As the top U.S. diplomat for Africa visits Cameroon, pro-government groups are protesting what they call Tibor Nagy’s interference in Cameroon’s internal affairs.

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Nagy and the European Union representative Federica Mogherini recently called on Cameroon to free opposition leader Maurice Kamto and 150 of his supporters.

They also urged Cameroon authorities to work harder to stop the violence in its western, anglophone separatist regions.

The coordinator for Monday’s protest, Lilian Koulou Engoulou, said the demonstrators want Nagy to hear them and take their message back to Washington.

America should stop interfering in Cameroon’s internal issues, Engoulou said, and should help end the crisis in the English-speaking northwest and southwest regions by stopping Cameroonians based in the U.S. from funding what he calls terrorists and destabilizing Cameroon.

The last comment refers to separatist leaders based in the U.S. who have appealed on social media for contributions to help the fighters back home.

Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi, who has previously accused the U.S. of harboring separatist leaders, said last week that Cameroon was outraged by Nagy’s statements.

Aime Manga of Cameroon Rights Watch, a local group, said officials should take Nagy’s comments as helpful suggestions rather than criticism.

It is public knowledge that Cameroon has a serious political and social crisis, he said, and Nagy’s comments bring hope to many who want democracy.

Cameroon has detained Kamto and his supporters since January for taking part in anti-government demonstrations. They are being tried in military courts for charges that include rebellion and could face the death penalty.

In comments made days before his arrival Sunday in Yaounde, Nagy said it’s not always positive to arrest opposition members during times of crisis.

He also called the death and suffering in Cameroon’s rebellion heartbreaking and urged authorities to do more to end the fighting.

VOA

Black box data recovered from an Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed last week shows “clear similarities” with a recent crash in Indonesia of the same type of aircraft, Ethiopia’s transport minister said on Sunday.

While declining to give details, Dagmawit Moges told journalists the parallels would be the “subject of further study during the investigation,” with a preliminary report issued in “30 days”.

The announcement came a week after Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 plummeted into a field southeast of Addis Ababa minutes into its flight to Nairobi, killing all 157 people onboard.

The disaster caused the worldwide grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft involved after aviation regulators noticed similarities with the October crash of an Indonesian Lion Air 737 MAX 8 that killed all 189 passengers and crew.

Families mourn over Ethiopian Airlines crash victims

Both planes reportedly experienced erratic steep climbs and descents as well as fluctuating airspeeds before crashing shortly after take-off.

Questions have honed in on an automated anti-stalling system introduced on the 737 MAX 8, designed to automatically point the nose of the plane downward if it is in danger of stalling.

The pilots of Lion Air Flight 610 struggled to control the aircraft as the automated MCAS system repeatedly pushed the plane’s nose down following take-off, according to the flight data recorder.

In the case of the Ethiopian flight, the black boxes have been handed to France’s BEA air safety agency, which is working with American and Ethiopian investigators to determine what went wrong.

Nothing to bury

The disaster in Ethiopia left families in 35 nations bereaved.

On Sunday, Ethiopians gathered at Holy Trinity Cathedral in the capital Addis Ababa to bury 17 of their citizens killed in the crash, including the eight-person flight crew.

Relatives of the deceased sobbed and held portraits of their loved ones as an Ethiopian Orthodox priest said the last rites.

Wearing a t-shirt bearing a photo of Amma Tesfamariam in her flight attendant uniform, Meselech Petros said her 28-year-old sister was not supposed to work last Sunday, but came in to cover for a friend.

“What I can’t forget is that she left an eight-month-old child and didn’t come back,” Meselech said.

“We are broken and hurting very much. It’s very difficult,” added Amma’s brother Selamsew Mathias, 26.

The funeral ceremony began when caskets draped in the Ethiopian flag were brought to the cathedral in a convoy of black hearses accompanied by hundreds of mourners.

It was unclear what the coffins contained.

Witnesses said the plane had nose-dived into the field, with the force of the impact leaving few bodies intact.

On Thursday, as grieving families and friends visited the area where the plane went down, an AFP correspondent saw them being handed plastic water bottles filled with earth from the site.

