26, June 2021

Southern Cameroons-Biya-Dangote Meeting: Saying nothing can be riskier than saying something ⁰

Except for the Igbos, all big businesses in Nigeria have political backing and many Nigerian political elites have been urging business tycoons to weigh in on politics and make huge campaign contributions.

This situation is also true in Cameroon where all CEOs running major corporations are chartered members of the ruling CPDM party also known as the crime syndicate.

The recent meeting between the 88-year-old President Paul Biya and Nigerian billionaire Aliko Dangote in Yaoundé, heralded the view that businesses have a right to participate in the political process.

Aliko Dangote’s trip to Cameroon was to weigh into a highly incendiary issue-the war in Southern Cameroons. To be accurate, it was a mission designed to placard the international business community that Cameroon is stable and that the war-torn country is still attracting prominent investors.

Dangote finally met the man that the French government has been using to fight against his cement empire in Francophone Africa and of course the Unity Palace meeting will invite serious consequences in the long term.

There is no African leader alive who’s benefited more from corporations’ spending money on politics than President Biya who continue to receive millions of US dollars from Elf, Exxon, Brasseries, and Euro-Oil in corporate donations to guarantee his stay in power.

It was stupid for Mr. Dangote to say the things he said about the butcher of Yaoundé which revealed that he (Dangote) was playing a key role on the divisive political issues in Cameroon. A growing number of consumers of Dangote cement in Cameroon are demanding that Dangote and his brands stand up for human rights whether the issue is controversial or not. Mr. Dangote avoided this area during his conversation with Biya.

Correspondingly, Cameroonian consumers want Dangote to be more human, to have a social conscience, to care about the Southern Cameroons refugees living under horrible conditions in Nigeria, Southern Cameroons women and children displaced by the fighting, and the poor in the country and so on and this requires him to follow the example of Mo Ibrahim and take a stance on political and social issues.

So our Cameroon Concord Group warning to Aliko Dangote is to stay out of Cameroon. The meeting with Biya was very irritating and Dangote’s reckless and tactless comments to the French Cameroun media must be condemned. The French Cameroun genocidal campaign going on in Southern Cameroons has put Dangote on the spotlight for the wrong reasons- In Cameroon today, saying nothing can be riskier than saying something.

English speaking Cameroonians were not expecting a business magnet of Dangote’s pedigree to receive an award or state honour from a man with so much blood in his hands. Dangote should instead join forces with Mo Ibrahim and campaign for multinationals to stop making political donations to dictators like Biya.

It is regrettable that the sense of urgency on Dangote’s Cameroon visit came only after the EU and US business regulators hinted that Cameroon was no longer safe for foreign investments.

This begs the question: What role, if any, do you think Dangote’s expressed interest in Cameroon’s oil and gas sector would play in the divided nation’s political discourse? Both French and British Southern Cameroonians don’t separate individuals from businesses anymore and consequently, Dangote’s statement on CRTV has damaged his business in Cameroon.

We of the Concord Group believe and fervently too that Aliko Dangote whose fortune has been linked to the military dictatorship in Nigeria for more than three decades, should concentrate on buying Arsenal Football Club than investing in Cameroon’s oil and gas.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

26, June 2021

Bundes: Several killed in knife attack in Wuerzburg ⁰

Several people were killed and others injured on Friday in the southern German city of Wuerzburg, police said, with media reporting a knife attack.

“The attacker was overpowered after the police used firearms. There are several injured as well as fatalities,” said police on Twitter, without giving details on the suspect’s motives.

German news outlets reported that the suspect had attacked people in the city-centre with a knife.

Police were able to arrest the man after shooting him in the leg, the Bild newspaper reported, adding that at least three people were killed and six others injured.

While the motive and full identity of the perpetrator have not yet been established, Germany has been on high alert after several deadly Islamist extremist attacks.

Suspected Islamists have committed several attacks in Germany in recent years, the deadliest being a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market in December 2016 that killed 12 people.

