Cameroon’s presidency known as the Unity Palace is in panic mode following the death of Chantal Biya’s driver on Monday, May 4, 2020 following an attack by the novel Coronavirus.

The driver has been down with flu-like symptoms which earned him a few days of rest; rest that will unfortunately be eternal.

The Unity Palace is concerned as the COVID-19 victim was the first lady’s driver and had recently driven her.

Since hitting the global scene, the novel Coronavirus virus has struck fear in many minds. It is no respecter of persons and it has sent many old people in the hiding, including Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, who is a colony of dangerous diseases.

Mr. Biya has not been seen in public since the virus emerged and sources at the Unity Palace have reported that Mr. Biya has been hiding under his bed and has lost appetite because he is scared that the virus will sweep him away.

For more than a decade, Mr. Biya has been assailed by many ailments with diabetes, high blood pressure and heart problems constantly using his body as conference room to discuss his fate.

His long marriage with alcohol has ruined his health and his distended prostate has always sent him to Switzerland and other European countries for check-ups.

But the shutting down of the world by the novel Coronavirus has left the president in deep thoughts. Any deterioration of his fragile health now might spell danger as the entire world, except Cameroon, is in lockdown.

A few days ago, Mr. Biya signed a decree opening up the country and sending Cameroonians to bars where they can run into the novel Coronavirus that is threatening to overwhelm the entire country.

While bars and crowded markets are open, schools have remained closed. National Day celebrations have been cancelled, as this would have required Mr. Biya who is a shadow of his former self to preside over the event which normally takes place on May 20.

Mr. Biya might have soldiers in his side, but COVID-19, which has attacked even royals and celebrities, fears no uniform and guns. Its dislike for old sickly people is exactly why Mr. Biya has decided to make the lower part of his bed his hiding of choice.

He does not receive anybody and all his staff are expected to keep a safe distance because they could infect him. The only person who comes close and who has been serving as his liaison officer is his wife who might have been infected by his driver who has kicked the bucket.

More will be yours as Cameroon Concord News Group gathers more details.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Switzerland has made available the sum of three billion CFA francs to help the French Cameroun army continue with its genocidal campaign in Southern Cameroons. But the Swiss ambassador to Yaoundé, Pietro Lazzer told the world that the donation was to combat the coronavirus.

According to the chief Swiss diplomat, the money is for humanitarian efforts but Cameroon Intelligence Report has documented evidence that the regime in Yaoundé is using the money to pay Cameroon government army soldiers currently killing innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in Bafut.

The Swiss have increased their business empire in Cameroon and the Swiss embassy in Yaounde is coordinating support from Swiss companies in Cameroon to help the Biya regime survive.

Ambassador Pietro Lazzer told Cameroon radio and television that Switzerland fully backs the ceasefire calls in Southern Cameroons as advocated by the United Nations Secretary-General last month. “Violence needs to stop in this area because the fighting of COVID-19 is a priority,” he said. The diplomat has maintained a kind of silence of the lamb on reports that Cameroon government soldiers have invaded Bafut in the Mezam County and killed scores of civilians.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroonian journalists are marking World Press Freedom Day with protests against abuse from the government as well as from rebels fighting for an independent English-speaking state. Reporters Without Borders, in its 2020 World Press Freedom Index, ranks Cameroon 134th out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index. Some Cameroonian journalists have been detained for their reporting or are on the run from the military or separatists.

This message from the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists, that journalism has rules, regulations and professional ethics, is broadcast on television and radio, and shared on social media platforms by journalists in Cameroon as a sign of protest against the abuses they face. The message insists that journalists be allowed freedom to practice.

“We say no to the constant harassment and haphazard arrest of journalists in their line of duties,” the message said.

Journalists did not organize popular celebrations and public protests as in the previous years because of the more than 2,000 cases of COVID-19 in Cameroon.

They said, however, they shared the pain of peers who have been in detention, such as Mancho Bibixy and Tsi Conrad, arrested and charged with insurrection against the state of Cameroon and who have been in detention since 2017, Samuel Wazizi arrested late last year and jailed for alleged collaboration with separatist fighters, and Wawa Jackson, who was arrested in 2019 and accused of propagating the secessionists’ agenda in the English-speaking regions where separatists are fighting to break away from the majority French-speaking country.

Ngah Christian Mbipgo, publisher of Cameroon’s lone English-language daily newspaper, the Guardian Post, said his news organ has been the victim of press abuses while covering the separatist crisis that has killed 3,000 people in Cameroon in the past three years. He said 15 of his reporters, newspaper vendors and their family members have fled from hostile areas in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions.

“The separatists think that we have not been doing much to project their independence ideology, and that is why our reporters in the field are targeted. I have not gone out of Yaoundé [to the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions] since 2017 that [when] the crisis metamorphosed into an armed conflict because they have openly called to tell me that I am a target. We receive calls from top government officials who say we are a newspaper that is working for the separatists,” he said.

Cameroon’s government did not issue a statement on for World Press Freedom Day, as there were no public ceremonies due to COVID-19. However, the government has always maintained that there is press freedom in Cameroon and journalists are only arrested when they act unprofessionally.

Jude Viban, president of the Cameroon Association of English Speaking Journalists said the government should decriminalize media offenses and make sure abuses against the rights of journalists by government officials and separatist fighters are stopped.

“What we are doing is to inform, and we do so for the interest of the population, so a handful of people should not attack the press. When stories are not told because journalists are under attack, the population would not be informed, which, of course, is their right to be informed in a democracy like ours,” said Viban.

Reporters Without Borders says press freedom continues its long decline in Cameroon, and reporters continue to be subjected to threats, attacks, intimidation and arrests after President Paul Biya’s reelection for a seventh term in October 2018.

Source: VOA

A separatist commander known simply as General Alhaji was among some insurgents who were killed on Friday in Bafut, a locality in Northwest, one of the two troubled Anglophone regions of Cameroon, the Cameroon army said Saturday.

The death of Alhaji was confirmed by Kingsley Ashu, a separatist leader, in a Facebook post.

He was killed after a week-long military offensive in the locality that also witnessed the seizure of war weapons and dismantling of several separatist camps, local authorities said.

Alhaji was commanding one of the “largest and fiercest” armed separatist groups known as “Seven Katta Bafut Defence forces” in the region, according to security reports.

He became “notorious” in 2018 after kidnapping over 80 school children and teachers and a driver of a secondary school in Bamenda, Cameroon Anglophone’s largest city, security sources said, adding that his physical elimination could prove a major blow to the rebels in that region.

Since 2017, government forces have been clashing with armed separatist forces who want the two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest to secede from the majority French-speaking nation and form a new country which they call “Ambazonia.”

Source: Xinhuanet