News

Southern Cameroons: Deadly floods in Fako point to a looming climate emergency

9, July 2022

Southern Cameroons: Deadly floods in Fako point to a looming climate emergency 0

Flash floods triggered by sudden rains swept through the Likomba-Mutengene main road in Fako Division in the early hours of Saturday. The Saturday disaster came with no warning.

“The local Likomba River was flooding with massive boulders. The trees were falling! It was terrifying” Cameroon Concord News Buea Bureau Chief said.

Likomba and Mutengene are in the mountainous Fako Division, where deadly cascade of rock, debris and water regularly wreak havoc.

Many are attempting to understand what caused the avalanche. But the massive flooding illustrates the risks of development in an area vulnerable to the accelerated effects of climate change.

An Environmentalist contacted by Cameroon Concord News say the construction of houses and building development works all over Fako Division have put the inhabitants in a precarious position.

Cameroon government military, paramilitary and police as well as disaster management officials were conspicuously absent as passengers in vehicles dug through mud, sand and rocks that swamped the Likomba-Mutengene road. Several passenger vehicles were on the road when the rains struck.

By Toto Roland Motuba

ID Card: Biya regime has detained over 5000 Anglophone teenage boys and girls

8, July 2022

ID Card: Biya regime has detained over 5000 Anglophone teenage boys and girls 0

Cameroon Concord News Group office in Yaoundé has revealed that the Francophone dominated military forces arrested some 5000 Southern Cameroons teenagers amid continued aggression against Ambazonia Self Defense Forces.

Concord’s Yaoundé Bureau Chief Rita Akana wrote in a write up  that there were minors as young as 16 among the detainees.

Many of the children were arrested when Cameroon government soldiers raided towns and villages across the South West and North West Regions.

“The Biya regime is so wicked,  devilish and occultic so much that they have over 5000 boys and girls of average age of 18 years in prisons for as flimsy as lack of ID cards” Rita Akana said.

 “Most of these juveniles are mercilessly abused by regime officers as sex slave” She furthered.

Cameroon Concord News Group understands that the teenagers are being held under the practice of administrative detention, which allows Yaoundé to keep detainees behind bars without charge for an indefinite time.

Eyong Ndip, an 18-year-old boy from Mautu, told Rita Akana that he was savagely beaten when Cameroon government soldiers arrested him near his house.

Sama Peter said a group of French speaking army soldiers had chased and caught him before they assaulted him with the butts of their rifles, stomped on him with military boots, and left him bleeding from his nose in Widikum.

At the very beginning of the crisis in Southern Cameroons, French speaking gendarmerie officers detained and assaulted 17-year-old Njuma Collins and his mum at Ekondo Titi.  The Francophone soldiers pepper-sprayed and violently beat Njuma calling him “young Amba fighter”. Njuma Collins sustained injuries to his face, back, and feet.

There is a growing trend of Francophone army soldiers shooting and injuring young English speaking Cameroonian men, especially in the knee and the leg, during overnight raids across the entire Southern Cameroons.

The Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government Dabney Yerima recently confirmed that Cameroon government soldiers had detained 5000 children since the beginning of the war in Southern Cameroons.

According to the Ambazonia Interim Government, several Southern Cameroons minors are currently being held in New Bell and Kondengui prisons including detention centers in French Cameroun.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files

Angola: Former president Dos Santos dies at 79

8, July 2022

Angola: Former president Dos Santos dies at 79 0

Angola’s former president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled Africa’s second biggest oil producer for nearly four decades, has died aged 79, the Angolan presidency said Friday.

Dos Santos died at 11.10am Spanish time at the Barcelona Teknon clinic following a prolonged illness, the presidency said.

The announcement said dos Santos, who ruled Angola for almost 40 years from 1979, was “a statesman of great historical scale who governed … the Angolan nation through very difficult times.”

Dos Santos had mostly lived in Barcelona since stepping down in 2017 and he reportedly had been undergoing treatment there for health problems.

Angola’s current head of state, Joao Lourenco, announced five days of national mourning starting Friday, when the country’s flag will fly at half-staff and public events are canceled.

One of Africa’s longest serving leaders, dos Santos came to power four years after Angola gained independence from Portugal and became enmeshed in the Cold War as a proxy battlefield. His rule was marked by a brutal civil war lasting nearly three decades against US-backed UNITA rebels and a subsequent oil-fuelled boom.

Shy, but shrewd political operator

His political journey spanned single-party Marxist rule in post-colonial years and a democratic system of government adopted in 2008. He voluntarily stepped down when his health began failing.

In public, dos Santos was unassuming and even appeared shy at times. But he was a shrewd operator behind the scenes.

