15, June 2022

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Two Cameroon gov’t soldiers killed in Njinikom ⁰

Two members of the Cameroon government Francophone dominated military have been killed in an armed attack by Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Njinikom, Boyo constituency.

According to government cables, the incident took place on Tuesday, when the pro Yaoundé army soldiers were on a patrol in Njinikom.

Yaoundé is yet to identify the soldiers but a video made public by Southern Cameroon Self Defense Forces in Boyo detailed the attack and the military equipments gained by the Amba fighters.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that four bullets hit both of the soldiers in the head and six bullets hit their hands.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government has not commented on the happenings in Boya. However, an aide to Vice President Dabney Yerima has been quoted as saying the Francophone soldiers were in Njinikom to commit inhuman crimes.

Southern Cameroons has been a victim of French Cameroun military attacks for over five years now.

After decades of chafing at perceived discrimination and marginalization, the people of Southern Cameroons led by their leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe declared the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia in 2017, triggering a crackdown by the French backed Francophone authorities in Yaoundé.

The spiral of fighting has claimed more than 10,000 lives and prompted more than a million people to flee their homes, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

Amba fighters are now targeting police, soldiers, officials and schools, which they deem to be symbols of the French Cameroun state.

The Francophone armed forces have also been accused of abuses — charges that the Cameroonian authorities have in the past been quick to dismiss.

By Rita Akana with files

15, June 2022

“I’ve been asked to denounce the Ambazonian struggle, slam Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s actions” ⁰

In a rare disclosure, the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government says French Cameroun regime officials attempted to persuade him to denounce the Ambazonian struggle and also condemn President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe for declaring the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News on Monday, Vice President Dabney Yerima said Cameroon embassy officials in some EU countries including the US infiltrated the Interim Government and encouraged unhealthy rivalry and divisions among Southern Cameroons front line figures.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader also revealed that he got anonymous telephone calls asking him to denounce the Southern Cameroons uprising and criticize President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and that a handsome reward await him if he accepted the proposal.

Comrade Dabney Yerima, however, said he had rejected the nasty and provocative advance from the corrupt Biya Francophone regime in French Cameroun.

Yerima added that Paul Atanga Nji has been reportedly calling upon Southern Cameroons traditional rulers and prominent elites to betray their people, “I have no words to describe my rejection of such criminal moves,” the Ambazonia Vice President asserted.

He also hinted that some senior Southern Cameroons personalities were recently invited to communicate with elements of the Francophone dominated secret service in Yaoundé.

By Toto Roland Motuba

15, June 2022

Prosecutor calls for suspended sentence for Blatter, Platini ⁰

The Swiss prosecutor’s office on Wednesday demanded an 18-month suspended jail sentence for Michel Platini and ex-president of FIFA Sepp Blatter, accusing them of fraud.

Blatter and Platini are being tried over a two-million-Swiss-franc payment in 2011 to the former France captain, who by that time was in charge of European football’s governing body UEFA.

The trial, which opened last week in the southern city of Bellinzona, follows an investigation that began in 2015 and lasted six years.

The Federal Criminal Court of Bellinzona will deliver its decision on July 8.

Platini was employed as an adviser to Blatter between 1998 and 2002. They signed a contract in 1999 for an annual remuneration of 300,000 Swiss francs, which was paid in full by FIFA.

Platini, 66, is regarded among world football’s greatest-ever players. He won the Ballon d’Or, considered the most prestigious individual award, three times in the mid-1980s.

Blatter, now 86, joined FIFA in 1975 and became the president of world football’s governing body in 1998.

Source: AFP

15, June 2022

UK forced to cancel deportation flight to Rwanda after European court ruling ⁰

A first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda as part of a controversial UK policy was cancelled on Tuesday in an embarrassing blow to Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government.

The number of those due to be put on the flight had dwindled from an original 130 to seven on Tuesday and finally none thanks to a last-minute ruling from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).

