24, August 2020
Deadly violence erupts in Ivory Coast after Ouattara’s third-term bid 0
At least two people were killed in ethnic clashes in Ivory Coast following President Alassane Ouattara’s controversial announcement he would run for a third term, a hospital source and local residents said Sunday.
Young opposition supporters on Saturday took to the streets to voice loud and violent protest in several major cities, especially the southern cocoa growing hub of Divo, after Ouattara accepted his party’s nomination for the October poll.
“One person evacuated to the regional hospital succumbed to their injuries and died this morning,” said a hospital source in Divo, adding that “several were badly wounded with machetes”.
Several local people also said they had seen the body of a teenager killed in a fire in a local bar.
Ouattara was officially anointed as candidate by his ruling RHDP despite having already served two terms — the maximum permitted under the constitution — since 2010.
He had planned to hand the reins to prime minister Amadou Gon Coulibaly, but his presumed successor died of a heart attack in July.
Six people had already died in violence following Ouattara’s August 6 announcement that he would run again, while 100 were hurt.
The president and his supporters say a 2016 constitutional tweak has reset the clock on the two-term limit.
“Going back on my decision was not easy” but “there is nothing preventing me from standing,” Ouattara said Saturday.
‘Armed with machetes and clubs’
Saturday’s violence in Divo saw a bus station, bars and shops set on fire and looted, MP Famoussa Coulibay told AFP, while barricades were set up and tyres burned in former president Laurent Gbagbo’s hometown of Gagnoa.
Election authorities on Friday rejected an appeal by Gbagbo as well as former rebel leader Guillaume Soro to be allowed to run in October.
In Divo, there were clashes between the local Dida tribe and Dioula people from northern Ivory Coast who back Ouattara.
“It was very violent. The young men were armed with machetes and clubs. A lot of people were hurt and I saw a young man being beaten. He lost consciousness and had to be taken away,” said one witness who asked not to be named.
Coulibay said that by the time he toured the city Sunday, “calm had been restored. There were a lot of police”.
He said 21 people had been wounded including eight seriously.
(AFP)



















25, August 2020
Biya seeking continues bloodshed in Southern Cameroons 0
The Southern Cameroons Interim Government has accused La Republique du Cameroun and its leadership of seeking continues bloodshed over Yaounde’s recent plan of building refugee makeshift camps in Eyumojok to transfer Ambazonian refugee from neighboring Nigeria into them.
Vice President Dabney Yerima informed the Southern Cameroons war cabinet late on Monday that Ambazonia Intelligence Services are already carrying out an investigation and that any attempt by the French Cameroun governor to visit Ambazonia refugees in Nigeria’s Cross River State will be met with a stonewall.
Dabney Yerima said the French Cameroun regime is presently putting Southern Cameroons refugees in Nigeria under immense pressure to return to the war ravaged territory. The exiled Southern Cameroons leader further noted that it is impossible to force the Ambazonian populations that flee to Cross River and Taraba States in Nigeria to return to Southern Cameroons.
Yerima stated that due to the severe escalation in the armed conflict in the Southern Cameroons and gross human rights abuses registered on a daily basis with women and children bearing the brunt, the Southern Cameroons Interim Government will take part in the International Conference on the armed conflict in Southern Cameroons to hold from October 30 to November 1 in the United States.
By Chi Prudence Asong