US Secretary of State says Trump admin could lift travel ban on ‘important partner’ Chad

13, March 2018

US Secretary of State says Trump admin could lift travel ban on ‘important partner’ Chad 0

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Monday Washington was considering lifting a travel ban on Chad, offering an olive branch to a key ally in the fight against terrorist groups in West Africa.

The top US diplomat flew into the Chadian capital N’Djamena on the last day of a truncated tour of Africa with stop-offs in Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Nigeria – all front-line partners against ISIL and al-Qaeda off-shoots.

It was his first diplomatic visit to the continent where many are still smarting from US President Donald Trump’s reported dismissal of states there as “sh**hole” countries in
January. Trump later denied making the comment.

Tillerson said Chad had made important steps to strengthen control over its security and passports. “These steps I think are going to allow us to begin to normalize the travel
relationship with Chad,” he told reporters.

A report on Chad’s progress was being prepared in Washington and would be reviewed by President Trump next month, Tillerson said. “We have to wait for the final report,” he added.

Tillerson, who had met Chad’s President Idriss Deby previously while serving as CEO of ExxonMobil, said he was concerned about the presence of ISIL-allied militants in the Sahel and called Chad an “important partner.”

In September, The Trump White House added Chad – along with North Korea and Venezuela – to a list of countries whose citizens are restricted from travelling to the United States -drawing protests from Chad and others including France which works closely with the Chadian military.

Officials from the US Department of Homeland security said at the time Chad had to failed to send in proof that it had taken a number of security measures. Chad’s President Deby “expressed his incomprehension” about the ban during a meeting with Tillerson on Monday, Foreign Minister Chérif Mahamat Zene said.

Tillerson’s entourage earlier said he had been forced to cut short the African tour on Monday to return to deal with urgent work in Washington.

He is due to fly on to Nigeria after Chad, but will spend just a few hours there on Monday evening rather than the overnight visit originally planned. There was no immediate
response from Abuja.

“Due to demands in the Secretary’s schedule, he is returning to the U.S. one day early after concluding official meetings in Chad and Nigeria,” Under Secretary of State Steve Goldstein told reporters.

The Africa tour coincided with several urgent foreign policy developments, including Thursday’s announcement that US President Donald Trump will meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Tillerson, 65, cancelled some events in Kenya on Saturday, saying he was feeling unwell.

(Source: Reuters)


Southern Cameroons Crisis: US confirms deployment of B.I.R soldiers to put down the Ambazonia uprising

13, March 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: US confirms deployment of B.I.R soldiers to put down the Ambazonia uprising 0

A US Army News Service article points to a dilemma faced by soldiers in northern Cameroon, who are stationed there to aid Cameroon’s fight against the militant group Boko Haram. The American soldiers are carrying out a diplomatic role that is not normally within their purview. “With no State Department personnel stationed in the area, soldiers are often placed into a warrior-diplomat role, representing the American government wherever they go.” But even AFRICOM seems worried by the mission creep that inevitably takes place when a solider becomes a “warrior-diplomat.” Posted by AFRICOM to its official website, the article notes that “any misconduct by a soldier could spark controversy and put the nascent relationship between both countries in jeopardy.”

In Cameroon, American Special Forces work closely with the Brigade d’intervention rapide, an elite, Israeli-trained unit that fights Boko Haram. Last year, Amnesty International found that on a small base in Salak, near the border of Nigeria that the American soldiers shared with the B.I.R., at least sixty people “were subjected to water torture, beaten with electric cables and boards, or tied and suspended with ropes, among other abuses.” Some of the B.I.R. soldiers have now been deployed to put down an uprising in Cameroon’s Anglophone region on the border with Nigeria. Reports of human rights abuses in the area are rife, and the Internet has been shut down there for the past year.

Yet, little seems to weaken AFRICOM’s vision of its work as inherently good. “Within US policy circles, or within US training and assistance community, or within the Special Operations community, there are these beliefs in cardinal truths, that US training and engagement makes these units more professional, that we ‘have to do something’ to help them fight terrorism,” said Page, the Chatham House researcher. “This failure to appreciate the consequences of these day-to-day things that we’re doing and what long-term implications they may have… characterizes US foreign policy in the Sahel.”

There is little hope that the US will stop putting heavy emphasis on military solutions in Africa, or, for that matter, elsewhere in the world. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had no prior experience in diplomacy, is essentially charged with taking apart his own agency. State’s budget has been slashed, and Tillerson has overseen the exit of an entire echelon of senior diplomats from the department. In the meantime, Secretary of Defense James Mattis has secured ever more resources for the Defense Department.

Trump’s choice for Senior Africa Director on the National Security Council is Cyril Sartor, who was the Deputy Assistant Director of the CIA for Africa. There has not been a permanent Secretary of State for African Affairs since January 2017, but in December, the Defense Department named Alan Patterson its new Deputy Assistant Secretary for African Affairs. Patterson is another CIA alum, who was previously in charge of clandestine operations in Africa. That former CIA officers occupy two of three leading positions for US engagement in Africa is dismaying. In earlier decades, the CIA was implicated in the assassination of Congo’s independence leader Patrice Lumumba, the coup d’état that overthrew Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and the arrest by the apartheid South African government of Nelson Mandela. More recently, in 2011 the CIA armed rebels fighting Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. The agency’s history of disruptive actions is not a promising backdrop to the general contours of American strategy today on a continent of countries that the US president has labeled “shithole.”

The gap left by the US’s (and, to some extent, Europe’s) lack of economic and political engagement with Africa has led the continent to turn its attention elsewhere for trade and investment. “Essentially, the entire non-military agenda in Africa of Africa’s outside partners has been ceded to China,” said Columbia professor Howard French, author of China’s Second Continent, a study of Chinese involvement in Africa. The lack of engagement is to the detriment of both Africa and the US, he argued.

