29, May 2018

Southern Cameroons crisis keeps escalating with killings, detentions mounting ⁰

Cameroon’s political crisis has witnessed what is possibly its most violent turning point. After months of clashes between security forces and regional separatist protesters, the bloodshed has worsened. But the international community has paid scant attention to the mounting crisis.

Over the past weekend, dozens were killed in the town of Menka in the country’s Northwest Region. One estimate put the death toll at 39.Security forces surrounded a hotel believed to be harboring leading secessionists which the government now labels as ‘terrorists’. “Several terrorists were neutralized”, according to an army spokesperson,

Independent journalists report of mass desertions of towns and villages that have already begun losing citizens to refugee camps in neighboring Nigeria. The recent violence comes shortly after leading secessionist voices were convicted on terrorism charges.

“The situation has got out of hand,” said a journalist who asked not to be named for fear of security reprisals. “People are being killed daily and no one is being held accountable.”

The crisis in Cameroon is yet another legacy of European balkanization and colonization of Africa—dating back to the end of World War I. German colonies, including what is present-day Cameroon, were split up and shared between the Britain and France. Southwest and Northwest Regions of present-day Cameroon form the English-speaking minority of a unified country whose central government is overwhelmingly dominated by those from the French-speaking regions. Years of passive fault lines and economic marginalization in what was touted as Africa’s version of Canada came to a head after sweeping new changes by the central government to implement the French civil law system and the use of French as the medium of instruction in schools and courts into the Anglophone regions.

In the last year, activists have called for a re-split to form an independent country, English-speaking country they call Ambazonia. Cameroon’s government has declared the move illegal.

President of Cameroon, Paul Biya, addresses the 72nd United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York — Cameroon president Paul Biya (Reuters/Lucas Jacksond)

Leading lawyers, teachers, journalists and other activists have been arrested or have simply disappeared. Early this month, the US ambassador in Cameroon, accused the government of “targeted killings, detentions without access to legal support, family, or the Red Cross, and burning and looting of villages.” Sections of the separatist movement have also resorted to horrific violence including bombings, killings of security personnel and arson.

In the aftermath of this latest killings, Ambazonia activists on social media have been sharing videos and posts comparing the attacks to the 1994 Rwandan genocide and have called for swift international assistance. The Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Patricia Scotland, has stepped in to mediate but the reports of rising violence haven’t stopped. Perhaps the most tangible effect of Baroness Scotland’s diplomatic overtures was the brief lifting of weeks of an internet blackout throughout the Anglophone regions when she visited in January.

In his 35th year as head of state, Paul Biya is one of Africa’s oldest and longest running authoritarian figures—presiding over the capture of the judiciary and the muzzling of the independent press, rights group say. As elections near, the 85-year old is widely expected to contest and win.

Culled from Quartz Africa

29, May 2018

France grants citizenship to Malian refugee who saved boy in daring rescue ⁰

France’s President Emmanuel Macron has offered citizenship to an illegal Malian refugee who earlier risked his own life to rescue a child hanging from a fourth-floor balcony in Paris.

On Sunday, the 22-year-old Mamoudou Gassama, originally from Mali, scaled the facade of a Paris apartment block without any equipment to save a four-year-old boy clinging to railings and about to fall. Gassama’s successful rescue was filmed by horrified onlookers, and the video soon went viral.

Recognizing the heroic act, President Macron met with Gassama in person at the Elysee presidential palace on Monday, congratulating him on the “exceptional” move to save the French boy’s life.

“We’ll obviously be setting all your papers straight and if you wish it, we will start the process of naturalization so that you can become French,” Macron told Gassama.

He also offered the young Malian a job.

“What you have done corresponds with what firefighters do; if this fits your wishes, you could join the firefighters’ corps so that you can do (such acts) on a daily basis,” he added.

Gassama arrived from Mali in France a few months ago. He has been nicknamed the “Spider-Man” following the viral spread of his rescue footage.

“I did it because it was a child,” Gassama told French newspaper Le Parisien. “I climbed… Thank God I saved him.”

Europe has faced an influx of refugees arriving from conflict zones since 2014. Many of the refugees have been fleeing wars and conflicts in their own countries.