The Tunisian attacker, a failed asylum seeker, was a supporter of the Islamic State jihadist group.

More recently, one man was killed and another seriously injured in an Islamist knife attack in the city of Dresden in October.

A 20-year-old Syrian jihadist in May received a life sentence for the homophobic attack.

In August, six people were injured in a series of motorway accidents in Berlin in what prosecutors described as a suspected Islamist attack.

The number of Islamists considered dangerous in Germany rose sharply between 2015 and 2018, according to security services.

But numbers have declined since then, with just 615 considered dangerous by the latest count — compared with 730 in January 2018.

On top of that, there are also 521 people “who have attracted the attention of the security services but have not yet reached the stage of being considered dangerous”.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has allowed in more than one million asylum seekers since 2015 — a decision that has driven the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which charges that the influx spells a heightened security risk.

But beyond Islamist attacks, there have been other assaults by knife-wielding people.

In October 2017, a knife-wielding man randomly attacked passersby in central Munich, lightly injuring eight people. Police excluded terrorism as a motive after detaining the suspected perpetrator.

(AFP)

25, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Washington blocks Yaoundé from acquiring patrol boats ⁰

The Cameroonian navy has embarked on a search for patrol boats after its attempt to acquire two Bollinger vessels from Washington was blocked as a sanction for abuses committed by the army in Southern Cameroons.

Source: Africa Intelligence

25, June 2021

Runway lights malfunction disrupts operation at Douala International airport ⁰

Air travelers have been warned that a “technical issue” affecting lighting at Cameroon’s largest airport, Douala International Airport, will affect their journeys, a government official said on Thursday.

Cameroon’s Minister of Transport, Jean Ernest Massena Ngalle Bibehe said, there had been a problem with the lighting on the runways.

“The malfunctions are linked to an insulation fault of cables,” Ngalle Bibehe said in a statement on Thursday.

“This situation had as a direct consequence the postponement of certain flights departing from this airport and the unfolding of other flights which were to land there, thus causing disruptions in the operating programs of the airlines,” he added.

The minister assured that competent authorities were actively working to ensure normal activities resume at the airport in the shortest possible time.

Source: Xinhuanet

25, June 2021

EU leaders reject France, Germany’s proposal for Putin summit ⁰

European Union leaders failed to agree on a proposal by France and Germany to hold a summit soon with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Poland and Baltic countries said it would send the wrong message as East-West ties deteriorate.

After U.S. President Joe Biden met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva on June 16, French President Emmanuel Macron said the first EU summit with Putin since January 2014 would be “a dialogue to defend our interests”. He insisted the EU could not only be reactive in its diplomacy with Russia.

But after late night talks at their meeting in Brussels, the 27 EU leaders failed to reach an agreement, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said early on Friday.

“It was a very comprehensive discussion, and not an easy one,” she told reporters. “There was no agreement today on an immediate leaders’ meeting,” she said.

EU summits with Russia ended after Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in March 2014 and the West imposed sanctions.

While Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said he supported the Franco-German proposal, many other leaders were opposed.

“It was a common position of many leaders” not to change the stance on Russia, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said after the meeting broke up. He earlier said the idea was like “trying to engage the bear to keep a pot of honey safe”.

Latvia’s Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said the EU risked rewarding Russia with a summit even though diplomacy has failed to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine with Russian-backed separatists.

Instead, EU leaders fell back to a familiar position of warning of more sanctions on Moscow if it continued what the EU says is a Russian policy of disinformation, cyber and covert attacks and interference to try to divide the bloc.

Russia denies any wrongdoing

In a summit statement, leaders called on the European Commission and the EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell “to present options for additional restrictive measures, including economic sanctions” against Russia.

The EU has sanctions on the Russian energy, financial and arms sectors and individual sanctions on Russians accused of human rights abuses and for using banned chemical weapons.