 

Source: www,nybooks.com


Ambazonian militants release video of abducted govt official

12, March 2018

Ambazonian militants release video of abducted govt official 0

A month after armed elements under the banner of the so-called Ambazonia Republic abducted a Cameroon government official, a video of the said officer has popped up on social media.

The said video showed the Nimbong Aaron Yong, a regional delegate for Social Affairs in the NorthWest pleading for his substantive minister to intervene before the separatists “sacrifice” him.

According to him, the Ambazonia leaders only wanted proof of life to be shown of over 40 of their comrades arrested in Nigeria and subsequently deported to Yaounde.

“I’m pleading with my minister to intervene. That the leaders of Ambazonia, arrested and brought to Yaounde, should be shown to the public, that they are alive. I have been given 48 hours, otherwise, be sacrificed, if the leaders are not shown,” he said.

The Ambazonia Defense Force (ADF) confirmed in late February 2018 that it had kidnapped the administrative official near the town of Batibo, some 40km from the NorthWest’s regional capital Bamenda.

State-run Cameroon Radio Television (CRTV) confirmed the incident, Yong at the time became the second person to be abducted by the separatists.

In mid February 2018, ADF claimed responsibility for the disappearance of Divisional Officer Namata Diteng, reports indicated that they kidnapped him and burnt his car.

Kidnapping is a new line of action by the separatists who usually staged deadly guerilla style attacks on members of the security forces. They said the soldiers, police and gendarmes were occupation forces hence their resolve to rid the towns of them.

President Paul Biya declared war on the separatists last year after they killed a number of police personnel. The group’s new leader has also declared an era of self-defense in the wake of reprisal attacks by members of the security on citizens.

 

Source: Africa News


Southern Cameroons Crisis: The government is still in denial

12, March 2018

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The government is still in denial 0

After more than 17 months of turmoil in Cameroon’s two restive English-speaking regions, the country’s government is still in denial that it has lost control of these regions. Despite growing insecurity in the two regions, the government still maintains that there is security in the regions. The death toll has been staggering and many families are yet to come to terms with the loss of their family members and sometimes, even their homes, especially in areas such as Kwakwa and Kembong where the government resorted to collective punishment as a means of intimidating the population.

Despite the government’s denial, it has recently created a fifth military region in Bamenda, the North West region’s capital. It has also increased the number of soldiers in Manyu Division, Southern Cameroons most populated division, where many army soldiers have been sent to an early grave. Despite the lull in fighting, there are still many skirmishes in the region and tensions remain very high. Places like Kembong in Manyu Division and Mbonge in Ndian Division are still considered by many as ticking time bombs that could go off at any time.

Analysts across the country and the world see the government’s deployment of troops in the regions as a move to face off with the separatists who are hell-bent on breaking up the country to grant the English-speaking population the independence it has been hankering after for years. The Yaounde government has also been working hard and long to prove that there is enough security in the two regions and this is fast drying up the state’s coffers and more than 800 civilian and military lives have been lost in a conflict that started with a peaceful demonstration by lawyers.

Most of the lives lost were due to the government’s refusal to head to the negotiating table, though the country’s president has, on many occasions, called for dialogue and peace as necessary factors that must be in place for the country to reach its 2035 development goals. But many analysts see the president’s calls for peace as a joke. He has been accused of paying lip service to the whole notion of peace and dialogue and his actions during the period of the conflict have clearly portrayed him as a man who professes peace, but practices violence.

The government’s violent response to demonstrations by teachers and lawyers are to blame for the degeneration of the conflict. If the entire Southern Cameroons population is in support of the calls for secession, it is more because of the government’s military response to a simple call for federalism. Many Southern Cameroonians have viewed all government actions ever since the conflict erupted as a strategy to shut up the people and keep them in the darkness of ignorance.

The Southern Cameroonian population was angered the most by the brutality Buea University students were subjected to during their call for dialogue with university authorities following a unilateral decision by Buea University authorities to increase fees.

In a typical fascist approach, the students were brutalized, some were made to drink raw sewage and many girls were raped. Similarly, many young men and women were taken to the police station and ever since, nothing has been heard about them.

The government has never apologized for allowing its forces to unleash such terror on innocent and armless students. It is yet to account for all the students who had been arrested during the student strike and the vice chancellor who was responsible for the strike, Professor Nalova Lyonga Pauline Egbe, has recently been rewarded with a ministerial position.

Ever since the conflict started, many schools have remained closed, especially in rural areas where most of the fighting is taking place today. In many of those villages, many young men have escaped into the jungle for safety as government troops have the nasty habit of brutalizing the population each time a soldier is killed by unknown armed men.

Like schools, the regions’ courts have remained closed and each time an English-speaking Cameroonian is arrested, he or she is immediately sent to Yaounde where he or she is held in custody for many months. It should be called that one of the grievances that caused the Southern Cameroons crisis was the abusive use of French in the English-speaking parts of the country and the subjecting of Southern Cameroonians to the use of French even when millions of them have not had any close contact with the language.

For more than 15 months, the country’s English-speaking minority has been striving to have the government rethink its strategy. It has organized ghost town operations with the objective of bringing the government to the negotiating table where the form of the state could be discussed in order to put an end to the hyper-centralized system that has brought frustration, death and destruction to Cameroonians. But the government’s refusal to discuss the form of the state has caused the conflict to drag on and this has resulted in moderate English-speaking Cameroonians to move from federalism to secession.

This is also causing the conflict to take a turn for the worse. Extrajudicial killings have become a daily affair and ordinary citizens are also killing and maiming soldiers in retaliation for the killing of many civilians. The arrest of secessionist’s leaders in Nigeria on January 5, 2018, and their illegal extradition to Yaounde in late January have not helped matters. These leaders have been held incommunicado for almost two months and this is a concern to rights groups which hold that they deserve a fair trial and access to lawyers.