He kept a tight grip on the 17th-century presidential palace in Luanda, the southern African country’s Atlantic capital, by distributing Angola’s wealth between his army generals and political rivals to ensure their loyalty. He demoted anyone he perceived to be gaining a level of popularity that could threaten his command.

Dos Santos’ greatest foe for more than two decades was Jonas Savimbi, leader of the UNITA rebels whose post-independence guerrilla insurgency fought in the bush aimed to oust dos Santos’ Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, or MPLA.

The Angolan strongman frequently described himself as an accidental president, taking the reins after Angola’s first leader, Agostinho Neto, died during cancer surgery in 1979.

With Neto having only served for four years and the 37-year-old dos Santos regarded as a relatively weak outside candidate, few could have imagined he would go on to rule for just shy of four decades.

But dos Santos proved an extremely astute politician.

In 2003, dos Santos banished his party’s secretary general to a junior position for appearing a little too eager to replace him. João Lourenço would have to wait 14 years to finally get his wish to become Angola’s next president.

Humble roots, grand ambitions

Born on August 28, 1942 to immigrant parents from the archipelago of Sao Tome, dos Santos was raised in the poor Luanda neighbourhood of Sambizanga. His father was a builder, his mother a maid.

But from a young age dos Santos had grander ambitions and joined the then-nascent MPLA.

Like many of his fellow liberation fighters, he spent his early 20s in exile in the Republic of Congo before moving to Baku in Azerbaijan, then part of the Soviet Union, to study petroleum engineering. There he met his first wife, Tatiana Kukanova, a Russian chess champion with whom he had his first and most famous daughter – Isabel dos Santos.

By 1977 and the death of Neto, dos Santos was among half a dozen senior MPLA members with a shot at the leadership. He won partly because he seemed the weakest candidate.

His opening speech as leader set the tone for future public appearances, lasting just one minute and 54 seconds. Over the next 38 years he would do just a handful of interviews.

Oil boom feeds family fortunes

Although he would increasingly be regarded by his critics as a dictator, it was his apparent willingness to compromise and stand by election results in 1992 as part of a UN negotiated peace process that would seal the popularity of his party.

Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA that fought on the other side of the civil war, refused to accept the result of that election and took the tired country back to war. When the Angolan army eventually succeeded in killing Savimbi, Unita had lost much of its support.

Between 2002 and 2014, as oil production grew in tandem with booming prices, the size Angola’s economy multiplied by 10, from $12.4 billion to $126 billion.

While little of the money trickled down to the poor, those closest to dos Santos became billionaires.

His eldest daughter Isabel became, according to Forbes, Africa’s richest woman and youngest billionaire worth about $3 billion. Forbes has since dropped Isabel from its list of billionaires because of the asset freezes.

Isabel also became chairman of state oil company Sonangol, while son José Filomeno headed a $5 billion sovereign wealth fund.

Dos Santos, who said in a rare 2013 interview he would like to be remembered “as a good patriot”, never specifically responded to the allegations that he had allowed corruption to become rampant.

Source: Reuters

Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister Abe pronounced dead after shooting

8, July 2022

Japan’s longest-serving Prime Minister Abe pronounced dead after shooting 0

Shinzo Abe smashed records as Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, championing ambitious economic reform and forging key diplomatic relationships while weathering scandals.

Nearly two years after poor health forced him to leave office, the 67-year-old has died after being shot during a campaign event on Friday.

Abe was a sprightly 52 when he first became prime minister in 2006, the youngest person to occupy the job in the postwar era.

He was seen as a symbol of change and youth, but also brought the pedigree of a third-generation politician groomed from birth by an elite, conservative family.

Abe’s first term was turbulent, plagued by scandals and discord, and capped by an abrupt resignation.

After initially suggesting he was stepping down for political reasons, he acknowledged he was suffering an ailment later diagnosed as ulcerative colitis.

They called it ‘Abenomics’

The debilitating bowel condition necessitated months of treatment but was, Abe said, eventually overcome with the help of new medication.

He ran again, and Japan’s revolving prime ministerial door brought him back to office in 2012.

It ended a turbulent period in which prime ministers changed sometimes at the rate of one a year.

With Japan still staggering from the effects of the 2011 tsunami and subsequent nuclear disaster at Fukushima – and a brief opposition government lashed for flip-flopping and incompetence – Abe offered a seemingly safe pair of hands.

And he had a plan: Abenomics.

The scheme to revive Japan’s economy – the world’s third-biggest, but more than two decades into stagnation – involved vast government spending, massive monetary easing, and cutting red tape.

Abe also sought to boost the country’s flagging birth rate by making workplaces more friendly to parents, particularly mothers.

He pushed through controversial consumption tax hikes to help finance nurseries and plug gaps in Japan’s overstretched social security system.