Diplomats say further sanctions could target Russian money laundering or powerful oligarchs suspected of serious corruption abroad, as non-EU member Britain did for the first time in April.

Search for dialogue

Macron had tried in September 2019 to seek less frosty ties with Putin, without success, and Germany’s outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel met Putin in Moscow in January 2020. Putin held a phone call with European Council President Charles Michel, who chairs EU summits, on June 7 this year.

France and Germany want to be able to work with Russia on combating climate change and to find ways to stabilise relations. Merkel said even without a summit: “Formats will be explored … under which dialogues can be started.”

Many EU countries are concerned that the Kremlin does not take the bloc seriously, after Borrell was publicly humiliated in February by the Kremlin. Russia expelled EU diplomats during Borrell’s visit to Moscow without warning.

Lithuania’s Nauseda said: “We should be extremely cautious, this is not like the relationship of Russia with the United States”.

While France is a nuclear power, the EU relies on NATO for its territorial defence and takes decisions among 27 states, making it easier for the Kremlin to exploit divisions.

The Kremlin earlier welcomed the idea of a summit, saying both Brussels and Moscow needed dialogue, although Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he wanted more details.

On opposing sides in standoffs in Ukraine and Belarus, and at odds over human rights, the EU and Russia accuse each other of threatening security and stability from the Baltics to the Black Sea.

The EU on Thursday imposed economic sanctions on Belarus, an ally of Russia that the Kremlin sees as a buffer state between Russia and NATO.

Reporting from Brussels shortly before the start of the summit, FRANCE 24’s Dave Keating said there was a “very mixed reaction” within the bloc to the proposal. “A lot of EU leaders are very angry about this proposal,” he explained. “Several feel that it’s pretentious for the leaders of France and Germany to think that they could meet with Putin and speak for all of the EU … a lot of countries think that this meeting shouldn’t be happening at all, particularly the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – and Poland.”

In their remarks to reporters ahead of the summit, a number of European leaders expressed misgivings over the initiative, said Keating. “Estonia’s prime minister [Kaja Kallas] coming into the summit building said she wants to hear from France and Germany what exactly has changed in terms of Russia’s behaviour to warrant this suggested opening of dialogue. We also had Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte saying that if Merkel and Macron want to meet with Putin, he won’t object, but he himself would never meet with Putin. Asked why, he said, ‘one word: MH17’ – that’s the airliner carrying Dutch passengers that was downed over eastern Ukraine by Russian separatists in 2014,” Keating explained.

Standing firm and engaging

The Merkel-Macron plan insists the EU has to stand firm and united on Moscow, but should look to engage with the Kremlin on issues of mutual interest such as climate change, health, the Iran nuclear deal and conflicts in Syria and Libya.

Source: France 24

25, June 2021

$335m Covid-19 fund investigation: French Cameroun prosecutors question PM Ngute for three hours ⁰

Prime Minister Dion Ngute was questioned by Francophone prosecutors recently about Cameroon’s response to the coronavirus outbreak and the alleged disappearance of the country’s coronavirus relief fund.

The prosecutors are reportedly looking into how about $335 million of Cameroon’s coronavirus relief fund has gone missing.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that Prime Minister Dion Ngute, who was questioned as a witness for three hours in his residence in Yaoundé is not under any criminal investigation.

Equipment for the coronavirus pandemic in the country has also gone missing. Reports say some seven government ministers have so far been called to answer questions before an auditing panel over the matter.

Accordingly, the funds that had been allocated to ministries went missing along with the personal protective equipment donated to Cameroon by the Chinese mega-investor Jack Ma to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

As a result, the 88-year-old President Paul Biya, ordered the investigation. But reports say Cameroonians are doubtful that the investigation will lead to any meaningful outcome.

A source at the Ministry of Public Health hinted this reporter that the money was used to pay accrued salaries owed the military.

By Rita Akana in Yaoundé

25, June 2021

Biya regime plans second global bond sale to finance virus spending ⁰

Cameroon plans to tap international markets for the second time in six years as the Central African nation seeks resources to finance an expanded budget.

