Leymah Roberta Gbowee, 2011 Noble Peace Prize winner, Liberian female peace activist, on Tuesday called for ending of disputes in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions that have been ravaged by war in the last two years.

“As someone who has survived war and has lived through it, I will tell Cameroonians, war has never been the answer to solving any kind of problem. My message to Cameroon is that it should never be Anglophone or Francophone, it should be one Cameroon, one people.” Gbowee told reporters in the capital Yaounde after meeting with government officials.

She said that she had spent three days in the restive regions urging for an end to the war and intensifying efforts to defend the rights of women and girls in the conflict zone.

“It is the women and girls who pay the brunt of it. There is always increase in sexually transmitted diseases, rape and abuse and teen pregnancies.” Gbowee said, citing the example of her country, Liberia which she said should serve as an example for Cameroon that nobody wins war.

“We (Liberia) went through a very devastating civil war where we killed almost 10 percent of our population and the impact is still been felt by the population. There are no winners in any kind of crisis. It takes generations for the pains to go away,” she said.

Cameroon is largely populated by French-speakers, but since November 2017, Anglophone minority have formed armed groups to fight for the independence of the English-speaking regions after complaining of decades of marginalization.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Stratolaunch, the world’s largest aircraft by wingspan, completed its successful first flight over the Mojave Desert, California, on Saturday.

The Stratolaunch has six engines and has a wingspan of 117m (384ft), bigger than the length of an American football field.

According to official information from Stratolaunch, the aircraft reached a maximum speed of more than 300 kilometres per hour (189 mph), during its 2.5 hour long flight at altitudes up to 17,000 feet (5,181m) over the desert.

According to reports, the Stratolaunch will enable convenient and affordable access to space, as its centre wing is designed to carry as many as three satellite-laden rockets and can support multiple launch vehicles, weighing up to a total of 500,000 pounds (over 226 tons).

In the face of violent attacks from US President Donald Trump and other Republicans, Muslim Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has said nobody could silence her.

“I did not run for Congress to be silent,” Omar wrote on Twitter on Saturday, hours after Trump shared a video suggesting that Omar, a Democratic member of the House of Representatives from Minnesota, was dismissive of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

Ilhan Omar✔@IlhanMN · 14hReplying to @IlhanMN

An administration that would rather give billionaires tax breaks than provide a little cushion for working people. An administration that would rather attack fellow Americans who are transgender and wear our country’s uniform than fight for equality and opportunity for all.

Ilhan Omar✔@IlhanMN

I did not run for Congress to be silent. I did not run for Congress to sit on the sidelines. I ran because I believed it was time to restore moral clarity and courage to Congress. To fight and to defend our democracy.39K7:22 PM – Apr 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy11K people are talking about this

The video spliced news footage of 9/11 with a clip from a speech Omar gave last month in which she described the terror attack as “some people did something.”

Omar, who came to the US from Somalia as a refugee and became one of the first Muslim women in Congress, thanked supporters for standing “against an administration that ran on banning Muslims from this country.”

“No one person – no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious – can threaten my unwavering love for America,” she wrote on Twitter. “I stand undeterred to continue fighting for equal opportunity in our pursuit of happiness for all Americans.”

Ilhan Omar✔@IlhanMN · 14hReplying to @IlhanMN

I did not run for Congress to be silent. I did not run for Congress to sit on the sidelines. I ran because I believed it was time to restore moral clarity and courage to Congress. To fight and to defend our democracy.

Ilhan Omar✔@IlhanMN

No one person – no matter how corrupt, inept, or vicious – can threaten my unwavering love for America. I stand undeterred to continue fighting for equal opportunity in our pursuit of happiness for all Americans.54.9K7:25 PM – Apr 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy12.3K people are talking about this

In an other tweet, Omar slammed Trump’s immigration policy. 