Similarly, armed groups have also cropped up across the entire region and their actions have left the government in a tight spot. The armed groups have succeeded to kidnap a few government officials and they are threatening to kidnap more as a strategy that will push the government into telling the world where their arrested leaders are. This may also help to reduce the abuses that are fueling the conflict.

These abuses are ongoing and getting serious by the day. The international community is concerned about the Cameroon government’s refusal to call for genuine and inclusive dialogue. And its approach to the resolution of this conflict has been criticized by the International Crisis Group. In its report that was released after the English-speaking regions declared their independence last October, the rights group decried government action.

Defense and security forces have always responded with disproportionate force and this usually result in deaths and sever injuries. It attributes the injuries and deaths to the use of live ammunition and excessive use of tear gas, including in homes and against worshippers.

Defense and security forces have also arrested hundreds of people without warrants of arrest, including in their homes. They have been making use of torture, as well as inhuman and degrading treatment. Sexual abuse, destruction of property and looting of homes by soldiers and police, as well as shooting from helicopters at protesters like on October 1, 2017, in places like Kumba, Bamenda and Buea have been reported by residents, local politicians, senior officials, the press, human rights organizations and the Catholic bishops of the two regions.

Today, the Anglophone regions remain under curfew imposed by their respective governors. The curfews have been imposed supposedly to allow security forces to contain attacks by armed separatists on members of the security forces. But the security forces have also been killing civilians indiscriminately. They have also been accused of committing crimes in the regions in which they have been deployed.

Since January 2018, more than 30 members of the security forces – the military, police and gendarmes – have so far been killed in guerilla-style attacks, especially at checkpoints, with the latest taking place in Kumba on March 8. The separatists have also reported having kidnapped two government officials and efforts to locate the two officers have been futile.

As the government keeps looking the other way while its security forces continue to kill and maim ordinary citizens, the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora is also working hard to ensure that the people get the right means to protect themselves. The Diaspora has been quietly mobilizing resources to bring arms to the country. These arms are helping Southern Cameroonian fighters to give government troops a run for their money.

Though the situation may be very serious, there is still room for a negotiated agreement. The government has to abandon its policy of attrition that has not worked for 17 months and embrace genuine and sincere dialogue. This dialogue must include key members of the Anglophone Diaspora which has a huge war chest.

The Southern Cameroonian Diaspora is rich. It is a Diaspora that has transformed marginalization into opportunity. If the government of Cameroon has to dream of political stability, it must reconcile with the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora that has a huge stomach for a fight. The Southern Cameroons Diaspora will continue to destabilize the country if the government does not reach out to members of this Diaspora.

Recycling old members of government and bringing those the population has rejected like Atanga Nji and Nalova Lyonga into government will not bring peace to Cameroon. Atanga Nji and Nalova Lyonga do not represent anybody and they will surely not have an audience to talk to. If the government is ready and willing to bring about an end to this conflict, it must be willing to engage with the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora which is highly concentrated in North America and the United Kingdom.

The world has changed. The Diaspora is a key factor in any country’s development. Ignoring this huge and resourceful group will only rob Cameroon of the peace it needs to engage in serious development activities. Being in denial is only making matters worse. The current lull could be deceiving. It could simply be the calm before the storm as Southern Cameroonian fighters are not yet ready to throw in the towel. There is no return to the status quo ante. The form of the state must be discussed and the Southern Cameroons Diaspora must be made to take its place at the table if peace has to return to Cameroon.

By Kingsley Betek and Pelagie Ebot with contributions from Rita Akana and Ebong Ngole


World’s Second Floating LNG Project Starts Production In Cameroon

12, March 2018

World’s Second Floating LNG Project Starts Production In Cameroon 0

Norwegian shipping firm Golar LNG on Monday said liquefied natural gas (LNG) production had started at its floating LNG production platform in Cameroon, the world’s second working example of the nascent technology.

The trading arm of Russia’s Gazprom has purchased the entire 1.2 million tonne per annum output from Golar’s FLNG platform, the Hilli Episeyo, for eight years.

The deal was agreed in late 2015 between Golar, Gazprom Marketing and Trading, Cameroon’s state-run Societe Nationale des Hydrocarbures and Perenco Cameroon. Golar LNG gave no indication of when the Hilli would achieve commercial LNG production or begin exports.

First LNG deliveries were initially targeted for the second half of 2017. The first ever FLNG project came on stream in Malaysia last year, developed by state-run energy giant Petronas, but the project has operated at a fraction of its production capacity.

 

Source: Reuters


Revealed: Cho Ayaba’s Big Cover-Up – His Role in Calabar Arrest of Ambazonian Refugees

12, March 2018

Revealed: Cho Ayaba’s Big Cover-Up – His Role in Calabar Arrest of Ambazonian Refugees 0

Cho Ayaba, AGC leader was quick to spin the news. First, he denied knowledge of his own meeting, and then shifted responsibility, blaming the Interim Government for the arrests at the meeting. But the meeting in question that saw the abduction of eight Southern Cameroons refugees in Calabar was actually organized by Dr. Ayaba.

Cameroon Intelligence Report has confirmed that Cho Ayaba used a third party who was among the arrested, to plan the meeting. The so-called Ambazonian freedom fighter was to address the meeting through a conference call. The meeting was meant to persuade attendees, most of whom were his acolytes, not to attend or participate in the joint self-defense initiative that was being organized by the Interim Government.