The government may sell a 10-year or 12-year euro-denominated bond after a series of investor meetings that commenced Wednesday, according to people familiar with the transaction. The country appointed Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase and Co. and Societe Generale SA to manage the sale, the people said.

The government increased proposed spending in its 2021 budget by 13% to 5.5 trillion CFA francs ($10 billion) as it seeks to reduce debt and pay for programs to counter the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Cameroon raised $750 million at 9.5% in its international debt-market debut in 2015. The yields on those bonds maturing in 2025 have dropped 187 basis points this year, and were at 5.06% by 12:30 p.m. in London. The country has made an offer to buy back some of the securities, depending on the success of the new offer.

The sale comes at a time when debate about the speed at which the U.S. Federal Reserve will roll back stimulus is putting upward pressure on global yields. Negative yields on German benchmark 10-year bonds are inching closer to zero, trading around -0.173% on Thursday.

Cameroon, assessed at sub-investment grade B by Fitch Ratings and a notch lower by S&P Global Ratings, follows Benin, Ivory Coast and Senegal as sub-Saharan African nations to raise euro-denominated debt this year, and Ghana and Kenya that sold dollar bonds.

Source: Bloomberg

24, June 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The military is bleeding! ⁰

The last two weeks have been the worst for Cameroon’s military. Many soldiers are walking around with lots of butterflies in the stomachs. Southern Cameroonian fighters have struck fear in their minds and many of them are thinking twice. The profession they chose just to earn a decent living has become the source of a nightmare that is not going away anytime soon.

Southern Cameroonian fighters have stepped up their game. They are disabling military trucks and rendering the soldiers powerless. The “boyses in the bushes” have turned the heat on army soldiers who thought their mission to Southern Cameroons was going to be like a walk in the park.

In Manyu Division, which is where the fighting started, three army soldiers were killed in the border town of Otu and many others are still reported missing. Their families are still waiting for their loved ones, but the jungles of Manyu might not be throwing up anytime soon these murderous killers dressed up in national military fatigue.

After more than one week, those who jumped into the Manyu jungle for safety only landed into greater danger. In Manyu Division, forgiveness is a rare word, especially if the intention to kill is manifest. The army soldiers sent to Otu were not angels. Their mission was well-defined. They had a shoot-and-kill order if they suspected anybody. But things hardly go as planned. Their best plan was upset by Southern Cameroonian fighters who now have more sophisticated weapons and are ready to blow up anything in Cameroonian military uniform.

Even if the jungles throw up the missing soldiers, they will not be fighting again. They will be heading home in body bags, as the “boyses in the bushes” have helped to put them out of their misery.

According to a voice note sent to the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Mamfe Office, two of the missing soldiers – both of Beti extraction – have been killed in the jungle. Those who made the voice note clearly said the missing soldiers would never be heading home. The missing soldiers were located by Southern Cameroonian fighters in the jungle between Otu and Eyumojock and they were killed in the most gruesome manner. Their uniforms were seized, and their bodies buried in a shallow grave.

The war in Southern Cameroons has assumed new dimensions. Southern Cameroonian fighters are now dictating things. They have the right weapons to face army soldiers who, for a long time, thought they had a monopoly of killing whoever crossed their path.

The fear triggered by those killings in Otu has changed the dynamics. There is a wave of apprehension and demoralization blowing among Cameroon’s army soldiers. They know the government will never win the war, especially with the arrival of Russian-made AK47s that are considered the deadliest and the best in the business of killing.

Many have been looking for a way out of the pretty mess the government has lumped them into. In the past, many army soldiers simply pretended to be sick to avoid being posted to the two English-speaking regions of the country.