While there was some progress with reform, the economy’s bigger structural problems remained.

Deflation proved stubborn and the economy was in recession even before the coronavirus struck in 2020.

Abe’s star waned further during the pandemic, with his approach criticised as confused and slow, driving his approval ratings down to some of the lowest of his tenure.

Political storms

On the international stage, Abe took a hard line on North Korea, but sought a peacemaker role between the United States and Iran.

He prioritised a close personal relationship with Donald Trump in a bid to protect Japan’s key alliance from the then-US president’s “America First” mantra, and tried to mend ties with Russia and China.

But the results were mixed: Trump remained eager to force Japan to pay more for US troops stationed in the country, a deal with Russia on disputed northern islands stayed elusive, and a plan to invite Xi Jinping for a state visit fell by the wayside.

Abe also pursued a hard line with South Korea over unresolved wartime disputes and continued to float plans to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution.

Throughout his tenure, he weathered political storms including cronyism allegations that dented approval ratings but did little to affect his power, in part thanks to the weakness of the opposition.

Abe had been due to stay on until late 2021, giving him an opportunity to see out one final event in his historic tenure – the postponed Tokyo 2020 Olympics Games.

But in a shock announcement, he stepped down in August 2020, with a recurrence of ulcerative colitis ending his second term too.

Source: AFP

Amnesty International says Yaoundé should end threats against activists who exposed violations and abuses in Southern Cameroons

8, July 2022

Amnesty International says Yaoundé should end threats against activists who exposed violations and abuses in Southern Cameroons 0

The Cameroonian authorities must ensure that human rights defenders are able to work free of intimidation and reprisals, Amnesty International said today after receiving reports that activists are being targeted with death threats for exposing human rights violations and abuses in Anglophone regions.

The individuals targeted include seven human rights defenders and a cyber-activist, all of whom had been documenting human rights violations and abuses in the English-speaking regions of North-West and South-West Cameroon, which are facing clashes between army forces and armed separatist groups.

“The authorities must urgently launch a thorough, independent and effective investigation into these threats and other abuses committed against human rights defenders”.

Unrelenting death threats

Akem Kelvin Nkwain, a human rights officer at the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA), an organization that has documented human rights violations and abuses by all parties to the conflict, told Amnesty International he received several death threats from alleged armed separatists.

The first threat came on 24 May 2022, shortly after Nkwain wrote on Twitter about a child killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) allegedly planted by separatist fighters in Kumbo in North-West Cameroon.

On 16 June 2022, he received calls and messages featuring photos of a captured policeman, dead civilians, bullets, guns, armed group members, and an image of himself being marked for killing.

One of the messages said: “We declare you and your whole entire family as traitors and enemies to the Ambazonian fighters. Until we reach your house, let that money bring you back to life when you get shot and kill.”

Felix Agbor Nkongho, a human rights lawyer and founder of the CHRDA, also received multiple death threats from alleged armed separatists by phone and on social media in reaction to his participation in a conference in Toronto organized by the Coalition for Dialogue and Negotiations, a US-based NGO focusing on the conflict in Cameroon, between 29 October and 1 November 2021.

Abductions

On 22 April 2022, four UN Special Rapporteurs focusing on human rights defenders, extrajudicial executions, the right to freedom of expression and the right to association, wrote to President Paul Biya raising concern over repeated death threats sent since 2015 to the president and the lawyer of the Organic Farming for Gorillas (OFFGO). OFFGO has exposed abuses by businesses in the North-West regions of Cameroon.

In May 2021, the lawyer received death threats by phone, and on 6 November 2021, he escaped an abduction attempt at his home in Bamenda. He was also reportedly abducted from his home and released two hours later on 19 February 2019. In a report released in January 2021, Final warning: death threats and killings of human rights defenders,the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders detailed the threats against him.

In addition, his brother was also abducted and tortured on 16 May 2019 and on 27 March 2020 as a way to intimidate him. His brother-in-law was also shot twice in the leg by unknow individuals in his presence.  Several complaints have been filed in previous years by OFFGO lawyer, but according to OFFGO officials, the authorities have failed to launch an investigation.

In May 2022, N’Zui Manto,a cyber-activist working from outside Cameroon was forced to leave the African country where he was living after the Cameroonian authorities identified him following information shared by the local police that raised fears of repatriation.

N’Zui MantotoldAmnesty International he started receiving death threats on social media at the beginning of 2019 since he publishes information about the Cameroonian army’s losses in Anglophone regions. On 28 May 2022, he received a message from a fake Facebook profile saying: “One day you will come across me. I will kill you like nothing.”