There have been instances of crimes committed by a handful of the refugees in Europe, and extremist politicians in European countries have magnified those cases to actively call for a stop to the flow of the refugees and for the deportation of the ones who have arrived.

But while it is an individual case, Gassama’s heroic act is certain to help change public sentiments toward the refugees.

Passersby pose with Mamoudou Gassama (C), from Mali, in front of the town hall in Montreuil, an eastern Paris suburb, on May 28, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

Adam Thiam, a Malian analyst and former presidential advisor, said Gassama’s act was praised in his home country.

“There is great pride here in Mali,” Thiam said, adding, “But while (Gassama) gets the honors, there are… Malian citizens under the threat of being expelled by the French government.”

Meanwhile, the boy’s father, who had reportedly left the boy alone at home, has been arrested and an investigation is underway to see if he committed a crime. The Paris prosecutor, François Molins, said, “His behavior constitutes an offense, failing to honor parental responsibilities, which carries a possible sentence of two years in jail.”

Source: Presstv

29, May 2018

Southern Cameroons “hell on earth” has killed more than 2000, but the fighting won’t end soon ⁰

Again, again and again unfortunate Southern Cameroons civilians are trapped in the hell on earth that the Ambazonia liberation war has become. A latest report puts civilian deaths at 1600 and thousands wounded under the heavy assault launched by President Biya’s Rapid Intervention Battalion Forces.

Recently it was the turn of residents of Menka in the Santa Sub constituency some few km west of Bamenda the capital of the Northern Zone. From every indication, conditions in Southern Cameroons are getting worse, and there is no end to the Ambazonia conflict.

The end to any violent conflict comes when either the warring sides realise the devastation they cause and make peace; outside intervention sways the warring parties to end the conflict; or there are clear winners delivering a crushing defeat to their enemies.

The 85 year old French Cameroon dictator does not seem to care about the devastation of the two-year war. Almost 97 rural communities in Southern Cameroons is rubble — more than 1600 Ambazonians have died, there are 40,000 Ambazonian refugees in Nigeria and some 160,000 internally displaced. Unfortunately, the dialogue option seems highly unlikely with Biya still in power. There has not been any international intervention through peace initiatives and France’s unconditional and active support of the Biya regime is hampering any attempt at negotiating a truce.

Since the conflict began, many Southern Cameroons resistance groups have sporadically emerged. Although most of them later merged into the larger entity-the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, there are still some small groups. Their inclusion in the Interim Government has been problematic causing the West to think that it is unclear who actually represents Southern Cameroons.

All along, Mr Biya’s regime has been claiming it is fighting separatists and terrorists groups in Southern Cameroons. French President Emmanuel Macron is pushing Mr Biya and Nigeria’s Buhari to wipe out these groups, spurred by the deep fear they could mobilise radical Biafra groups within Nigeria’s borders.

The European Union doesn’t want Mr Biya, but they love his argument of protecting a one and indivisible Cameroon. So, the lack of an international intervention and the impossibility of Biya sitting down to negotiate with the Interim Government, leaves only the option of fighting it out until clear victors emerge. This leaves the Biya regime with a free run to assert itself by killing as many Southern Cameroonians as possible.

This is the strategic line the Biya regime has drawn thick on the ground and it explains why Biya and his political gang have ignored calls for a ceasefire. Biya and the French government had hope for a quick and absolute victory, even if it is a bloodbath. But the pattern of the war will eventually see the collapse of the Cameroon army.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

29, May 2018

Biya regime’s secret extermination campaign at Buea and Mbouda prisons ⁰

It has been two years since the outbreak of the Southern Cameroons conflict. The senseless war fought between Cameroon government forces and the Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces has already driven more than two hundred thousand Southern Cameroonians out of their homes and approximately some 1600 have died in it. Southern Cameroonians civilians do not suffer in Kondengui Central prison or the famous New Bell prison in Douala only: Cameroon Intelligence Report correspondents have uncovered the Biya government’s campaign of extrajudicial executions at detention facilities in Buea and Mbouda.