But now that Southern Cameroonian fighters are gradually diminishing the number of those soldiers in the war zone, the sick certificates presented by many of those soldiers are simply rejected by their superiors. Nobody is safe! All the soldiers must head to the war zone to do the job they had signed up for when joining the military. Many of these young boys and girls who joined the military just for the money now spend many weeks without sleeping, especially when informed that they must head to Southern Cameroons where the determined Southern Cameroonian fighters are waiting for them with open arms.

With those sick certificates no longer popular, the new strategy is to head to the war front and simply defect. Two weeks ago, a bunch of seven army soldiers simply travelled to Nsanaraki in Eyumojock Sub-Division and divulged their intention to surrender to the villagers who could not understand French.

Thanks to one soldier of Manyu extraction who interpreted for them, the villagers offered them clothes and their military fatigue and protective gear were handed over to Southern Cameroonian fighters who were not far from the village. The deserters are now in Nigeria, seeking to leave the continent for greener pastures in Europe or North America.

In Ndian Division, Southern Cameroonian fighters are still proving that they are a force to reckon with. Last week, they arrested some government civil servants who thought they could move around freely in total disregard of the rules rolled out by the Ambazonia Interim Government. These lawless civil servants are still being held in various locations where they are being interrogated and they are doing their best to help Southern Cameroonian fighters in their investigation into who has been encouraging them to violate the laws of the land.

Ndian Division is in the hands of Southern Cameroonian fighters who are in no hurry to give it up. Also, last week, they quietly dismembered an army soldier and put his body parts on display for other soldiers to see and understand that they were the masters of that land. The gory images were very demoralizing to young army soldiers who had to head to Ndian to fight in a jungle they do not even know. Success in Ndian Division, like in Manyu Division, clearly depends on a better understanding of the terrain.

The dense equatorial forest is providing much-needed cover to fired-up Southern Cameroonian fighters whose main objective is to bring about total independence in Southern Cameroons. This is messing up the government’s apple cart.

But the mother of all humiliation was somewhere else. The situation in Manyu Division looked like a very serious situation, but it clearly pales in comparison to what happened in Bamali in Ndop a week ago. Army soldiers were simply treated like animals. They were butchered like little rats. The way seven of them were killed simply spoke to the poor training they get and the lack of motivation that drives true soldiers.

Ever since these incidents took place, the government has been silent, giving the impression that it is not bothered by the numerous setbacks it has suffered in a war it hastily declared. But sources close to the minister of defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, say the warmonger is very disappointed with the way things are turning out.

Southern Cameroonian fighters have been emboldened by their numerous victories and the purchase of modern war machines which have struck fear in the minds of many army soldiers has only bolstered their confidence. Even the top military brass in Yaoundé is at a loss for words.

But General Valery Nka, the man who claimed he would clean up the Northwest Region of Southern Cameroonian fighters had to admit to the BBC that things were really headed in the wrong direction following the humiliation in Bamali.

“It is a disgrace for an army to be treated that way. They are attacked, killed and weapons carried away. They don’t take to instructions. It means there are no sentinels at their various command posts. This is disgraceful for a trained army such as ours,” a frustrated and disappointed General Valery Nka said.

At the Presidency, nobody wants to discuss the failure, though they all know that they are losing their authority. The soldiers do not want to fight, but they do not have many options in life. Politicians are burying their heads in the sand, hoping that time will help them out of the quagmire they have created for themselves and the country.

Whatever options the Yaoundé government chooses, Southern Cameroons will forever be a huge scar on the collective conscience of a country predicated on brutality and arrogance. Southern Cameroonians never wanted to quit their French-speaking counterparts, but the government’s military response to calls for an overhaul of a political system that is spreading death and destruction among the English-speaking minority has pushed many Southern Cameroonians to the brink. Many want to leave the lopsided union and their support for the fighters is total and unwavering.

With so many killed, it will be tough for Southern Cameroonians to accept anything short of independence. The pain is excruciating, and the anger is spilling out of control. Recently, some government hawks have been talking about discussions on federalism, but a few years ago, it was against the law to talk about federalism in Cameroon. Could this latest move by these regime hawks be seen as a testing of waters or a simple acknowledgment that the government’s policies and strategies over the last four years in the prosecution of the war have simply failed?