British Home Secretary Priti Patel said she was disappointed that “legal challenge and last-minute claims” meant the plane did not take off but vowed to pursue the heavily criticised policy.

“We will not be deterred,” she said in a statement.

“Our legal team are reviewing every decision made on this flight and preparation for the next flight begins now.”

The grounding was thanks to an ECHR ruling that at least one of the asylum seekers should stay in Britain as there were no guarantees for his legal future in Rwanda.

Patel called the ECHR intervention “very surprising” and vowed that “many of those removed from this flight will be placed on the next”.

The flight cancellation is an embarrassment for Johnson’s Conservative government, after Foreign Secretary Liz Truss insisted the Kigali-bound plane would leave, no matter how many people were on board.

“There will be people on the flights and if they’re not on this flight, they will be on the next flight,” Truss told Sky News earlier Tuesday.

The ECHR issued an urgent interim measure to prevent the deportation of an Iraqi man booked on the flight as he may have been tortured and his asylum application was not completed.

The Strasbourg-based court said the expulsion should wait until British courts have taken a final decision on the legality of the policy, set for July.

British newspapers from across the political spectrum expressed outrage at the eleventh-hour reversal and the government’s handling of the affair.

The conservative Daily Mail and Daily Express placed the blame in the hands of “meddling judges in Strasbourg”, expressing anger at what they called the “abuse of the legal system”.

The left-leaning Daily Mirror, meanwhile, slammed the government’s “cruel farce” and the “chaos” the policy had provoked.

‘All wrong’

Rights group Care4Calais tweeted that the same measure could be applied to the others set to be transported to Rwanda.

Truss said the policy, which the UN refugee agency has criticised as “all wrong”, was vital to break up human-trafficking gangs exploiting vulnerable migrants.

Record numbers of migrants have made the perilous Channel crossing from northern France, heaping pressure on the government in London to act after it promised to tighten borders after Brexit.

British media said some 260 people attempting the crossing in small boats were brought ashore at the Channel port of Dover by 1200 GMT on Tuesday.

More than 10,000 have crossed since the start of the year.

‘Shames Britain’

Legal challenges in recent days had failed to stop the deportation policy, which the two top clerics in the Church of England and 23 bishops described as “immoral” and “shames Britain”.

“They (migrants) are the vulnerable that the Old Testament calls us to value,” Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell wrote in a letter to The Times.

“We cannot offer asylum to everyone, but we must not outsource our ethical responsibilities, or discard international law—which protects the right to claim asylum.”

It was reported last weekend that Queen Elizabeth II’s heir, Prince Charles, had privately described the government’s plan as “appalling”.

But Truss said: “The people who are immoral in this case are the people traffickers trading on human misery.”

In Kigali, government spokeswoman Yolande Makolo told reporters it was an “innovative programme” to tackle “a broken global asylum system”.

“We don’t think it is immoral to offer a home to people,” she told a news conference.

Johnson has told his senior ministers the policy was “the right thing to do”.

‘Value for money’

Truss said she could not put a figure on the cost of the charter flight, which has been estimated at upwards of £250,000 ($303,000).

But she insisted it was “value for money” to reduce the long-term cost of irregular migration, which the government says costs UK taxpayers £1.5 billion a year, including £5 million a day on accommodation.

In the Channel port of Calais, in northern France, migrants said the risk of deportation to Rwanda would not stop them trying to reach Britain.

Moussa, 21, from the Darfur region of Sudan, said “getting papers” was the attraction. “That’s why we want to go to England,” he said.

Deported asylum seekers who eventually make the 4,000-mile (6,500-kilometre) trip to Kigali will be put up in the Hope Hostel, which was built in 2014 to give refuge to orphans from the 1994 genocide of around 800,000 mainly ethnic Tutsis.

Hostel manager Ismael Bakina said up to 100 migrants can be accommodated at a rate of $65 per person a day and that “this is not a prison.”

The government in Kigali has rejected criticism that Rwanda is not a safe country and that serious human rights abuses were rife.