Ilhan Omar✔@IlhanMN

This country was founded on the ideas of justice, of liberty, of the pursuit of happiness. But these core beliefs are under threat. Each and every day. We are under threat by an administration that would rather cage children than pass comprehensive immigration reform.108K7:18 PM – Apr 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy30.7K people are talking about this

In the hours after Trump attacked Omar, top Democrats in the US Congress strongly condemned Trump and other Republicans for attacking Omar over comments she made that seemingly minimized the 9/11 attacks, which were a series of strikes in the US that killed nearly 3,000 people and caused about $10 billion worth of property and infrastructure damage.

US officials assert that the attacks were carried out by 19 al-Qaeda terrorists but many experts have raised questions about the official account.

They believe that rogue elements within the US government, such as former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, orchestrated or at least encouraged the 9/11 attacks in order to accelerate the US war machine and advance the Zionist agenda.

In Omar’s speech, given to a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, she said Muslims had “lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen and, frankly, I’m tired of it, and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it.”

“CAIR was founded after 9/11 because they recognized that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties,” Omar said.

Lawmakers from Trump’s Republican Party have accused Omar of minimizing the 9/11 attacks, while critics of the president say he took Omar’s words out of context in order to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment.

US Senator Bernie Sanders, who is running for president again in the 2020 elections after he lost in 2016, described Omar as a leader with “strength and courage.”

“She won’t back down to Trump’s racism and hate, and neither will we. The disgusting and dangerous attacks against her must end,” Sanders tweeted Friday.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren condemned the attacks against Omar as not only dangerous for the congresswoman, but Muslims in the US in general.

“President Trump’s inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric towards Ilhan Omar is jeopardizing her safety. He is deliberately putting her and all Muslim Americans in harm’s way,” Inslee tweeted Friday.

Jay Inslee✔@JayInslee

President Trump’s inflammatory and dangerous rhetoric towards Ilhan Omar is jeopardizing her safety. He is deliberately putting her and all Muslim Americans in harm’s way.49.6K1:41 AM – Apr 13, 2019Twitter Ads info and privacy16.2K people are talking about this

Warren also tweeted a similar message on Friday: “The President is inciting violence against a sitting Congresswoman—and an entire group of Americans based on their religion. It’s disgusting. It’s shameful. And any elected leader who refuses to condemn it shares responsibility for it.”

Rashida Tlaib, the other Muslim American woman in Congress, was the first on Friday who urged Democrats to “speak up” for Omar.

“Enough is enough,” she wrote. “No more silence, with NY Post and now Trump taking Ilhan’s words out of context to incite violence toward her, it’s time for more Dems to speak up. Clearly the GOP is fine with this shameful stunt, but we cannot stand by.”

Source: Presstv

Hundreds of Southern Cameroons demonstrators brought traffic to a standstill in Berlin today after turning out in their droves to call for an end to cooperation between Abuja and Yaounde and the immediate implementation of the Nigerian High Court decision that ordered the return of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides back to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.

The Ambazonians led by Acting President Ikome Sako crowded the streets outside the Nigerian Embassy in Berlin and some took it even further by blocking the entrance to the main building. Waving the Southern Cameroons flag with placards which read ‘Freedom for Southern Cameroons”, demonstrators chanted the Ambazonia National anthem as they protested against the ongoing genocide in Southern Cameroons.

Several of the Southern Cameroons protesters held banners which read: ‘Human Rights rejects the French Cameroun regime and condemns its criminal siege and occupation of Southern Cameroons. However, despite the large crowds, Bundes Polizei said the protest was largely peaceful as a whole.

In a statement delivered in front of the Nigerian embassy, Southern Cameroons Acting President Dr Ikome Sako said: ‘This isn’t about Southern Cameroons Self-Defense and Restoration Forces. It’s about the French Cameroun government and army fighting to maintain its control over Ambazonian lives, and Ambazonian land.

Prominent among the Southern Cameroons delegation that attended the rally in Berlin were Ambazonia Communications Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu, Dr Elad K. Logan Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Ambroise Etenjeh, Secretary for Home Affairs. It is vital to include in this report that Acting President Sako handed over a copy of the Abuja verdict to the Nigerian ambassador to Germany.