A source within the country’s presidency has revealed that senior government officials are mulling the possibility of engaging with Southern Cameroonian leaders at the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison on how best to end the bloodshed and unnecessary destruction of human life and property in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

The source said that members of the ruling party’s inner circle were currently strategizing on how best to engage with a group of people the government had clearly branded as terrorists. The ruling party wants to ensure that the country’s president, Paul Biya, comes out of this mess in a way that makes him look like a hero. But some ruling party stalwarts hold that the situation is dire and that pulling it off to give Biya a hero’s tag will require more humility than trickery.

“The people are smarter today and Southern Cameroonians are determined to inflict huge losses on the government. If they must be brought to the table, it will be through objective, sincere and humble negotiations and not through the arrogance and trickery that have become the government’s hallmarks,” the source stressed.

As army soldiers keep on dropping like flies in Southern Cameroons, the government knows that if it does not employ other approaches, it will be humiliated, and the independence of Southern Cameroons will continue to be more probable than impossible. Currently, there are silent efforts in the Diaspora to put more sophisticated weapons in the hands of the fighters who have proven that they can take the war to the enemy.

If the government wants to save its face, it must acknowledge reality, take corrective measures, and engage with Southern Cameroonian leaders abroad and with those in jail. Last week’s setback has left the government with a bloodshot eye and there is more bad news for the government if it does not act promptly. With its forces defecting, deserting, and demoralizing, the days ahead will only bring more pain and humiliation to a government that sees negotiations as a sign of weakness.

With things going south for the government, it must learn how to bend over backwards if it really wants to stare down the barrel of peace. The situation is dire. The population is sick and tired of the bloodshed and state coffers are running dangerously low. Negotiations and not war will help the government save its bloody face. The ball is in its court!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman/Editor-In-Chief

Cameroon Concord News/Cameroon Intelligence Report

24, June 2021

French Cameroun: Nigerian business tycoon Dangote meets Biya ⁰

Paul Biya received Nigerian business tycoon Aliko Dangote at the Unity Palace on Wednesday 23 June. State media reported that for over an hour, the two men reviewed the functioning of the landmark cement factory operated by Dangote in Cameroon.

Aliko Dangote expressed his deep admiration and gratitude to the Francophone dictator who he said has always stood by him and spared no effort to facilitate the implantation of his business in Cameroon. He pointed out that President Paul BIYA always gave him hope and was very supportive of his business investments in Cameroon.

Aliko Dangote also revealed that his company intends to set up in other locations in Cameroon so as to increase the output of his cement factory. He noted that further investments will be made in other domains, including oil and gas and that he felt very much at home here, because Cameroon is a very good neighbour to Nigeria.

The audience was crowned with a medal award as President Paul BIYA raised Aliko Dangote with the Commander of the National Order of Valour. He was very elated with the great honour accorded to him by the Head of State, as sign of recognition given to a true friend.

Reported by PRC with additional editing from Camcordnews

24, June 2021

Battle For Bangui: France, UK and US accuse Russia of human rights violations ⁰

The United States, Britain and France accused Russia on Wednesday of operating alongside Central African Republic forces and committing human rights violations against civilians and obstructing U.N. peacekeeping – charges immediately denied by Russia which denounced the Western nations for engaging in an “anti-Russia political hit job.”

The exchanges took place at a U.N. Security Council meeting after the U.N. special representative for the conflict-wracked Central African Republic, Mankeur Ndiaye, expressed serious concern at the military counter-offensive by the country’s security forces and “bilateral forces and other security forces” against a coalition of rebel groups which supports CAR’s former president Francois Bozize.

Ndiaye called the situation in CAR “among the most dangerous in the world,” saying violations of human rights and international law allegedly committed by CAR forces “and bilateral and other personnel …have never equaled those recently committed and detailed by MINUSCA,” the 15,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force in the country.