But Rwandan opposition parties have questioned whether the resettlement scheme will work given high youth unemployment rates.

Source: AFP

14, June 2022

Resurgence of cholera kills 150 people in Cameroon ⁰

More than 150 people have died during a resurgence of cholera in Cameroon over the last eight months, the United Nations said on Monday.

“The health ministry registered 8,241 cases and 154 deaths,” to the end of May, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said.

Seven of the West African nation’s 10 regions have reported cholera cases.

The worst-hit is the English-speaking Southwest with 5,628 cases and 90 deaths, followed by the Littoral with 2,208 cases and 58 deaths, OCHA said.

Access to the Southwest “remains difficult” after years of violence between anglophone separatists and the army, said OCHA’s Cameroon office head Karen Perrin.

Cholera is an acute diarrhoeal disease that is treatable with antibiotics and hydration but can kill within hours if left untreated.

Outbreaks occur periodically in Cameroon, which has a population of more than 25 million. The last epidemic occurred between January and August 2020, when 66 people died.

According ot the World Health Organization, researchers estimate that each year there are between 1.3 million and 4.0 million cases of cholera worldwide, leading to between 21 000-143 000 deaths.

Source: AFP

14, June 2022

Visit Rwanda: UK to send first asylum seekers to Kigali ⁰

The British government was to send a first plane carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda on Tuesday despite last-gasp legal bids and protests against the controversial policy.

A chartered plane was to leave one of London’s airports overnight and land in Kigali on Tuesday, campaigners said, after UK judges rejected an appeal against the deportations.

Claimants had argued that a decision on the policy should have waited until a full hearing on the legality of the policy next month.

Thirty-one migrants were due to be sent but one of the claimants, the NGO Care4Calais, tweeted that 23 of them had now had their tickets cancelled.

Those due to be deported include Albanians, Iraqis, Iranians and a Syrian, Care4Calais said.

Other claimants included the Public and Commercial Services Union, whose members will have to implement the removals, and immigration support group Detention Action.

PCS chief Mark Serwotka said on Sunday it would be “an appalling situation” if Tuesday’s removals were subsequently found to be illegal at the full hearing.

Home Secretary Priti Patel should wait for the July hearing if she “had any respect, not just for the desperate people who come to this country, but for the workers she employs”, Serwotka told Sky News.Protesters gathered outside the Royal Courts of Justice and the Home Office on Monday.

In Geneva, UN refugee chief Filippo Grandi called the UK government policy “all wrong” and said it should not be “exporting its responsibility to another country”.

Church of England leaders, including the most senior cleric the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, reiterated criticism of the policy as “one that should shame us as a nation”.

“Our Christian heritage should inspire us to treat asylum seekers with compassion, fairness and justice, as we have for centuries,” Welby and 24 other bishops wrote in Tuesday’s Times newspaper.

“This immoral policy shames Britain.”

“Evil trafficking” must be combatted by providing safe routes to the UK to “reduce dangerous journeys”, The Times quoted the bishops as saying ahead of the letter’s publication.

‘Hate speech and discrimination’

Patel and Prime Minister Boris Johnson insist the policy is needed to stop a flood of all-too-often deadly migrant crossings of the Channel from France.

“It’s very important that the criminal gangs who are putting people’s lives at risk in the Channel understand that their business model is going to be broken,” Johnson told LBC radio on Monday.

“They’re selling people falsely, luring them into something that is extremely risky and criminal.”

Under the agreement with Kigali, anyone landing in the UK illegally is liable to be given a one-way ticket for processing and resettlement in Rwanda.

The government says that genuine asylum claimants should be content to stay in France.

And contradicting the UN refugee agency UNHCR, it insists that Rwanda is a safe destination with the capacity to absorb possibly tens of thousands of UK-bound claimants in future.

Doris Uwicyeza, chief technical adviser to Rwanda’s justice ministry, pushed back against criticism of the human rights record of President Paul Kagame’s government — which is set this month to host a Commonwealth summit attended by Prince Charles and Johnson.