Ever since the beginning of the crisis, every week and often twice a week, groups of up to 40 Southern Cameroonians were executed. In two years, as many as 1600 people, most of them civilians believed to be opposed to the Biya regime in Yaoundé, have been killed in secret at Mbouda and Buea. The Ambazonian detainees suffer in inhuman conditions: repeated torture and the systematic deprivation of food, water, medicine and medical care. We also gathered that the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia have acquired documentation depicting how these extermination policies have killed massive numbers of Southern Cameroons detainees. Our chief reporter in Northern Zone, Sama Ernest who contributed to this report said there are strong reasons to believe that this routine is still ongoing today.

The Yaoundé government, led by Paul Biya, has never taken time to investigate any killings. All it has always done is to resort to collective punishment wherein the houses of innocent civilians are razed, and innocent youths are gunned down point blank. The actions of the country’s armed forces have created more fighters over the last six months, as ordinary civilians – both boys and girls – now believe they have to defend themselves against a military that is using their tax money to murder the people they are supposed to protect.

Southern Cameroonians have been calling for international assistance. They now want the world to protect them against their supposed protectors. The government’s mass murdering tactics and collective punishment have drawn a lot of flak in recent times and even the Trump Administration has been disappointed by the methods the dictatorial government in Yaoundé is using to restore order in the two restive English-speaking regions of the country.

Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have also been very vocal against the Yaoundé government’s irresponsible actions. For the past six months, the government of Cameroon has been working hard to wipe off villages from its own map through a scorch-earth policy that many in the international community have frowned upon. Amnesty International and the International Crisis Group have all called the government’s action against Southern Cameroonians into questions. The world has been taken aback by the government’s commitment of such human rights abuses.

Kwakwa, Mbonge, Etoko and Kembong in the South West region have been rolled back into the 10th Century by the government. Its plan was to intimidate the people into submission, but the strategy has so far been counter-productive. In Kwakwa, many old people were burnt alive by government forces as a move to punish the entire population for the killing of an army soldier by some unknown and unidentified gunmen.

Other villages have also experienced the government’s wrath and frustration with a rebellion it felt it could put out in one single military action. Mbonge, Bali and Batibo have all been victims of the Yaounde government’s malicious policy designed to stamp out any opposition.

Terrorism has become the buzzword in Cameroon and anybody who holds a view that is contrary to the government’s is considered a terrorist. This is a new tool it is using to stamp out opposition, but times have changed, and the people of Southern Cameroons are clearly resisting a government they believe is corrupt to the marrow and inefficient.

source: www.cameroonintelligencereport.com

28, May 2018

School heads kidnapped in Southern Cameroons ⁰

The latest round of abduction by alleged separatists in Cameroon’s restive Anglophone region has claimed two school heads in the Southwest region.

The two were reportedly abducted late last week in the capital of the region, Buea. Sources gave their identities as Georgina Enanga Sanga, headmaster of the public high school (GHS) Bolifamba Mile 16-Buea and Eric Ngoumba, head of the Cameroon Baptist Academy Yoke-Muyuka.

According to witnesses quoted by local media, the two officials were in a public transport that was intercepted by four armed assailants. The attackers are said to have fished out Georgiana and Eric despite incessant pleas from other passengers.

State security forces deployed in the area are said to have arrived late thus the inability to track the armed men. The authorities have, however, reassured students and parents about the smooth running of the end-of-year exams.

Most security watchers following the crisis have stressed that it bears the modus operandi of separatists operating under the so-called Ambazonia Republic.

The crisis which started in November 2016 in Cameroons English-speaking areas was in protest against marginalization and demand for more participation in French-dominated Central government.

The separatists have since October 2017 mounted guerilla style attacks that have killed about 45 security forces – police, soldiers and gendarmes. It is estimated that more than 600 civilians have already died as a result of the Anglophone crisis, according to NGOs.

In addition, some 160,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the violence, according to the UN. Thousands of these people are currently seeking asylum in neighbouring Nigeria.
Source: Africa News

28, May 2018

Cameroonian legend Samuel Eto’o not ready to retire ⁰

African legend Samuel Eto’o says he is not yet ready to call time on his illustrious career, but concedes that he does not miss playing in the UEFA Champions League.