As one example, he said, the number of sexual violence-related incidents in the first quarter of 2021 was five times higher than the number reported in the last quarter of 2020.

While Ndiaye didn’t identify “the bilateral forces and other security forces,” Russia has troops in CAR training its military at the invitation of the government.

A recent report to the council by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly criticized CAR’s security forces and bilateral forces for an “unprecedented increase in hostile threats and incidents” targeting U.N. peacekeepers and alleged human rights abuses. He said people in the country continue to face an “unacceptably high level of violence.”

The mineral-rich Central African Republic has faced deadly inter-religious and inter-communal fighting since 2013. A peace deal between the government and 14 rebel groups was signed in February 2019, but violence blamed on former president Bozize and his allies threatens to nullify the agreement.

It erupted after the constitutional court rejected Bozize’s candidacy to run for president in December. Faustin Archange Touadera won a second term with 53% of the vote, but he continues to face opposition from rebel forces linked to Bozize.

France, US cite targeting of CAR Muslims

U.S. deputy ambassador Richard Mills noted Secretary-General Guterres’ report of a 28% increase in incidents of human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law over the past four months. He said the United States is deeply concerned at the increased targeting of Muslims, and the alarmingly sharp increase in abuses committed by national and bilateral personnel.

“I think we need to be clear about these bilateral personnel — the individuals committing what many are now referring to as ‘atrocities’ are not independent actors — they are operating as extension of Russia’s Ministry of Defense,” he said.

Mills said the Biden administration is “deeply disturbed” that Russia has failed “to prevent its mercenaries from impeding MINUSCA’s freedom of movement on a daily basis.” He condemned an “appalling incident in which these bilateral Russian actors threatened” MINUSCA’s deputy special representative and a U.N. delegation on a humanitarian mission to Bang, which is close to CAR’s border with Chad and Cameroon, on May 28.

France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere called the situation in CAR “dramatic,” pointing to extrajudicial executions, gang rapes, torture, occupation of schools and violence particularly targeting Muslim communities, “as shown by the murder of a traditional chief a few days ago.”

“Let us be clear: Central African armed groups are no longer the only threat to the Central African population,” De Riviere said.

He said reports by the secretary-general and U.N. experts monitoring sanctions against CAR “point to the responsibility of a new actor, who is operating alongside the Central African armed forces and whose status is a mystery.”

“Some will try to deny the presence of the Wagner company,” De Riviere said, calling on MINUSCA to provide details of who these men involved in the fighting in CAR are and who they are accountable to for their actions. The Wagner Group is a Kremlin-backed security company that was implicated in the conflict in Libya.

Britain’s deputy ambassador James Roscoe said the armed groups are “fomenting instability, frankly, in order to line their own pockets.”

“And now, a new factor of instability: Russian private military companies acting in concert with the national armed forces to obstruct MINUSCA and to violate the rights of the civilians and citizens of the Central African Republic,” he said.

Roscoe said human rights violations, including acts of sexual violence, are not only being committed by armed groups “but also by members of the national armed forces and the Russian private military personnel accompanying them.”

He said the Russians will deny this, “but the evidence is increasing and overwhelming, and I hope they will reflect on the role they want to play in the Central African Republic and their responsibilities as a permanent member of this council.”

Russia: Allegations are ‘unfounded’

Russia’s deputy U.N. ambassador, Anna Evstigneeva countered that Russian instructors “are successfully enhancing the professional expertise of the Central African security forces without taking part in military actions against illegal armed groups.”

She said there are constant “dubious” attempts to discredit them without any evidence, especially in the U.S. and French media which use anonymous sources.

“This looks more like an anti-Russian political hit job,” Evstigneeva said.

“As for the unfounded allegations coming from the US, they’re not done by chance,” she said. “Our colleagues seem to see Russian instructors or mercenaries everywhere.”

(AP)