Rwanda’s 1994 genocide made it particularly attentive to “protecting anybody from hate speech and discrimination”, including gay people, she told LBC radio.

British newspapers reported that Prince Charles had dubbed the plan “appalling”.

The reported comment prompted unnamed cabinet ministers to tell Queen Elizabeth II’s heir to stay out of politics.

International NGO Human Rights Watch issued a public letter warning that “to this day, serious human rights abuses continue to occur in Rwanda, including repression of free speech, arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, and torture”.

Source: AFP

14, June 2022

Southern Cameroonian man shot dead, several others injured by Francophone troops ⁰

Cameroon government forces have shot and killed a young Southern Cameroonian man and injured several others in a raid in Bamenda the chief city in the North West region, as tensions have been running high in the entire Southern Cameroons in recent months.

Our correspondent in Bamenda says the victim is yet to be identified and noted that he sustained critical wounds after being shot by troops loyal to the Francophone regime in Yaoundé on Sunday.

Cameroon Concord News gathered from eyewitnesses that the bullet penetrated the young man’s abdomen, diaphragm and aorta, and all attempts to save his life did not succeed.

The Ambazonia Interim Government described the killings going on in Southern Cameroons as French Cameroun executions and called for a UN Security Council resolution on the situation.

The bitter clashes broke out when a large number of Francophone soldiers reportedly killed nine innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in Missong, a village in the North West.

A Roman Catholic cleric said five Southern Cameroonians were also struck with live bullets on the Bamenda-Bali main road on Sunday.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

14, June 2022

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Yerima criticizes front line leaders for acting poorly vis-à-vis the struggle ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has criticized some front line Ambazonian figures for acting very poorly in defending the Ambazonian cause against French Cameroun military occupation.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks in a meeting with a group of Southern Cameroonians in the Republic of South Africa recently that saw him addressed a rally with renowned South Africa politician Julius Malema.

Vice President Yerima took the Southern Cameroons leaders to task for wasting precious time on trivial issues while the French Cameroun regime is busy slaughtering innocent Southern Cameroons civilians.

“Frankly speaking, some senior figures of our struggle particularly those in North America are acting very badly vis-à-vis the resistance and are not even willing to support Ground Zero. Some of them imagine that changing our name from Interim Government to Revolutionary Council or whatever is the way to get to Buea, this is a very big mistake,” Yerima stated.

“Their actions would bear no fruit even for the new alliance and groups they intend to create” Yerima furthered expressing hope that the people of Southern Cameroons will soon regain their independence from La Republique du Cameroun’s occupation.

Dabney Yerima hailed the oppressed but powerful Ambazonia fighters who have been preventing the Southern Cameroons issue from sinking into oblivion through their resistance and sacrifices.

By Enowtaku Ebanghatabi Christelle

14, June 2022

Mamfe hospital disaster triggers fear and inflation! ⁰

It never rains but it pours. This is an apt description of what is happening in Mamfe following the violent fire that consumed seven of the nine wards which made up the Mamfe General Hospital.

While the population is still struggling to accept that the only hospital that they have in the Division has been razed by some criminal elements, food prices have kept moving up as fear that Amba Fighters will soon raze the town’s central market.

Amba boys have issued many audio messages trying to distance themselves from the fire which has attracted condemnation from far and wide, but their threats have continued and this time, they are targeting the market. By threatening to burn down the market, the fighters have made themselves very unpopular in the town. The people who once professed to be the protectors of their people have morphed into a disaster to the same people.

Illiterates have become judges and lawyers in rural parts of the Division and the fines they impose on their people are mind-blowing. You pay CFAF 100,000 for having a round of sex with somebody’s wife. Sex has never been this expensive in Manyu! Many young men have simply escaped from their villages just because they have been suspected of having sex with women who are not their wives. An Islamic state is gradually playing out in many villages in Manyu.