Tarnteh Amadu Ngangpanweh,a human rights defender for Conscience Africaine, a Cameroon-based NGO, told Amnesty International he began receiving death threats after attending a press conference in Yaoundé on 18 May 2020. The event, which was organized by a coalition of civil society organizations, shared findings from a report on the Ngarbuh massacre, in which more than 20 civilians were killed during a military operation on 13 and 14 February 2020.

Two days later, after Tarnteh published the report on Facebook, an unknown person messaged him on Facebook saying he “better stop such activities, because this is obviously the first and last time, I am warning you on conspiring to publish false information, the next time you will be sorry for yourself.”

Tarnteh received several other threatening calls in late 2020, July 2021 and December 2021 after he documented alleged detentions for ransom by security forces in North-West region, and after he published a report on abductions allegedly committed by armed separatists.

Culled from Amnesty International

Amba fighters will give shocking response to Yaoundé offensives

5, July 2022

Amba fighters will give shocking response to Yaoundé offensives 0

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government (IG) says Ambazonia Self Defense Groups will soon deliver a shocking response to the ongoing French Cameroun military operations in Manyu and Ndian County as they constitute a flagrant violation of Southern Cameroons sovereignty.

Dabney Yerima told the Southern Cameroons war cabinet late on Sunday that Amba fighters will give a crushing response to Yaoundé within the next few weeks in Manyu, Ndian and Lebialem.

Yerima said the IG can no longer stand idly by in the face of attacks and violations carried out against the people of Southern Cameroons in Mamfe, Mundemba and Fontem.

Dabney Yerima went on to say that most Francophone military commanders deployed to Southern Cameroons by the Biya regime have created fake armed groups and are using them to terrorize the local population.   

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader highlighted the nasty role currently being played by the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church and sounded a note of caution to Southern Cameroons clerics to continue to be prophetic voices of the suffering people.

By Enowtaku Ebanghatabi Christelle

Francis Ngannou shares disturbing visuals of “inhumane treatment” to people from Southern Cameroons

4, July 2022

Francis Ngannou shares disturbing visuals of “inhumane treatment” to people from Southern Cameroons 0

Francis Ngannou has shared some disturbing visuals detailing the inhumane treatment of the people from his homeland, Cameroon.

Francis Ngannou, who was born and raised in Cameroon, himself migrated to Europe at the age of 26. However, he was arrested and handed a two-month jail term for illegally crossing into Spain.

After serving the term, Ngannou entered France. He subsequently met MMA Factory head coach Fernand Lopez in Paris, who helped him start his MMA career. Ngannou soon scaled great heights of success and reached the pinnacle of the sport, winning the coveted UFC heavyweight title.

Source: Sportskeeda

IMF, CPDM Crime Syndicate reach staff agreement that could save up to $73.6 million

4, July 2022

IMF, CPDM Crime Syndicate reach staff agreement that could save up to $73.6 million 0

The International Monetary Fund announced on Wednesday that its staff had come to an agreement with Cameroon regarding the second review of its loan programmes. If the Executive Board of the Fund approves, the agreement could result in the disbursement of $73.6 million.

According to the Fund, Cameroon’s economic outlook is still favourable, with growth of 3.8% predicted for 2022, but uncertainties are growing as a result of high rises in the cost of food, fertiliser, and oil due to the conflict in Ukraine.

Explosion at Mokolo market in Yaoundé:  There has been no claim of responsibility

4, July 2022

Explosion at Mokolo market in Yaoundé:  There has been no claim of responsibility 0

An explosion occurred at Mokolo market in Yaounde the afternoon of July 2. Initial reports indicate the blast, caused by an improvised explosive device, has resulted in an unknown number of injuries.

Authorities have almost certainly deployed to the area, and may close nearby streets following the incident. There has been no claim of responsibility.

Heightened security and localized traffic disruptions are likely in the affected area through at least July 2 as police conduct their investigation.

Secessionist violence continues to undermine the security environment in Cameroon. Related attacks are regularly reported in the Northwest and Southwest regions, with incidents also occurring occasionally in Yaounde.

Felix Tonye Mbock: Former renowned Francophone cabinet minister dies

2, July 2022

Felix Tonye Mbock: Former renowned Francophone cabinet minister dies 0

Veteran French Cameroun politician and peer to Biya and the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo, Hon. Felix Tonye Mbock has died, his family has announced.

He was hailed as the man who created the Indomitable Lions of Cameroon and a true Francophone trailblazer.

Felix Tonye Mbock died on Saturday, July 2, 2022 from an undisclosed illness.

Felix TONYE MBOG served as Minister of Sports, Labour and Social Insurance, Posts and Telecommunications and External Relations.

He reportedly named the Francophone dominated football national team as the “Indomitable Lions” when he was Minister of Youth and Sports some few weeks before the 19 72 Africa Cup of Nations that was staged in Cameroon.

By Rita Akana

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