It is rare for attacking players to continue playing beyond their 35th birthday, but Eto’o has defied the odds as he continues to strut his stuff on the pitch at the age of 37.

Currently on the books of Turkish Super Lig club Konyaspor, the former Cameroon international has recently been linked with a possible return to Italy, where he reportedly met with Lazio last week.

Without touching on the transfer speculation though, the former Barcelona star has stressed his desire to continue playing at the highest level.

“What drives me is that I am still fit, and my vision is still the same as when I started. I’ve enjoyed myself on the pitch so I just want to keep going,” said Eto’o at the Castle Africa 5’s finals in Lusaka, Zambia over the weekend.

While his desire for competitive football remains, Eto’o has admitted his appetite for arguably the biggest continental club competition in the world has long diminished.

“No,” he responded hastily when asked if he misses the Champions League, before laughing the question off. Asked for his reasons, he simply responded, “Because I’ve won it four times (Ed: three) and this is enough for me.”

Eto’o has won the continental club crown on three occasions – twice with Barca in 2008/09 and 2010/11, before bagging another with Inter Milan in 2011/12.

Source: Kickoff.com

28, May 2018

Cameroonian children with sickle-cell disease face death ⁰

Sitting on a stool outside her wood-plank house in Cameroon, indifferent to the light rain falling, Diane described how she killed her five-year-old “sorcerer” son.

They boy had suffered from episodes of severe pain his whole life, and was weak and thin, she said. As is the custom in the Central African country, she and his father consulted traditional healers known as marabouts about what to do.

“Madam, your child is a sorcerer,” they said. “He came into the world to torture you. He will die one day,” recalled Diane, who asked not to be identified by her real name. The marabouts told her it was useless to seek medical help.

So on a Thursday morning in February last year, at the rooster’s crow, she suffocated her son with an old pillow.

“I kept the pressure on like in movies and he died,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, with no sign of remorse.

“I killed my child because he was going to die anyway. Before, he was suffering greatly. Now he is at peace.”

What the boy really suffered from was sickle-cell disease, a genetic condition that causes abnormally shaped red blood cells and a variety of complications. It can be treated but not cured.

Diane had learned that she and her partner carried the disease trait during a hospital visit with their first child, who died. But she believed the marabouts over the doctors.

“They told us we couldn’t have more children because we would give them the disease. It was false. The marabouts showed us that sickle-cell children came into the world to torture us and spend all our money,” said the frail 32-year-old.

It took seven months for Diane to agree to tell her story, on the condition that her real name and location not be revealed.

Of the 19 people with sickle-cell disease the Thomson Reuters Foundation interviewed for this story, 16 said they were called “sorcerers” and “devils” as children, abandoned by their fathers and subjected to “demystification” rituals that could have killed them.

Eleven mothers said they believed their children were sorcerers.

“In Cameroon, sickle-cell disease is synonymous with discrimination, the disease of shame, something mystical,” said Fernand Tekoua, president of the national association of people with sickle-cell disease.

“It is ingrained in habits and in society. Even the family thinks you are worthless and just waiting for your day to die,” he said.

LIVING DEAD

Sickle-cell disease is most common in Africa, and affects up to two percent of the population in tropical countries such as Cameroon, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The main symptoms are pain attacks which can last up to a week, a susceptibility to infections, and anemia, which causes weakness and fatigue. Most children with the most severe form die before the age of five, according to WHO.

Like Diane, other parents interviewed described their children as having been constantly sick since birth.

“Sickle-cell crises are frequent and a week of hospitalization can cost over 200,000 CFA francs ($350). The majority of families don’t even have money to eat,” said Tekoua of the national association.

“The child with sickle-cell disease is thus seen as the one that ruins the family.”

Although there is no evidence that children with sickle-cell disease are regularly murdered in Cameroon, interviews with doctors, patients, and parents suggested that it is possible, and that others die of intentional neglect.

“He’s a monster, he deserves to die,” said one mother in the capital Yaounde of her nine-year-old son. When she found out he had sickle-cell disease two years ago, her partner abandoned her and she never took the boy to the hospital again.