The event, aimed at gathering as many self-defense proponents to the Calabar meeting as possible. Ayaba was going to sway them from participating in any IG joint self defense initiative. At the end of his address, Ayaba’s (lady) representative who has lived in Calabar for years runs a hotel business and trades in petrol had solely put the meeting together on Ayaba’s behalf, would distribute as support from the AGC, cash from Dr. Ayaba. It was a stipend they would use to pay their transportation back to Ikom.

But the plan wasn’t going very well. The refugees smelled danger with increasing pressure from the lady as the day of the meeting drew closer, coupled with the fact that she won’t reveal to anyone, the venue of the meeting in Calabar. Some officials of nonprofit groups in the camp heard of the meeting and the secrecy involved and passed out announcement in the camp warning refugees not to attend the meeting. We also gathered that some camp officials of the IG passed out an alarm owing to the very secrecy under which the meeting was being organized.

This lady, one Emerald Johnson, it should be recalled, had hosted Dr. Ayaba in her motel while he visited Dadi on November 2017, to tour the camp his ADF boys were being trained. She didn’t only host Ayaba, she accompanied Ayaba, sitting in the back seat in the car with him to Dadi. It wasn’t a coincidence that Ayaba chose her and her hotel facilities to host the meeting in Calabar that saw the arrest of innocent needy refugees who had gone there hoping they did get some money after Ayaba addresses them.

Unfortunately for those who ignored the warnings and went to the meeting, they were picked up right at their hotel locations before the meeting even started. News began to filter out immediately after the arrest from the police station in Calabar as one of them had succeeded to sneak his phone into the cell. From behind bars, he began sending text messages to others who had stayed back in Ikom. He said what happened in Abuja has happened to them, that they have all been abducted.

When things took the wrong turn, Cho Ayaba spun the news, denying knowledge and responsibility for the meeting entirely. First, he accused the IG of calling the meeting, actually naming Acting President, Dr. Sako and Homeland Security Secretary, John Egywang as the ones who called for the meeting. He said that the Acting President set up the meeting purposefully to get his supporters abducted like in the Abuja case. To some other people, he said that the IG had called for the meeting to persuade his ADF members to defect him and join the joint initiative that was being put together by the IG for self-defense.

When contacted, both the Acting President and Homeland security chief denied ever knowing about the meeting. The IG self-defense meeting was to come up on the weekend of Saturday March 10. But before the meeting, Ayaba and his surrogates let the cart, accepting he actually called the meeting before going viral with attacks on Chris Anu, Secretary of State for Communications for revealing the identity of Emerald Johnson, the lady who hosted the meeting. Ayaba and his gang have said that by revealing the name of the lady, Anu put the lives and security of refugees at stake.

Cameroon Intelligence Report talked to Anu, hitherto, Editor of the Southern Cameroons Journal, asking him why he put the name of the lady out knowing that she was a Southern Cameroonian and he stated; “I had no clue who the lady was, not until news came to me afterward that the same lady was the one who accompanied Cho Ayaba to Dadi,” he said.

Anu pointed out that; “I received a WhatsApp post from Alex Mbianda in Boston that said Atam Milan had conspired to get some woman in Ikom to collect names of refugees 11 years and above and send to him.” Anu said “the post came across as legit, and I was like, this concerns refugees. If I do nothing and something happens, people may blame me for not following up on Mbianda’s lead.” He said he called a number of people in the refugee camp, including George Tando who was accompanying the two women from London and Germany to find out what precisely their assignment was. He said he called about four different workers in the camp to find out who was it Milan was conspiring with to illegally sneak refugees to South Africa. He said he was given two phone numbers of a woman who was supposed to be that of Milan’s accomplice, all belonging to the Johnson lady.

“When I called her,” Anu said, “I told her my name is Ashu Martin. You see, in my head, I was like if I should say I’m Chris Anu, and she has anything conspiratorial, she won’t want to talk to me. So I gave her a different name to get her open up and talk to me. But she began immediately yelling at her lungs saying that people should stop calling her, that she knows nothing about the Southern Cameroons crisis other than what she sees on Facebook. She even threatened to sue, saying that since morning, so many people have been calling her number and that she didn’t know why. And then she dropped the call.” Anu explained.

Anu said that since nobody was, initially, – not the IG, nor any other group was accepting responsibility for the meeting that the lady had put together, his immediate conclusion was that Emerald Johnson must have been an agent of the Nigerian Gov’t used to set-up the arrest of the eight refugees. “Remember, she had told me earlier in the phone call that she’s Nigerian, and that she knows nothing about the Southern Cameroons crisis. So later on, when news of the arrests came out and it happened that she was the one who organized it, and coupled with the fact that neither Ayaba nor the IG would take responsibility, I took her for an agent, thinking the meeting was solely her making. In my heart, I was like if she actually plotted the arrest, then she should be exposed, people should know. I had no idea, not until I mentioned the name publicly, that the AGC now claimed that Emerald Johnson was their supporter and a close friend of Dr. Cho Ayaba whom he had used to convene the meeting.

“I was taken aback by AGC attacks on me. I thought by revealing the name of the woman, I was indeed helping our people know who the agent behind their arrests was.” Anu stated. “Of course, if I had known that comrade Ayaba organized the meeting, or let me put it this way; If Ayaba had blown an alarm that he put a meeting together and his supporters got abducted; or think about it this way, if the lady had told me earlier in the phone call that she was Cameroonian and then later on I come to find out that she was at the Centre of the arrests, I probably would have treated the story in a different way. But here was I thinking we have a repeat of the Nera Hotel incident and the agent must be exposed” Anu explained. “I called the lady just once. And the call was only following up with Mbianda’s lead that some woman was about taking names of refugees to forward to Milan.