By Sessekou Asu Isong in Berlin on Special Assignment

British police say they have arrested WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where the whistleblower has been living since 2012.

“Julian Assange, 47, has today, Thursday 11 April, been arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) at the Embassy of Ecuador,” police said.

Police said they arrested Assange after being “invited into the embassy by the Ambassador, following the Ecuadorean government’s withdrawal of asylum.”

WikiLeaks had warned in the past days that Assange was likely to be expelled from the embassy soon.

British interior minister Sajid Javid was due to make a statement to parliament later in the day on the arrest of Assange, the opposition Labour Party said on Twitter.

Assange took refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in London in 2012 after facing a warrant for arrest following allegations of sexual assault and rape from the Swedish government. He has denied the allegations, and the investigation was closed last year.

However, the Australian computer programmer had stayed in the embassy out of concern that he would be extradited to the US to be prosecuted for publishing classified documents that were leaked by American whistleblower Chelsea Manning.

Ecuador’s president, Lenin Moreno, said in July that he was planning to withdraw asylum protection for Assange and evict him from its UK embassy.

He said Thursday that London guaranteed Assange would not be extradited to a country that has the death penalty.

“In line with our strong commitment to human rights and international law, I requested Great Britain to guarantee that Mr Assange would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty,” Moreno said in a video posted on Twitter. “The British government has confirmed it in writing, in accordance with its own rules.”

Source: Presstv

A Sudanese government source says President Omar al-Bashir has stepped down and that consultations are underway to form a transitional council.

Adel Mahjoub Hussein, the Sudanese minister of production and economic resources in North Darfur, told the Dubai-based al-Hadath TV on Thursday that, “There are consultations to form a military council to take over power after President Bashir stepped down.”

The announcement brought thousands of Sudanese to the center of the capital, Khartoum, cheering in jubilation and chanting anti-Bashir slogans.

Organizers had also arranged for protesters to gather outside the Defense Ministry, where people chanted, “It has fallen, we won,” in an apparent reference to Bashir’s government.

Reports said that Bashir was at the presidential residence and under “heavy guard.”

Sudan protesters attacked during sit-in

Military to make ‘important’ statement soon

Sudan’s military has said it will make an “important” statement soon. Troops are deployed to key roads and bridges in Khartoum, amid speculation that a coup attempt could be underway against the embattled president after months of anti-government protests across the Northeast African country.

“The armed forces will present an important statement shortly. Be ready for it,” a short notice on state television read, without giving further details.

Soldiers raid offices of Bashir-linked group

In a separate development on Thursday, a team of Sudanese soldiers purportedly raided the offices of a group linked to Bashir’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Khartoum. The soldiers raided the offices of the Islamic Movement, the ideological wing of the NCP, on Thursday morning, according to witnesses speaking to AFP.

Sudan has been struggling with protests since December 17 last year, when an anti-government campaign erupted over price hikes and shortages of food and fuel. That initial public display of anger quickly spiraled into calls for the 75-year-old Bashir to resign.

The embattled president declared a state of emergency, dissolved the central government, and replaced state governors with security officials. But the protests did not stop.

Opposition figures have urged the military to help negotiate an end to Bashir’s nearly 30-year rule and a transition to democracy.

Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) over his alleged role in genocide in the Darfur region. He denies having had a role.

Source: Presstv

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the global human rights watchdog, has investigated murders in many Cameroonian villages in the country’s northwest region. The report published in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, has accused Cameroonian soldiers, gendarmes, and members of the Rapid Intervention Brigade (BIR) of carrying out a deadly attack on the North-West region village of Meluf on April 4, 2019.

The report points out that Government forces killed five civilian men, including one with a mental disability, and wounded one woman. Three of the bodies were later found mutilated, including one that had been decapitated.

The report says further attacks could occur if government forces are not reined in. The authorities should investigate members of the security forces alleged to have carried out these killings, and prosecute those responsible. The attack on Meluf occurred as violence by the security forces in and around health centers and against medical workers in the North-West is increasing.