“I wouldn’t shed a tear at the death of this child that separated me from my husband,” she said.

Several people with the disease said their parents would tell them: “Why did I bring you into the world? You shouldn’t be alive. Die and leave us in peace.”

They were referred to as “living dead”, “revenants”, “disciples of the devil” and “guardians of hell”, they said.

Hans Edgar, 24, who is living with the disease, said that his father walked out on the family after refusing to spend a penny on his “sorcerer son”.

His mother then took him to a marabout, who one day put him on a grate over burning coals to rid his body of the bad spirit.

“I was little and I jumped with all the force of desperation to save my skin,” he said. “He wanted to grill me like a chicken.”

PREVENTION

Cameroon’s health ministry estimates that sickle-cell disease is responsible for 16 percent of all deaths of children under five, said Etoundi Mballa, head of the division for diseases and epidemics.

“This is a lot. It’s a really worrying problem,” he said.

In 2014, the first treatment center devoted to the disease was opened in a hospital in Cameroon’s second city Douala. But unlike HIV, tuberculosis and malaria programs, it is not subsidized by the government.

Mballa said the health ministry’s plan for fighting the disease included awareness-raising, free vaccines for certain infections and free iron tablets and antibiotics.

The ministry also recommends that young adults get tested for the trait before marrying and having children, he said.

But people living with the disease said much more must be done to spread correct information and make treatment affordable.

In Douala, those who have survived into adolescence and adulthood meet twice a week to console one another, discuss the future, and share concerns and advice.

To end the disease, they think the government should make blood tests free and mandatory.

“If my parents had done this test, I would not be going around today with this disease that destroyed my life,” said Allan, a 17-year-old student.

“We must give all Cameroonians a chance to save the next generation of children.”

Source: Reuters

28, May 2018

Biya’s election office head under fire from staff ⁰

Cameroon’s election commission on Friday called for the sacking of its own director, accusing him of “opaque and calamitous management” ahead of this year’s presidential and parliamentary votes, in an internal note seen by AFP.

The election commission Elecam said it had withdrawn support for its head, Abdoulaye Babale, and that he should be removed from his position by presidential decree.

In a letter to President Paul Biya last week, Elecam employees accused Babale of embezzling 2.76 billion CFA francs ($4.9 million) from the electoral body.

In Friday’s missive, Elecam accuses the commission chief of “opaque and calamitous management of human resources, materials and finances” as well as frequent absences, adding that his behaviour was affecting staff morale ahead of the elections due to take place before the end of the year.

The European Union and other international partners are helping to finance the polls. Last year graft watchdog Transparency International placed Cameroon 153rd out of 180 countries on its corruption index.

28, May 2018

Menka-Pinyin Massacre: Barrister Agbor Balla declines to say whether Biya regime killed Ambazonians ⁰

More than two dozen people have been killed in one of Cameroon’s Anglophone regions, local sources said on Saturday, although the exact circumstances of their deaths were not immediately clear.

The incident in the town of Menka in Cameroon’s Northwest Region is one of the deadliest since armed secessionists from the English-speaking minority launched an insurrection last year against the predominantly Francophone central government.

Agbor Balla Nkongho, a local human rights lawyer and activist, told Reuters that at least 34 bodies were found on Friday in Menka. He declined to say who had killed them.

Another local source who visited Menka on Saturday and asked not to be named said she saw a total of 29 bodies, including three outside a school, riddled with gunshot wounds. Some were women and others boys as young as 13, she said.

The bodies “are rotting already and reek,” she said.

Army spokesperson confirms battle with separatists

Army spokesman Colonel Didier Badjeck said in a statement to local media that government troops surrounded a hotel in Menka on Friday morning after they were tipped off to the presence of separatist rebels.

A long firefight ensued and “several terrorists were neutralised”, Badjeck said, without providing further details.

A representative for the separatists did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Armed conflict erupted last year in Cameroon’s Anglophone Northwest and Southwest Regions after the government violently repressed peaceful protests that begun in 2016 against perceived marginalisation of English speakers.