Ethiopia’s government has said it may take up to six months to identify the remains.

“What makes us very sad is we didn’t find any of her remains,” said Teshome Legesse, whose 24-year-old niece Ayantu Girma was a flight attendant on the plane.

‘Grief belongs to everyone’

Ethiopian Airlines is Africa’s largest carrier and in many ways the international face of the nation.

The deaths have shocked Africa’s second-most populous country, and the funeral attracted a wide range of mourners.

“We all are children of Adam and Eve, even though our skin colours are different,” said Seyoum Kidanu, a retired police officer wearing full dress uniform and a sash in the colours of the Ethiopian flag.

“When one person dies in this world, the grief belongs to everybody.”

(AFP)

More than a year before the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved a secret campaign to silence dissenters, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The campaign included surveillance, kidnapping, detention and torture of Saudis, said the report which cited US officials who have read classified intelligence reports about the effort.

American officials referred to it as the Saudi Rapid Intervention Group, the Times said.

At least some of the clandestine missions were carried out by members of the team that killed and dismembered Khashoggi in October at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, suggesting his murder was part of a wider campaign against dissidents, the report said, citing the US officials and associates of some Saudi victims.

The murder of Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributing columnist, generated global outrage including an order from US senators for President Donald Trump to designate and punish those responsible.

He did not comply.

The senators, briefed by the heads of US intelligence agencies, said they were convinced that Prince Mohammed was responsible for the Khashoggi killing.

Saudi Arabia has stressed the prince was not involved.

The kingdom initially said it had no knowledge of Khashoggi’s fate but later blamed rogue agents for his death.

Saudi Arabia’s public prosecutor has charged 11 people over his murder.

Among its activities, the Rapid Intervention Group appears to have been involved in the detention and abuse of prominent women’s rights activists arrested last year, the Times said.

The intervention team was so busy that in June its leader asked a top advisor to Prince Mohammed whether he would give them bonuses for Eid al-Fitr, a major holiday at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Saudi officials declined to confirm or deny that such a team existed, or answer questions from the Times about its work.

The Saudi embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to an AFP query for comment.

The Rapid Intervention Group was authorized by Prince Mohammed and overseen by Saud al-Qahtani, a royal court insider, American officials told the Times.

US intelligence reports did not specify how involved Prince Mohammed was with the group’s work, but said that the operatives saw Qahtani as a “conduit” to the prince, the report said.

Qahtani has been sacked over Khashoggi’s murder but Saudi authorities have not said if was among those charged.

Five of the accused face the death penalty.

AFP

US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, arrives in Cameroon for a two-day official visit to discuss counter-terror cooperation and ongoing domestic instability.

The US State Department released a human rights report on the country, which expressed concern at ongoing excessive and arbitrary violence committed by the government and its security forces. The visit comes months after the re-election of President Paul Biya, whom has faced condemnation for voting irregularities and the jailing of over 100 political opponents.

Anglophonic Cameroonians have long been marginalised in the country and have caused considerable unrest in the past year over poor living conditions and violence from security forces. This has threatened to develop into a separatist crisis for the francophonic central government. The situation in Cameroon’s southern anglophone regions risks spiralling into a greater ethnic and cultural conflict due to the differences that exist between the countries two predominant regions.

The US report has heightened international scrutiny of the country, which has pledged to investigate allegations of state-sponsored violence. With Biya’s re-election having caused greater political instability, failure to find a mediated political solution and address anglophone underrepresentation risks escalating tensions into widespread civil conflict.

Foreign Brief

Russia, Japan, and Tunisia follow a host of countries in either grounding or banning takeoffs, overflights, and landings of Boeing 737 MAX planes following a recent fatal crash.

Russia’s Interfax news agency said on Thursday the country’s aviation authority had grounded the only two such aircraft that it owns among its 96-strong fleet.

An Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX en route from Addis Ababa to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi crashed a few minutes after takeoff on Sunday, killing all the 157 people, mostly foreign nationals, on board.