“Government forces are committing abuses against people living in the Anglophone areas of Cameroon,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Cameroon’s civilian and military authorities should make it clear that these types of abuses will not be tolerated and hold commanders responsible,” he added.

Based on interviews with 10 witnesses and residents and reviews of video and photographic sources, Human Rights Watch found that the victims were either executed or shot as they attempted to flee when the security forces raided their neighborhood, located near an armed separatists’ camp.

One resident of Meluf, a 45-year-old man, said that soldiers broke into his house, shot his aunt, and killed his uncle. “We woke up to the sound of guns. A soldier broke the window, and asked my aunt where the Amba boys [separatists] were hiding. She told him that she didn’t know, so he shot her in the right arm,” he said.

Multiple witnesses said that the security forces entered Meluf on foot, and later with military vehicles, including one armored car with a machine gun mounted on top, at least three military trucks and a bulldozer. The forces forcibly entered at least 80 homes in Meluf, looted some, and burned down seven.

“They used the bulldozer to open the road, which had been blocked with trees, and they shot in all directions,” one witness said. “Some [security forces] were shooting from their vehicles, others were on foot. More than 60 soldiers came.”

Relatives of victims and residents who participated in the victims’ burial said that three bodies were found desecrated. A teacher from Meluf who attended the burial ceremony of the man whose body was found beheaded said that “We proceeded with the burial of the body because we could not find the head, as it had been dumped elsewhere. After the burial, the head was found in the nearby area of Ngoonjo. So, residents picked it up, went back to the grave, dug another hole and buried it.”

He added that “the genitals were cut off of two of the victims’ bodies. A relative of the men said that he found the victims dead and lying on the floor of their home, their hands tied up and their bodies mutilated. Residents said the mutilation of dead civilians has been traumatizing for the community.”

Meluf was also the target of a December 5, 2018 attack, when the army killed seven people, including a 70-year-old man with a hearing impairment who was burned inside his neighbor’s home. Dozens of homes were destroyed in that attack.

Meluf was not the only village in the North-West region to be attacked in recent weeks. Security forces attacked Noi village on March 25, burning and looting eight homes.

The attack on Meluf comes as violence by state security forces in and around health facilities and against medical staff is increasing in the North-West region.

In the early morning of April 1, soldiers and gendarmes carried out an operation in a residential area on the grounds of the Mbingo Baptist Hospital. They killed a 32-year-old mother of three and shot another man while searching for separatists. The woman had tried to warn people that soldiers were coming. “She was shot at close range,” a witness said. “She was shot in the back and bled to death because we could not take her over to the hospital itself.”

On March 27, security forces took their casualties to the same hospital for treatment after clashes with separatists. Witnesses said that a soldier fired several shots inside the hospital, between the women’s ward and the staff room, forcing staff to abandon patients.

On March 21, soldiers entered the Wainamah health center in search of wounded separatists. They accused a motorbike driver waiting outside for a patient of being a separatist. Witnesses said that security forces shot him dead on the main road. A nurse said that the soldiers forced the driver to undress and shot him four times.

Five medical professionals working in several health facilities in the North-West region said that the number of people seeking care at the hospitals has dropped drastically over roughly the last six months because patients don’t feel safe. “Patients prefer to die at home,” a doctor from Kumbo said.

Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch documented the killing of a pregnant nurse, and three attacks by security forces on health facilities in Kumbo, North-West region.

Security force violence directed against medical facilities and health workers is emerging as a worrying trend in the Anglophone regions, one that risks depriving the population of health services when they need them the most, Human Rights Watch said.

“The Cameroonian government’s failure to hold its security forces to account has only encouraged abusive units to commit more crimes,” Mudge said. “Government forces need to respect basic human rights, and stop targeting civilians.”

Culled from HRW with comments from Linda Embi

A man has shot and killed the mother of his child in front of the Hawthorne police department in Hawthorne, Los Angeles, California, officials say.

