Zambia ⁰

Cameroon’s Aboudi Onguene scored a brace to give her side a 3-2 win against Zambia in the first leg of the African women’s football Olympic play-off final.

The striker scored an 88th minute winner in an eventful game in Yaounde, handing her side a narrow advantage before the second leg in Lusaka on 10 March.

The score was 1-1 at half time, after Zambia’s Grace Chanda scored the first of her two goals before Cameroon’s Ajara Nchout equalised before the break.

Onguene then put the home side ahead for the first time in the 71st minute. Three minutes later, Chanda scored a second to level the scores before Onguene gave Cameroon the victory late on.

The winner of the tie will earn a place at Tokyo 2020, which is scheduled to go ahead as planned in July and August despite fears over the coronavirus outbreak.

The losers in the tie will have one final chance to seal a place at the Games, with a play-off against Chile, the runners-up in the 2018 Copa America.

Three men’s teams have already qualified in the men’s section – South Africa, Egypt and Ivory Coast.

Cameroon have beaten Ethiopia, DR Congo and Ivory Coast to reach the final, while Zambia beat Botswana and Kenya after Zimbabwe’s refusal to play handed them qualification in the early rounds.

Source: BBC

6, March 2020

Cameroonians won U.S. asylum in 81% of cases in the 2019 fiscal year ⁰

President Donald Trump isn’t the only world leader making it virtually impossible for many Africans to get asylum in the United States. He’s getting plenty of help from allies in the Americas.

Ecuador is closing its doors as one of the few countries in North and South America to welcome African visitors, depriving them of a starting point for their dangerous journeys north by land. If asylum-seekers make it to Mexico, they face a virtual barricade near its southern border with Guatemala.

Trump’s allies are blocking a path for Africans fleeing violence in their homelands as those countries face a U.S. president who has used economic leverage to get help curtailing immigration. Ecuador is pursuing a trade deal with Trump, while Mexico is trying to stay in his good graces after his threat to increase tariffs prompted its crackdown on illegal immigration last year.

People from Cameroon, who are escaping bloodshed that has killed tens of thousands, often win asylum in the U.S. even more than other Africans, but they first must reach American soil. Most are English speakers fleeing torture inflicted by a French-speaking government at war with separatists.

Dozens of them are languishing in Tapachula, a Mexican city of about 300,000 people in a coffee- and banana-growing region along the Guatemalan border.

“I can’t go back to my country. I can’t go forward. I’m stuck. I don’t know what to do,” a 25-year-old Cameroonian said recently at a guest house where he’s staying and relies on handouts to eat.

The man spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared jeopardizing his immigration status in Mexico.

Trump has called asylum “a scam” and adopted several policies to reduce claims, including denying asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without seeking refuge there first. Border arrests plummeted 78% in January from a 13-year high in May.

While Ecuador’s 2008 constitution embraces “universal citizenship” that allows almost anyone to visit, its government said in August that people from 11 countries need a visa to come, including from Cameroon and six other African nations. Twelve countries already faced visa restrictions, half of them in Africa.

Jose Valencia, Ecuador’s foreign affairs minister, said the latest visa restrictions followed a detailed study of migration trends.

“Universal citizenship is a principle that is not open to debate and not questioned in the sense that it is valid, an aspiration,” he said in an interview published in El Universo newspaper. The challenge, he said, is “to avoid a regime of universal citizenship that is so open we have to be subject to threats that can affect us and third countries.”

Ecuador’s crackdown comes as Trump dangles a trade deal. He said he was working on it when President Lenin Moreno became the first leader of the small South American nation to meet with a U.S. president in Washington in 17 years.

Trump drew a contrast between Moreno and his leftist predecessor.

“Ecuador had a very unusual outlook on life but, with your great president, he realizes how important it is to get along with the United States,” Trump told reporters of Moreno.

After the Oval Office meeting last month, the acting deputy U.S. Homeland Security secretary, Ken Cuccinelli, said on Twitter: “Hopefully we can all work together to reduce illegal immigration out of Ecuador.”

Cameroonians won U.S. asylum in 81% of cases in the 2019 fiscal year, compared with 29% for all nationalities, according to court data analyzed by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Ethiopians had a 77% success rate; Eritreans, 67% and Nigerians, 58%.

To seek asylum in the U.S., Africans fly to South America and travel north by land, on journeys where many get robbed or die from hunger and thirst. It’s faster than seeking refugee status, which has always been an extreme long shot with years of waiting — even more so now that Trump has dramatically cut the number of refugees the U.S. will take.

Bolivia, which is much farther from the U.S. than Ecuador, is the only country in the Americas that accepts people from Cameroon and Eritrea without a visa, according to the Henley Passport Index. People from Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo are barred from all countries in the Americas without a visa.

English-speaking Cameroonians recently began coming to the U.S., perceiving an ally in Trump, said Alexandra Lamarche, an Africa expert at advocacy group Refugees International. Last year, the U.S. scaled back military assistance to Cameroon, a longtime ally, and Trump eliminated some trade benefits over human rights violations, including extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention and torture.

Cameroonians also felt an affinity with the United States over a shared language, Lamarche said. Many have settled in the Washington, D.C., Dallas and Houston areas.

“Everyone had a connection,” Lamarche said.

More than 2,400 Cameroonians visited Ecuador in 2019, more than three times the previous year, according to government records, including the 25-year-old man stuck in southern Mexico.

He fled Cameroon after being jailed twice on allegations of opposing the government, where he was beaten, forced to lay down in water and walk on his knees on a hard floor.

Being imprisoned in Cameroon “was a lot of stress,” the man said. “You don’t feel where they beat you. They kick you with a heavy boot. They smash my toes.”

Once in South America, he walked six days through the lawless jungle of the notorious Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. He ran out of food and saw friends swept away by rushing rivers. He said assailants raped women, robbed him of $500 and stole watches and phones.

After three months of waiting for travel documents to leave southern Mexico for the U.S., he left without them in October and was jailed for two months after his bus was stopped at a government checkpoint.

Back in Tapachula, the largest Mexican city along Guatemalan border, he slept on the streets and begged for money until a guest house owner allowed him to sleep on cushions on a hallway floor. For food, he relies on the charity of housemates, who sleep four to a room.

“I don’t know what I can do to leave this place,” he said. “They’re not giving me papers.”

Cameroonians are desperate with nowhere to go, said Salva Lacruz of the Fray Matias de Cordova Human Rights Center in Tapachula.

Last summer, dozens of Cameroonians arrived daily in Tijuana, putting their names on a list of people waiting to be processed for U.S. asylum. Now, hardly any reach the Mexican border city.

A hotel in Tijuana’s red light district rented about 15 rooms to Cameroonians last summer — three in each one. By February, a desk clerk said Cameroonians occupied only two rooms.

Source: Blackvoicenews