Residents of the Division hold that Amba fighters have made it hard for their children to go to school for more than five years and this act of irresponsibility is breeding a generation of frustrated and criminal elements who will grow up to become millstones around the necks of their parents.

Their threat to burn down the market implies that they are willing to destroy everything in Mamfe in particular and Manyu in general. Many girls are already pregnant and there are many fatherless children running around, with no hope on the horizon. Threatening to burn down the market implies that they do not even want parents to put food on their tables. The population is bitter and confused, and does not know what to do to check these criminals who are making life unbearable for the population.

Speaking to some residents of Mamfe, the Cameroon Concord News Group’s special reporter to Mamfe, Fon Lawrence who has left the town via Nigeria, has said that there is a lot of tension in Mamfe. There are no lights and no water, and with the hospital gone, the population’s desperation has increased, and many people do not know where to turn to, as the government cannot even help them. Mamfe town is also not safe, as gun-toting Amba boys keep an eye on everybody, while soldiers make things worse by harassing ordinary citizens, especially those who may be new in town.

“We are frustrated. We don’t feel safe in our own land. Our grandparents never witnessed what we are witnessing. How can our own children be burning our own infrastructure? They have burnt the motor park. The hospital has gone up in smoke and food prices are on the rise as traders close their shops in order not to incur the wrath of the trigger-happy Amba fighters who have clearly demonstrated their determination to ruin everything in their path. What are we supposed to be doing now? Soldiers kill our children. Amba boys kidnap our brothers, and they are now threatening to burn down the market. How do we survive?” the angry resident of Mamfe who elected anonymity said.

“In less than four days, food prices have risen, and these escalating prices are hurting us. Not many people are heading to Nigeria to buy goods that might not be sold because of the fear that the Amba fighters will burn down the market. In less than twenty-four hours, the prices of garri, palm oil, rice, and other necessities have risen. How are we going to live? Mamfe is a small town with very few businesses and almost no financial institutions which can grant us credit. BICEC, the only bank that used to operate here, has shut down operations and its staff hurriedly left town, fearing that both Amba fighters and army soldiers could become a threat to them,” the frustrated resident lamented.

“We are already living in Hell. Escalating food prices simply imply many people will not be able to feed their families. It is like the Amba fighters have put us on a diet of hunger. Before long, many of us will be losing weight and we are not even big. Many elderly people will surely die if they cannot have their daily food rations. The war itself has already destabilized many, but this unannounced dry fasting will surely send many of them to an early grave. No food, no water, no electricity. We have simply been rolled back into the dark ages,” the resident said.

The days ahead are bleak. Residents of Mamfe are looking for hope even in the wrong places. Churches are full of new Christians, but many do not have money for tithes, and this makes them unwelcome. Personal homes have been converted into churches just to give the depressed an opportunity to find hope and solace.

The announcement that the Minister of Special Duties at the Presidency of the Republic will be in town on Saturday, June 18, 2022, and information that the Diaspora is raising funds to rebuild the hospital is giving the people some hope.

“We are calling on our brothers abroad not to abandon us. We are aware that there are efforts underway for the mobilization of money to help us. I was told that our brothers in Toronto, Canada, are already making giant strides to raise money, and this has gladdened my heart. I think many others will emulate the example of our people in Canada. We are counting on them, and we are looking forward to hearing more good news,” a teacher at Grammar School Mamfe said.

“I hear the drive is championed by Dr. Joachim Arrey. He is very credible person. I hear he is leading an institution which has been providing books to displaced children here in Mamfe. We should pray that things work so that much money can be raised. Back home, I hear Minister Mengot is also leading his own efforts to bring some relief to the people. Let other Manyu sons and daughters support any initiative that will lead to the rebuilding of our hospital. Diseases do not know if you are a federalist or a separatist. We will all perish if something is not done. This is not the time for politics. We must work together to restore hope,” the teacher stressed.