The cause of the crash is still unknown; however, the pilot had reported difficulties and asked to return to the Ethiopian capital before the incident, the airline has said.

Also on Thursday, Japan’s Land and Transport Ministry banned the medium-haul planes from landing in the country.

No Japanese airline company possesses Boeing 737 MAX planes, while All Nippon Airways (ANA) plans to buy 30 units of the aircraft. The ministry, however, has not issued any instruction on the pending purchase, an official told the agency, adding, “Primarily, each private company should make its own decision.”

Tunisia likewise does not fly any of the aircraft, but barred them from using its airspace and airports.

Romania’s Blue Air, meanwhile, said it would take a decision on its order for 12 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets pending the results of an investigation into the tragedy.

A growing number of countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, India and China, have now grounded or banned Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes inside their airspace.

The recent crash is the second of a Boring 737 plane in five months. In October 2018, a Lion Air jet crashed into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java, only minutes after taking off from the capital Jakarta. The crash claimed the lives of 189 people.

Source: Presstv

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says 40 people were killed and more than 20 seriously wounded in mass shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch on Friday. 

New Zealand has been placed on its highest security threat level, she said, adding four people with extremist views are held in police custody but they had not been on any police watchlists. 

One of the suspects is Australian, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. “I can confirm that the individual who was taken into custody I have been advised is an Australian-born citizen,” he told reporters in Sydney.

Video footage widely circulated on social media, apparently taken by a gunman and posted online live as the attack unfolded, showed him driving to one mosque, entering it and shooting randomly at people inside.

One man who said he was at the Al Noor mosque told media the gunman was white, blond and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest. The man burst into the mosque as worshipers were kneeling for prayers.

“He had a big gun … he came and started shooting everyone in the mosque, everywhere,” Ahmad al-Mahmoud told Reuters. He said he and others escaped by breaking through a glass door.

“This is one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” Prime Minister Ardern said.

Police advised people living in the city center to stay indoors. All mosques, schools and council buildings were also placed on lockdown.

The Bangladesh cricket team was also at the mosque attending Friday prayers. The team was slated to play New Zealand in a third cricket test starting on Saturday.

Presstv

Another damning Human Rights Report on Cameroon by the US State Department. The question remains: after documenting all these abuses, some of which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, what will the US do?

 
Excerpts of the 2018 US State Dept. report: 
“Government security forces were widely believed to be responsible for disappearances of suspected Anglophone separatists, with reports of bodies dumped far from the site of killings to make identification difficult. According to credible nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the government did not readily account for some of the activists arrested in connection with the Anglophone crisis. Family members and friends of the detainees were frequently unaware of the missing individuals’ location in detention for a month or more.

For example, authorities held incommunicado Ayuk Sisiku Tabe, the “interim president” of the so-called Republic of Ambazonia, along with 46 other Anglophone separatists, from January 29 until late June when they were allowed to meet with their lawyers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“There were credible reports that members of government forces physically abused and killed prisoners in their custody. In its July report, Human Rights Watch highlighted the case of Samuel Chiabah, popularly known as Sam Soya, whom members of government forces interrogated under harsh conditions and killed, following the killing of two gendarmes by armed separatists at a checkpoint between Bamenda and Belo in the Northwest Region.

A video widely circulated on social media featured Sam Soya sitting on the floor and being questioned about the killings, along with one other suspect. In the video Sam Soya could be heard crying in agony and denying participation in the killings. Photographs were released on social media that showed members of security forces in uniform using a bladed weapon to slice open Sam Soya’s neck and the leg of the other man, both of whom were lying face down on the floor and in handcuffs.

In July human rights lawyer Felix Agbor Nkongho Balla reported an incident in which guards at the Yaounde Kondengui maximum security prison abused 18 Anglophone detainees who had been transferred from the Buea Central Prison and the SED. He indicated that prison guards kept the detainees in tight chains and brutally beat them, repeatedly referring to them as Ambazonians. In solidarity with the victims, other Anglophone detainees staged a violent protest.