“Now, they are out there blaming me for blowing the cover of a lady they all knew supposed to, maybe have been protected instead of blaming themselves for initially trying to shift responsibility for the meeting, that isn’t leadership, Anu concluded.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Kingsley Betek in Calabar


Thousands rally in Catalonia to demand split from Spain

12, March 2018

Thousands rally in Catalonia to demand split from Spain 0

Thousands of people have demonstrated in the capital of Spain’s Catalonia region to demand that lawmakers elect a new regional leader and continue working toward total secession from Spain.

An estimated 45,000 demonstrators, holding Catalan flags, rallied in Barcelona on Sunday, according to the city’s urban police. They were holding banners calling for a “republic now!” and chanting “freedom for political prisoners.”

Vice President of the National Assembly of Catalonia (ANC) Agusti Alcoberro said during the rally that what the Spanish state was doing was “outrageous.”

“We mobilized people and on December 21 [2017], we got a majority in the parliament in favor of the Catalan republic,” he said. “What we are doing today is taking to the streets as citizens to demand that the republic that we voted for in October continue forward.”

Protesters hold banners reading “Republic now!” during a rally held in Barcelona, Spain, on March 11, 2018. (Photo by Reuters) 

 

Catalonia’s pro-independence leaders held a referendum on October 1, 2017, which had been banned by Spain’s central government and declared illegal by the country’s Constitutional Court. Organizers said 90 percent of voters backed secession. Before and during the referendum, Spanish police carried out a heavy crackdown on separatists.

Former regional president, Carles Puigdemont, who unsuccessfully declared independence from Spain on October 27 last year — in violation of the nation’s constitution — later fled to Belgium to escape arrest.

Catalonia, one of Spain’s wealthiest and most productive regions, is now theoretically under the direct control of the Spanish national government in Madrid. Pro-independence parties won a slim majority after a December 2017 election called by the Spanish government. However, they have since been locked in drawn-out negotiations on forming a government.

Puigdemont announced earlier this month that he was temporarily withdrawing his bid for presidency and proposed the jailed Catalan independence leader, Jordi Sanchez, to take the job.

Catalans hold a poster of deposed leader Carles Puigdemont along with signs reading “Republic now!” during a rally in Barcelona, Spain, on March 11, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

 

The regional parliament was due to vote on the region’s new leader on Monday, but the speaker of the parliament, Roger Torrent, suspended the vote on Friday. He decided to wait for a European Court of Human Rights ruling on whether a jailed leader of Catalonia’s independence movement can be the next president.

Torrent made the decision after Spain’s Supreme Court turned down Sanchez’s request to leave prison and attend the planned session of parliament.

Lawmakers had planned to vote on making him the region’s leader. But Spain’s central government says individuals who face charges and who are unable to be present at the debate and vote in Barcelona can’t be elected by the regional parliament.

Sanchez, the former head of Catalan National Assembly, has been imprisoned near the Spanish capital, Madrid since October over allegations that he and another secessionist figure used a major protest in September to stop Spanish police officers from following a judge’s orders to halt the banned referendum.

 

Source: Presstv


Atanga Nji: A Robot in French Cameroun’s rebot genocide command structure

12, March 2018

Atanga Nji: A Robot in French Cameroun’s rebot genocide command structure 0

The duties attributed to Minister Atanga Nji from when he was sourced from his serious criminal gang underground world where he was a crime kingpin to join the French Cameroun crime syndicate was that of the Secretary-General of its National Security Council, Minister of Special Duties at the Presidency and a Section President of the CPDM in Mezam County of the Southern Cameroons.  He was strategically placed and provided the resources to zealously advance French Cameroun’s fifty-six-year-old genocide of the Southern Cameroons.  Cameroun Concord News can now state that the appointment of this crime kingpin as Minister of Territorial Administration a position he cumulates with that of Secretary-General of French Cameroun’s Security Council and Section President of the CPDM for Mezam is intended to put a public face to this robot in French Cameroun’s genocide reboot command structure. It is intended also to insulate and prevent Paul Biya and members of his French Cameroun’s crime syndicate from being held criminally responsible for the genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and multiple international violations within the territory of the Southern Cameroons and Nigeria.

The appointment of Atanga Nji from the shadows of the crime syndicate from where he operated, to the more visible role of Minister of Territorial Administration was not intended to fundamentally change the nature of the duties he has been performing within the crime syndicate. It is intended to enable him to play a commanding public role within the reboot command structure of French Cameroun’s genocide crime syndicate. 

French Cameroun is a French neo-colonial state that was built on a foundation of criminality and genocide. Paul Atanga Nji (to use his three names) has played a behind the scene role within French Cameroun’s colonial policy of the asphyxiation of the Southern Cameroons and the rape of its economy.  Lest we forget, the war against the Southern Cameroons is both territorial and economic.  The Interim Government’s Communication Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu is right to call for a strategic realignment of our fighting forces on all fronts to confront the enemy in these and other fronts.

French Cameroun’s reboot policy in which Paul Atanga Nji was appointed, is a tested old policy which the neo-colonial state used effectively and relied on with reasonable success to subdue its own masses and the Southern Cameroons under the mirage of the so-called “one and indivisibility”. The so-called “one and indivisibility” clause was in the French colonial imposed constitution of French Cameroun prior to the annexation and colonization of the territory of the Southern Cameroons with the complicity of Great Britain and France.  The “one and indivisible Cameroun” did not include Ambazonia and cannot and will never apply to the Southern Cameroons which has never been part of French Cameroun and will never be.

The appointment and duties attributed to Paul Atanga Nji are routed in French Cameroun’s France genocide policy.  A careful review of France genocide policy in French Cameroun and its extension to the Southern Cameroon/Ambazonia places the fifty-six-year genocide of the Southern Cameroons in its reboot form on the hands of France. This genocide policy was carefully written in the France/French Cameroun 1959 Cooperation Agreement. The implementation of this genocide cooperation agreement in the territory the Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia led to the ongoing genocide. Paul Atanga Nji was recruited and provided the resources and command to oversee this genocide. He has been enforcing this policy from the shadows and his recent appointment merely lifted him from his shadow operating status to a public one.