According to Fon Lawrence, the Cameroon Concord News Group’s reporter who has fled to Nigeria, something needs to be done. Before leaving the town, he visited the town’s Preventive hospital which will now serve as a full-fledge hospital, and he reports that the Preventive Hospital itself is small and run-down. It needs to be upgraded if it must play its new role.

“There are no beds for hospitalization and no medications for the critically ill. The structure is begging for an upgrade and the staff are not very hopeful. The facility has been neglected for years and it is now being converted into a hospital. It will be a real miracle if things really work out, but from the look of things, Mamfe is in the grip of a massive health storm,” Fon Lawrence who is currently in Nigeria said over the phone.

Meanwhile some of the patients who had been ordered out by the criminals who burned down the General Hospital have died. Two patients who could not access proper care gave up the ghost on Monday. They were unable to go to any private clinic due to lack of resources. Their families are devastated. This is the challenge that will be facing many people in the town. Lack of money will certainly send many people to an early grave, except the government and other well-wishers act very fast. A disaster is hovering over the town. Natives of Manyu Division must now step in to save their people from the jaws of death.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

13, June 2022

French army quits Mali base ahead of total pullout ⁰

French troops were on Monday handing back a military base in northeastern Mali ahead of a final withdrawal from the Sahel nation, France’s army said, after nine years fighting a jihadist insurgency.

And the UN’s emissary there warned that their withdrawal could leave Menaka, where they were based, vulnerable to a jihadist attack.

The departure from the Menaka base “was conducted in good order, safely and in transparent fashion”, said French army spokesman General Pascal Ianni in Paris.

It comes ahead of the last withdrawal from Mali “at the end of the summer” when France’s main military base at Gao will be returned to Malian forces, he added.

But El-Ghassim Wane, the UN Secretary General’s special representative in Mali, warned that the pull-out could spell trouble for Menaka.

He had visited the town two weeks ago, he said, and people there he had spoken to “did not rule out an attack on Menaka town”, where 5,000 people forced to flee the violence in the region had taken shelter.

“Should this scenario come to pass, the MINUSMA base is likely to be perceived as the last haven for civilians fleeing violence,” Wane added, referring to the base of the UN peacekeeping force in Mali.

But he warned: “With minimal Malian forces in the area and some 600 peacekeepers available to protect civilians, UN personnel and assets, MINUSMA’s ability to mount an effective response is limited.”

Deteriorating relations

Former colonial ruler France set up the Menaka outpost in 2018 in the wild tri-border zone where Mali meets Niger and Burkina Faso. It housed French and European special forces under the name Takuba tasked with training up local troops.

General Ianni told journalists the Takuba operation would not be transferred to neighbouring Niger.

France launched anti-jihadist operations in the Sahel in 2013, helping Mali snuff out a revolt in the north.

But the jihadists regrouped to attack the volatile centre of the country, initiating a fiery insurgency that elected president Ibrahim Bubacar Keita was unable to crush.

In August 2020, protests against Keita culminated in a coup by disgruntled colonels — followed by a second military takeover in May 2021.

From then on, relations with France went steadily downhill, propelled by the junta’s resistance to setting an early date to restore civilian rule and by Bamako’s charges that France was inciting the region to take a hard line against it.The bust-up accelerated in 2021 as the junta wove closer ties with Moscow, bringing in “military instructors” that France and its allies condemned as mercenaries hired from the pro-Kremlin Wagner group.

France not quitting Sahel

The French operation across the Sahel counted at its peak in 2020 some 5,500 troops before Paris started to reduce the numbers gradually and close the most forward bases at Kidal, Tessalit and Timbuktu in northern Mali.

Last January, the French ambassador to Bamako was expelled and the following month President Emmanuel Macron announced the total withdrawal from Mali as relations and security deteriorated.

However, the army said Monday that French forces were not quitting the Sahel region.

“The commitment to the struggle against terrorism, alongside the states of the region, at their request, remains an absolute priority,” the spokesman said.

Source: AFP