The incident happened on Sunday afternoon as the two were meeting for a custody exchange of their 17-month-old child when the man shot and killed the woman.

An officer, who ran outside the station once he heard the gunfire, opened fire, but the suspect escaped the scene.

The suspect’s black pickup truck was left less than a block away. After three hours, he was finally arrested near where his car was found.HThis happened just hours after, in another incident, Hawthorne police officers and a gunman exchanged gunfire, leaving one officer and the suspect both wounded.

The incident began when officers responded to a report of a man chasing a woman in the lobby of a hotel before 9:30 in the morning, according to Hawthorne Police Chief Michael Ishii.

As the officers arrived, the suspect ran across the street and into a shopping center.

The officers then confronted the man and twice exchanged gunfire with him, according to Ishii.

“I just heard the gunshots. It was just nonstop for 30 seconds to a minute, just nonstop gunshots,” said witness Kevin McCullough. “I parked my car and got out and filmed as carefully as possible. It was pretty frightening to say the least.”

One of the officers, a 15-year veteran, was struck in the leg and taken to a hospital. The suspect was arrested and taken into custody.

The gunman was armed with “some sort of assault rifle or a TEC-9-type high-powered or high-capacity weapon,” Ishii said at a press conference.

As Rwanda marks 25 years since the genocide that killed an estimated 800,000 people in just 100 days, France is renewing efforts to shine a light on its role in the country, long a source of tension between Paris and Kigali.

Rwanda has repeatedly accused France of playing a role in the genocide by supporting the Hutu government whose supporters carried out most of the killings, accusations that have often tarnished bilateral relations.

The violence erupted on April 6, 1994, after a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana and president Cyprien Ntaryamira of Burundi – both men Hutu – was downed by a rocket attack. Within hours, members of the Rwandan presidential guard began killing Tutsi civilians in retribution.

The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi rebel militia, claimed that Hutu extremists within the Rwandan government had downed the plane while the government claimed the RPF itself was behind the attack. The actual perpetrators remain unknown.

For the next 100 days a massacre of the Tutsi ethnic minority unfolded. More than 800,000 people are thought to have been killed, according to the UN, and an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 women were raped. Some 300,000 of the dead were children while another 95,000 were orphaned.

On June 22 the UN Security Council authorised French-led troops to launch a humanitarian mission known as Operation Turquoise that saved thousands of civilians. But France has also been criticised for allowing many of the soldiers and officials responsible for the genocide to flee through the humanitarian zone it controlled into what was then Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo).

In an effort to bring more clarity to France’s role, President Emmanuel Macron appointed a panel of eight researchers and historians this week to study French actions in Rwanda from 1990 through 1994, covering the period before, during and after the massacre.

But Macron also elicited a new round of criticism when his office announced he would not personally be attending commemoration ceremonies in Rwanda, citing scheduling conflicts.

‘We must arrest them’

France had a strong presence in the country in the early 1990s under president François Mitterrand. From the start of the civil war in 1990 into 1993, the French army was training Rwandan soldiers.

According to Laurent Larcher, author of a new book that exhaustively recounts the stories of witnesses to the genocide, France took a particular interest in supporting the French-speaking regime of Hutu president Habyarimana. His rivals – The RPF led by Paul Kagame – were English-speaking allies of the United States.

Larcher says the belief that France was an ally helped emboldened the Hutu militiamen. As the genocide erupted, the regime allowed French nationals in Rwanda to be repatriated.

Journalist Vincent Hugeux, who was in Rwanda during the genocide, also cites cultural factors as playing a part in French decision-making: “For Mitterrand, Habyarimana, who was the kind of person who could quote the Parnassian poets from memory, could not be fundamentally bad.”

But even back then there were those who could tell trouble was brewing. General Jean Varret, who worked for the French ministry of cooperation and travelled regularly to Rwanda, warned the French as early as 1990 that “a genocide is being prepared”. Rather than his warning being heeded, Varret was replaced in 1993.