The precedent in history was the appointment of Enoch Nkwayeb a Bamileke as Minister of Territorial Administration and Samuel Kame as the Secretary of the National Security Council by Babatoura Ahmadou Ahidjo to oversee the genocide of their own people in French Cameroun. French Camerounese of Douala and Bassa origins, Jean Claude Ngoh and Guilliume Nseke were appointed to enforce the genocide in Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia.

These slave servants rendered commendable services to their masters with over five hundred thousand of their own citizens slaughtered, civilian settlements torched, napalm bombs used to exterminate hundreds of thousands and many of their leaders pursued abroad, abducted or poisoned to death. The reboot of this policy sourced Paul Atanga Nji from his underworld crime world to play the role these Iscariots of the French Cameroun genocide in the Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia.  Atanga Nji is not alone in this category, only his roles differs from those attributed to other Iscariots of the Southern Cameroons.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group warn Atanga Nji and the Southern Cameroons Iscariots who by their participation in French Cameroun’s civil, administrative, political and military participation are helping the enemy in its war efforts against Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonia. They will not be as lucky as the French Cameroun’s Bamileke and Bassa elite who were recruited to oversee the genocide of their own people.

Majority of Ambazonians, from Fon Gorgi Dinka to the Interim Government have called on all Southern Cameroonian/ Ambazoniain in the French Cameroun’s Parliament to resign and come back to support the liberation struggle in their homeland. Rather than comply with the popular request, these individuals are instead supporting the enemy’s war efforts and crimes against their own people.

On October 1, 2017, when French Cameroun deployed helicopter gun boats to slaughter armless Ambazonia civilians, Iscariots like Chiefs V.E. Mukete, George Tabetando and a hand full of Senators led a demonstration in Yaounde supporting the massacre. The genocide masterminds like Laurent Esso, Fame Ndongo, Isa Tchiroma, Cavaye Jibril, Okalia Bilai, Lele l’Afrique and other French Cameroun’s administrative and military personnel deployed to exterminate Ambazonian civilians were encouraged and energized in committing the pogrom.  Lately John Fru Ndi, with open support from a constituent member of the so-called All Ambazonia Collaborative Council defied a ban imposed by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia AACC  and held the Convention of his party in Bamenda and in the CPDM Congress hall attended by the deputy Secretary-General of the CPDM. Ni John Fru Ndi has been widely denounced as an Iscariot and there was a reported attempt to torch his property in Bamenda. Only one constituent member of the so-called AACC joined in denouncing Ni John Fru Ndi. He was in the minority in doing so since the rest said nothing. Cameroon Concord News is concerned about the hypocrisy of the so-called AACC in giving tacit support to Fru Ndi through the open support provided by its constituent member whom it failed to even rebut.  The silent endorsement of the support by its core member for the Fru Ndi’s Convention over the ban by the IG confirms the fear by many people that the reboot conference and its offspring the AACC are the amorphous Trojan horses of treachery in the Ambazonia revolution. The danger that this amorphous Trojan horse may be in league with Atanga Nji to derail this struggle appears real.

There are disturbing indicators pointing to this direction. France’s record of criminality in French Cameroun and in the territory of Ambazonia is not in dispute. It is their policy to pay or appoint people to claim responsibility for certain crimes deflecting attention away from them. The admission of responsibility of some crimes committed on our people by some supposed Southern Cameroons defense commanders or surrogates on their behalf is troubling. This conduct assists the enemy. Atanga Nji who is fast replacing Isa Tchiroma as the genocide war propaganda chief of French Cameroun accused Southern Cameroons fighters for attempting to abduct school children and killing one of the soldiers who was deployed to protect the students.

Paul Atanga Nji intended to whitewash the conduct of French Cameroun’s soldiers and portray their deployment as necessitated to provide protection to school children from abduction by Ambazonia combatants. Paul Atanga Nji accused Ambazonia combatants of raping and impregnating school girls. Paul Atanga Nji the dangerous criminal by making these false allegations is preparing the ground to abduct our children from schools and lay the accusation on our fighters. He knows about the international outcry and outrage that the abduction of school girls in Nigeria has caused.  Under serious pressure from Ambazonia fighters, French Cameroun is resorting to blackmail to discredit our revolution. Its strategy policy is to commit these crimes and get some corrupt Ambazonians to claim responsibility. This will undermine the ongoing efforts by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to unite, modernize and operationalize our fighting forces and our self-defense fighting strategy

The Atanga strategy is based on patently false serious allegations which so-called commanders have failed to counter. Failing to counter these false allegations does harm to the revolutionary war of liberation and the image of our valent combatants in the international community and at home. The internet and social media surrogates for these commanders spend time attacking concerned Ambazonians who are craving for a reformed strategic and tactical self-defense strategy aimed at defeating the enemy. There are indeed several enemy targets within our territory which can be taken out.If properly identified, they will deter the enemy from its onslaught against our people.

The allegations made by Atanga Nji and the failure to counter them are alarming. The militarization of our territory, the brutalizing of our students, the torching of schools and extensive civilian settlements within our territory are well documented.  As Secretary-General of French Cameroun’s National Security Council, Atanga Nji has always been one of the master minds of this criminal policy and strategy. On the request of Nalova Lyonga and Okalia Bilai, armed soldiers who were deployed to the University of Buea and civilian settlements in Buea brutalized, humiliated, abducted, raped and maimed several students who were shouting, “no violence, no violence, no violence” in efforts to deter the crimes.   Prior to this, the heavily militarized University Buea became the laboratory and guinea pig for culture genocide of the Southern Cameroons. Protesting students were massacred, maimed, raped, abducted and jailed.