The prison registrar allegedly told the inmates that he had received orders from his hierarchy to keep the detainees in chains. In an attempt to resolve the tension, after long hours of negotiations, the prison registrar removed the chains and the situation returned to normal.

Two black boxes from the Boeing 737 MAX airplane that crashed in Ethiopia arrived on Thursday in Paris for expert analysis, officials said, as regulators around the world awaited word on whether it was safe to resume flying the jets.

A spokesman for France’s BEA air accident investigation agency said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be handed over to the agency later in the day. Their data are critical to finding out what caused the brand-new aircraft to plunge to the ground shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on Sunday.

Following the lead of other global aviation regulators unnerved by the second crash involving a 737 MAX in less than five months, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued orders on Wednesday for the planes to be grounded.

Boeing, which maintained that its planes were safe to fly, said in a statement that it supported the FAA move. “Boeing has determined – out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety – to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.”

The FAA along with the National Transportation Safety Board, the Ethiopian civil aviation authority, and Boeing, have been investigating the crash at the site, some 60 km (around 40 miles) outside the Ethiopian capital.

On Thursday morning in Addis Ababa, grieving relatives of some of the 157 victims of Sunday’s air disaster boarded buses for a three-hour journey to the crash site.

Others described their visit on Wednesday to the arid farmland where the passenger jet crashed. Relatives of the victims lay flowers during a visit to the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash site on March 13, 2019 Tony Karumba, AFP

“We saw where he died and touched the earth,” said Sultan Al-Mutairi, who had come from Riyadh to mourn his brother, Saad, who ran a recruitment agency in Nairobi and perished in the crash.

Experts say it could take weeks or months to identify the victims, as their remains were scattered, charred and in fragments due to the impact of the crash and ensuing fire.

Investigation

Frustration is growing among the families of victims of the crash who are in Addis Ababa. On Thursday morning, some asked Ethiopian Airlines for greater transparency. Both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and a Lion Air crash in Indonesia occurred just minutes after take-off.

Fresh information from the wreckage in Ethiopia and newly refined data about the plane’s flight path indicated some similarities between the two disasters “that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause,” the FAA said in a statement.

Acting FAA administrator Daniel Elwell said he did not know how long the U.S. grounding of the aircraft would last. A software fix for the 737 MAX that Boeing has been working on since a fatal crash last October in Indonesia will take months to complete, Elwell told reporters on Wednesday.

Deliveries of Boeing’s best-selling 737 MAX jets were effectively frozen, though production continued, after the United States joined a global grounding of the narrow-body model over safety concerns, industry sources said.

All 737 MAX jets have now been grounded, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said. An Air Canada flight from San Francisco to Halifax was the last to land late on Wednesday.

With the uncertainty hanging over the 737 MAX, a French presidential source said European planemaker Airbus and Ethiopian Airlines are discussing a possible new contract as part of the airline’s fleet overhaul.

The official said President Emmanuel Macron and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had spoken about a possible new contract during Macron’s visit to Addis Ababa earlier this week.

Airlines operating the 737 MAX jets that have been delivered since its 2017 debut said they had cancelled some of their flights and rearranged schedules to use other jets in their fleets.

“Our goal is to operate our schedule with every available aircraft in our fleet to meet our customers’ expectations during the busy spring travel season,” said U.S. carrier Southwest Airlines Co, the world’s biggest operator of the 737 MAX.

(REUTERS)

The top United States diplomat to Africa says perhaps it’s time to take the deadly separatist crisis in Cameroon to an “international forum.”

An exasperated Tibor Nagy told reporters on Tuesday that “my heart breaks for Cameroon … I just don’t understand why this crisis goes on and on and on.”

Some half a million people have been displaced as Cameroon’s government battles an Anglophone separatist movement in the largely French-speaking country. Weary residents in the middle have pleaded for peace.

Nagy, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, called for “open, unlimited national dialogue.”

Cameroon’s government in a strongly worded statement last week criticized Nagy’s earlier comments on the Anglophone crisis, accusing him of misunderstanding the situation and interfering in the West African country’s internal affairs.

Associated Press