Jean-Hervé Bradol, who worked at Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in Rwanda at the time, acknowledges that the humanitarian area set up by Operation Turquoise saved thousands of Tutsis. But due to the neutral nature of the mission, “we also allowed those behind the genocide to administer some things, continue their massacres in some areas, receive weapons”, he said. “We did not arrest people who passed through, [and] some were perpetrators of genocide.”

According to documents obtained by FRANCE 24 in February of this year, there was a sharp division between the Élysée presidential palace and the French foreign ministry at the Quai d’Orsay on how to respond to the violence in Rwanda.

The French ambassador to Kigali at the time, Yannick Gérard, warned Paris in July 1994 that the Rwandan authorities bore much of the blame for the genocide: “We do not have any other choice, despite the difficulties, we must arrest them.”

But the decision not to pursue those responsible came from the top.

Some underscore that France’s actions were necessarily limited. Hubert Védrine, then the secretary-general of the Élysée Palace, told FRANCE 24 that the UN mandate was a humanitarian one – not a judicial one.

“I don’t see how France could have done something at the time, because there was no clear mandate from the [UN] Security Council,” Védrine said. It would have been different if France had been given a mandate to arrest those who were responsible, he added.

Jacques Lanxade, chief of the French army at the time, concurs, saying France had no choice but to remain neutral. “We had no power to arrest people,” Lanxade told FRANCE 24 earlier this year, adding: “We did not have that right.”

France’s then foreign minister, Alain Juppé, vowed that those responsible for the mass killings would be arrested. But instead the French mission enabled many of them to flee.

Four months after the massacre, president Mitterrand remained hesitant to ascribe blame to one side. In response to a question about the genocide during a France-Africa summit in Biarritz, Mitterrand asked: “What genocide are you talking about, Sir, that of the Hutus against the Tutsi or of the Tutsis against Hutus?”

Rwandan genocide: 25 years on, mass graves still being discovered

France has always denied any responsibility for the killings, but French presidents have at times sought to improve relations with Kigali by seeking justice for the victims.

The first trial in France of someone accused in connection with the genocide opened in 2014, when Captain Pascal Simbikangwa went on trial in Paris. He was convicted six weeks later. The UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda has separately indicted 93 people for involvement in the genocide.

In October 2017, French judges heard from a witness who claimed to have seen the missiles used to down the plane carrying Habyarimana. The witness said he saw two surface-to-air missiles at the headquarters of the RPF led by Kagame. France dropped its longstanding investigation into several Rwandan officials in connection with the presidential plane crash in December last year.

But just two months later, Radio France and investigative news site Mediapart published excerpts of a memo from the DGSE – the secret service branch specialising in foreign intelligence – that appeared to indicate France had advance warning of Habyarimana’s assassination.

“This French intelligence document indicates that two (Hutu) extremists – Colonel Théoneste Bagosora, an aide to the defence minister, and Laurent Serubuga, a former chief of staff of the Rwandan army – were the main instigators of the April 1994 attack,” the report said, adding: “Did the French secret services really know nothing?”

Serubuga moved to France in the 1990s. French authorities rejected a Rwandan request to extradite him in 2014.

Source: France 24

Switzerland’s Ambassador to Cameroon, Pietro Lazzeri, was granted an audience April 4 at the Palais de l’Unité by President Paul Biya; a meeting during which both authorities reviewed the sociopolitical situation in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions.

“The diplomat submitted an offer that aims to help Cameroon find responses to the crisis,” according to the Presidency of the Republic. Pietro Lazzeri says given his country’s reputation for linguistic and cultural diversity and its international partiality, it is willing to offer Cameroon its expertise. In this wake, the diplomat indicated that contacts previously initiated between the Swiss authorities and the officials of the National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism in Cameroon will be strengthened.

As a reminder, the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon sparked with simple claims for better conditions of employment by lawyers and teachers but gradually turned into deadly violent separatist claims motivated by reckless Cameroon government actions and armed Southern Cameroons groups. Violence caused 21,921 people to flee to neighboring Nigeria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Source: Business in Cameroon