This policy was extended to all the institutions of learning in the territory of Ambazonia and rape, maiming, theft of property, and torching of schools and public buildings became the hallmark of soldiers deployed to commit these crimes to humiliate and subdue Ambazonians.  The Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia took the decision to close schools in part to protect our children from these perverts and predators and to halt the corruption of our educational system and its core value system. Atanga Nji allegation that the soldiers who were deployed by French Cameroun were to protect the students and that it is Ambazonia forces who are committing the crimes lacks merit. Ambazonians are taking the responsibility for some of the crimes that are aiding the enemy by deflecting attention from their crimes and blackmailing our fighting forces who have made the French Cameroun criminal occupying forces the object of their attacks. Cameroon Concord News cautions that the destruction of civilian settlements is the method used by French Cameroun in its prosecution of the war. It used it against its own people from the 1950s.

Communication Secretary of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia Hon.Chris Anu, made a very wise call for all our self-defense fighting forces to come together to  review the hit and run tactic which although necessary and effective in some regards may be relied on by the enemy to delegitimize our revolution in other respects. Lest we forget, Atanga Nji in his capacity as a CPDM Section President and so-called North West elite prior to his reboot appointment as Minister of Territorial Administration called for the formation and arming of pro-CPDM militias in Ambazonia to kill and maim our people. He has been appointed to implement tested policies and to rely on elaborate structures French Cameroun had established within the territory of Ambazonia under the supervision of administrative officers and Iscariot elites to exterminate our people. Prior to his ministerial order and instructions to governors and DOs, banning motor cycles and timely reports on the enforcement of the crimes soldiers were deployed to execute, some people thought that torching of motorcycles all over our territory and the shoot to kill conduct by soldiers were the work of ill-trained over zealous soldiers. In a few egregious cases, French Cameroun government pretentiously promised to investigate the crimes but never ever.  God being a God of justice, Paul Atanga Nji has emerged on the scene and provided documentary evidence of the deliberate genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes ordered and committed against Ambazonians by the crime syndicate in power in French Cameroun.

The banning of motor cycles, the most popular means of transportation in Ambazonia is intended to enforce an effective ban of transportation generally, trading, agriculture, education, hospitalization, and indeed the economic life of Ambazonia.  This is tantamount to using starvation as a weapon of war criminalized by the Malabo Protocol on the African Court. The razing of civilian settlements, the elaborate rapes, mass extermination, torching of schools and markets, deportation of the civilian population from their ancestral homes, subjecting civilians to  unbearable conditions of life, indignities on women and children, sexual violence, torture, militarization of civilian settlements and schools, looting and pillage and terrorizing the civilian population through abductions in Ambazonia and in Nigeria are international crimes punishable by the Rome Statute and the 1949 Geneva Conventions.

The abduction of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and members of the Interim Government in Abuja Nigeria by a combined force of Nigeria and French Cameroun’s special agents with French Cameroun’s agents wearing uniforms provided by Nigeria special agents to conceal their illegal operations in the territory of Nigeria aggravated the criminal responsibility of Nigerian and French Cameroun’s leaders in the acts of terrorism that are threatening peace and security in the Gulf of Guinea.  Cameroon Concord News can conclusively state that Paul Atanga Nji was always present and played a significant role of the realization of these crimes.

We of this publication can also authoritatively state that the outing of the identity and role of Paul Atanga Nji through his recent appointment has at long last exposed the limits and vulnerability of the French Cameroun’s crime syndicate and its criminal policies in Ambazonia. As a crime robot, Paul Atanga Nji will be remote-controlled to inflict more mass crimes against our people. He may also use hit and run tactics to kill to justify mass murder and torching of civilian settlements by French Cameroun forces.

A united Ambazonia defense strategy advocated by the Acting President Dr Samuel Sako Ikome and efficiently communicated and explained by Secretary of Communication, Chris Anu has not ruled out hit and run but rightly states that it must be accompanied by support measures aimed at protecting Ambazonia civilian population and property.  Cameroon Concord News has stated that France through French Cameroun colonized Ambazonia for its natural resources and economic potentials.  The hitting of these economic targets as strongly advocated by the Interim Government and explained by the Secretary for Communication Chris Anu, will remove the pressure from our civilian population.  By targeting these economic targets, we will deprive the enemy of the revenue from the resources it is exploiting to fund the war of genocide against us. The agents of the war economy as well as the gendarmes, the soldiers, the police, the administrators, and collaborators reside in our territory; they operate in or from our territory and their women and children reside among us.  There is a clear distinction between the civilian population of French Cameroun who must be protected and agents of the enemy operating the war economy and their military operations. Over the years, due to an elaborate policy of corruption and land grab, French Cameroun’s administrators, politicians and military officers-built mansions in our territory and continue to operate businesses in our territory.

These are the elaborate structures that the enemy has used to enslave us for over half a century. This war is intended to protect the economic interests of France and the crime syndicate within our territory.  A strategic realignment our self-defense strategy will deprive the enemy of the resources used to perpetrate the genocide of our people. It will deprive them of the resources relied on to destroy our civilian settlements, torch the motor cycles of our people and rape our women and girls. If Paul Atanga Nji places a ban on motor cycles, we too can place a ban on all administrative vehicles, military vehicles and vehicles used to conduct the business operations of French Cameroun’s colonial interests within our territory. 

There are many strategic decisions that a united, well-coordinated self-defense force can take which Cameroon Concord News Group Strategic Editorial Team has withheld from publication.