Behind Cameroon’s linguistic divide

Cameroon’s linguistic divide harks back to the end of World War One, when the League of Nations divided the former German colony of Kamerun between the allied French and British victors.

Dozens of people have been killed since late last year – including more than 20 soldiers and police ambushed by the separatists – and tens of thousands of refugees have fled to neighbouring Nigeria.

The United States and rights groups have accused the Yaounde government of burning down villages and carrying out targeted killings in the Anglophone regions, charges the government has angrily denied.

The latest violence comes just months ahead of an election in which President Paul Biya, who has ruled the Central African oil producer for the last 35 years, is expected to stand for a fresh term.

REUTERS

28, May 2018

Italy in turmoil as president vetoes anti-EU minister, PM stops bid to form govt. ⁰

Italy has plunged into political uncertainty after the president refused to endorse the eurosceptic pick for the post of finance minister, prompting the premier-designate to drop the mandate to form a government and pushing the country to the verge of fresh elections.

President Sergio Mattarella refused on Sunday to accept the nomination for finance minister of Paolo Savona, who had formerly said that the country’s entry into the European Union’s single currency, euro, was a “historic mistake.”

This prompted prime minister-designate Giuseppe Conte to give up his mandate to form a government, said an official from the presidential palace following talks between Mattarella and Conte.

“The uncertainty over our position has alarmed investors and savers both in Italy and abroad,” the president said in a televised speech. “Membership of the euro is a fundamental choice. If we want to discuss it, then we should do so in a serious fashion.”

Under the country’s law, the president is authorized to reject the appointment of a cabinet member.

Mattarella said he will appoint a technocratic, or non-political, prime minister. His office later said the president has invited Carlo Cottarelli, a former senior director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), for talks on Monday.

Italian President Sergio Mattarella speaks to media at the Quirinal Palace in Rome, May 27, 2018. (Photo by Reuters)

Cottarelli, 64, is widely known at home as “Mr. Scissors” for making cuts to public spending. To become prime minister, he is required to gain the approval of parliament with Five Star and the League holding a majority in both houses.

Italy – a founding member of the European Union — has been without a government since elections on 4 March and is now expected to go to the polls again later this year.

Two populist parties— far-right League and anti-establishment 5-Star Movement – which were trying for form a coalition government, responded with fury to the president’s veto of their choice and accused him of abusing his constitutional powers.

The two parties also slammed the president’s decision as “meddling” by Germany, ratings agencies and financial lobbies.

Some lawmakers within the coalition have even called on the parliament to impeach Mattarella.

League chief Matteo Salvini also threatened mass protests unless early elections were called.

Supporters of Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) party wait for their leader Luigi Di Maio to arrive at a meeting in Acerra on March 6, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

“In a democracy, if we are still in democracy, there’s only one thing to do, let the Italians have their say,” Salvini said.

He also wrote in a Facebook post that “it won’t be an election, it will be a referendum between Italy and those on the outside who want us to be a servile, enslaved nation on our knees.”

Under article 90 of the Constitution, the parliament can demand that the president step down based on a simple majority vote.

If that majority is secured, the constitutional court should then make the final decision on whether to impeach the president.

If it manages to form a government, the coalition would be the first eurosceptic alliance to head a founding member state in EU history.

Five Star Movement and the League have vowed to battle the European Union over its financial and immigration policies. The two have formerly been open to the possibility of Italy holding a referendum on euro.

According to recent polls, the League, which won 17 percent of the vote in March, would surge in any early ballot, while support for 5-Star remained strong on around 35 percent.

Center-left and center-right parties, however, are said to be losing further ground in the face of high unemployment, the sluggish economy and rising poverty.

The center-right Forza Italia Party and the center-left Democratic Party (PD) both censured calls for impeachment, with former PD leader Matteo Renzi saying his party would organize street demonstrations to defend the country’s institutions.

“Today, we need people to say ‘no’ to those who want to break us apart, who make excuses rather than assuming their responsibilities, who are playing on the anxieties of others,” Renzi wrote on Facebook.

The prospect of a eurosceptic government in Rome has concerned European Union leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who are pushing for further political and economic integration.

Source: Presstv