However, the self-defense policy towards collaborators and enemies of the revolution cannot wait.  The people of Lebialem torched the house of their MP one Benard Foju who in complicity with the crime syndicate betrayed them. The self-defense forces in the Northern Zone must borrow from Lebialem and send these traitors parking to French Cameroun.  Cameroon Concord News has observed a recent trend in the Northern Zone where CPDM criminal zealots have been emboldened to organize under military supervision depopulated televised addresses supporting Paul Biya. Participants in these crimes have returned to the communities with no consequences and this may embolden others to join them in their treachery. It is from the pool of these traitors that Atanga Nji will recruit hitmen to terrorize our civilian populations.

Cameroon Concord News and Cameroon Intelligence Report therefore call on the citizens and self-defense forces within our territory to quickly answer the appeal by the Interim Government to unite to develop a common strategy to defeat the enemy.  Atanga Nji may be a priceless criminal treasure to the French Cameroun crime syndicate. Cameroon Concord News and a majority of Ambazonians know him as a tug and a hardened criminal who has crossed the blood of his people for material gain. He and others supporting him or willing to join him or who have joined him, and the crime syndicate must be stopped. There must be serious consequences for his unpardonable treachery. As a robot of French Cameroun’s crime syndicate, he and his master cannot stop our train of victory to reclaim Buea the Capital of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

To this I put my name

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman, Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group


Nigerian judge, Chile Eboe-Osuji elected new president of International Criminal Court

12, March 2018

Nigerian judge, Chile Eboe-Osuji elected new president of International Criminal Court 0

The judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), sitting in a plenary session have elected Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji of Nigeria as President of the Court for a three-year term with immediate effect. Judge Robert Fremr from the Czech Republic was elected First Vice-President with Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France as Second Vice-President.

‘I am deeply honoured to have been elected by my peers as President of the International Criminal Court. As I take up my duties, I feel encouraged that I am able to rely on the wide experience of the two Vice-Presidents, Judge Robert Fremr and Judge Marc Perrin de Brichambaut, both of whom I have closely worked with previously. I look forward to working together with them as well as with all the judges, all the Officials and the staff of the Court in a spirit of collegiality.

I also look forward to collaborating with the Assembly of States Parties, civil society and the international community at large, acting together to strengthen and reinforce the Rome Statute system, the 20th anniversary of the adoption of which we celebrate this year’, President Chile Eboe-Osuji stated following the election.

New ICC Presidency elected for 2018-2021

Today, 11 March 2018, the judges of the International Criminal Court (ICC), sitting in a plenary session, elected Judge Chile Eboe-Osuji (Nigeria) as President of the Court for a three-year term with… ‘I am also grateful to the previous President, Judge Silvia Fernández de Gurmendi, and Vice-Presidents, Judges Joyce Aluoch and Kuniko Ozaki, for their work and leadership,’ he added.

Justice Chile Eboe-Osuji was born in Anara in Imo State, Nigeria, on September 2, 1962. He obtained his bachelor of laws degree from the University of Calabar, Nigeria. He obtained his master of laws degree from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and doctor of laws degree from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1986 and practised briefly there. After achieving his Master’s degree from McGill in 1991, he worked as a barrister in Canada. From 1997 to 2005.
During his stay in Canada he worked as a barrister and law lecturer.

Judge Eboe-Osuji worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda as prosecution counsel and senior legal officer to the judges of the tribunal. From 2005 to 2007.

Working for the Special Court for Sierra Leone as senior prosecution appeals counsel in 2007/08 and returning to the ICTR from 2008 to 2010 as Head of Chambers, he became the Legal Advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2010.

He has authored two books and numerous law journal articles in international law. On 16 December 2011, he was elected as a judge of the International Criminal Court. He won the office in the fifteenth ballot in the Assembly of States Parties with 102 votes.

The Nigerian born judge in 2014 recused himself as a member of the bench that tried the case involving Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta who was standing trial with his vice William Ruto for crimes against humanity following the Kenya’s post election violence in 2007.

The work of the ICC Presidency:

The Presidency – consisting of the President and the two Vice-Presidents – plays a key role in providing strategic leadership to the ICC as a whole.

The Presidency coordinates with the other organs and seeks the concurrence of the Prosecutor on matters of mutual concern.

In accordance with the Rome Statute, the ICC’s governing treaty, the Presidency is responsible for the proper administration of the Court, with the exception of the Office of the Prosecutor.

The Presidency oversees the activities of the Registry and provides input into a broad range of administrative policies affecting the Court’s overall functioning.

Furthermore it conducts judicial review of certain decisions of the Registrar and concludes Court-wide cooperation agreements with States and international organizations.

 

Culled from Africa News


Russia: Putin ordered hijacked plane to be downed in 2014

12, March 2018

Russia: Putin ordered hijacked plane to be downed in 2014 0

Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a hijacked passenger plane reported to be targeting the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi to be shot down.

“I was told: a plane en route from Ukraine to Istanbul was seized, captors demand landing in Sochi,” the Russian president said in a documentary titled “Putin” aired on Sunday.

In the documentary, Putin tells a reporter Andrey Kondrashov that he received a telephone call from security officers responsible for the Sochi Olympics on February 7, 2014, a few hours before its opening ceremony.

Kondrashov reports that the pilots of a Turkish Pegasus Airlines Boeing 737-800 flying from Kharkiv to Istanbul claimed that one of the passengers was carrying an explosive device and was demanding that the plane change course to Sochi where 40,000 people had gathered to watch the opening ceremony.

Putin said that his security advisors told him that the emergency plan for such a situation was for the flight to be downed.

“I told them: act according to the plan,” Putin said, adding that after several minutes he received a call in which he was informed it incident had been a false alarm and that the said passenger had been inebriated.

When asked by Kondrashov what he experienced between the two phone calls, Putin said that “this is something I would prefer not to talk about.”

The remarks made in the documentary have been confirmed by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

 

Source: Presstv


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