29, May 2021

Cameroon bishop condemns corruption in distribution of COVID aid ⁰

“I really felt bad that within a period like this when most people, most governments are trying to look for ways and means of combating COVID 19 disease – a virus that is killing and taking away the lives of many people – that people will still have the audacity to embezzle funds of this nature, that is meant for the common good, that is meant to save the lives of people,” said Bishop Michael Bibi of Buea, in Cameroon’s South West Region.

According to the Johns Hopkins COVID portal, over 1,200 people have died of COVID-19 in Cameroon, with more than 77,000 people testing positive.

In the face of such a health emergency, Bibi said it was evil for people to steal money.

“To say the least, this is inhuman. It is not correct, and I think that the Cameroonian government should do proper investigation and the people who are responsible should be brought to justice. We cannot allow things like this to go ahead because it is not proper. Humanly speaking, it is bad,” he told Crux.

Cameroon’s Ministry of Health has come under fire for its poor transparency in the distribution of hundreds of millions of dollars of COVID aid, with members of the opposition and some international aid agencies accusing members of the government of embezzlement.

In the face of the mounting scrutiny, Cameroonian President Paul Biya earlier this year instructed the Justice Ministry to investigate.

Meanwhile, 23-page report by the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court that was leaked in the local press on May 20 reveals disturbing facts about the way the $382 million of COVID funds were managed.

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) was overbilled at ten times the expected rate, and there was no public bidding for contracts. Some contracts were allegedly given to “ghost companies” that didn’t actually exist.

Over $11 million was budgeted for the local manufacture of chloroquine and azithromycin. Instead, the heal ministry imported the drugs from India and repackaged them in Cameroon.

Renovation work on facilities meant to welcome COVID-19 patients was not completed – only seven of eleven facilities were completed.

“The conditions under which the special contracts were awarded remain unknown to the Audit Bench of the Supreme Court, which reflects a certain opacity in the awarding of contracts, and which affected most of the contracts,” the report states.

The Audit Bench accused the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation of 30 management errors, and recommends ten legal proceedings that could end up as criminal investigations.

The ministries have denied wrongdoing.

Bibi said the government must pursue these cases.

“Corruption thrives when there is little follow up to bring the culprits to justice,” the bishop said.

He said conversion of hearts is the only way the problem can be rooted out of the country.

“Corruption is something that is common and I think that we all have to fight against corruption; we all have to educate ourselves that whatever position we have in the Church, in the government, and if we have funds that are given to us for the common good, we should use it for the common good,” he told Crux.

“We should not think about our individual benefits or what is going to benefit our family members and friends, we should think about the common good. For me I think that is key, and my prayer and wish is that we should be converted from this attitude of corruption, because if we are not converted, the country will never develop, things will never move properly,” Bibi said.

Source: Crux

28, May 2021

Football: Nike says it dumped Neymar over his refusal to cooperate with sex assault probe ⁰

Nike said Thursday it parted ways with Neymar last year after the superstar Brazil attacker “refused to cooperate in a good faith investigation” as the company probed an employee’s claim that he sexually assaulted her.

The apparel giant said in a statement that its investigation into the alleged 2016 incident — which was reported to the company in 2018 — was inconclusive.

“No single set of facts emerged that would enable us to speak substantively on the matter,” the company said.

In a Wall Street Journal article reporting the assault allegation, a spokeswoman for Neymar said the player denies the claim.

“Neymar Jr. will vigorously defend himself against these baseless attacks in case any claim is presented, which did not happen so far,” she said in a statement, adding that Nike and Neymar split for commercial reasons.

Nike said otherwise in its statement.

“It would be inappropriate for Nike to make an accusatory statement without being able to provide supporting facts,” the company said, but added: “Nike ended its relationship with the athlete because he refused to cooperate in a good faith investigation of credible allegations of wrongdoing by an employee.”

The Wall Street Journal reported, citing documents and unnamed people, that Nike hired lawyers at Cooley LLP to conduct an investigation starting in 2019 and decided to stop featuring Neymar in marketing during the probe.

In its statement, the company said it was prepared to investigate in 2018 when the woman first came forward, but “respected the employee’s initial desire to keep this matter confidential and avoid an investigation.”

The firm therefore didn’t share information with law enforcement or any other third party until 2019, when she expressed an interest in pursuing the matter.

“We continue to respect the confidentiality of the employee and also recognize that this has been a long and difficult experience for her,” Nike said.

Neymar’s spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal that the two parties had been in talks since 2019.

“It is very strange a case that was supposed to have happened in 2016, with allegations by a Nike employee, come to light only at that moment,” she told the newspaper.

Neymar’s father accused Nike of “blackmail.”

“We were surprised by something that happened in 2016,” the senior Neymar told Brazil’s Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. “It’s all very strange now. Neymar doesn’t even know this girl, of course this came from Nike after we left.”

Nike did not give a reason when it terminated its contract with Neymar at the end of August 2020. The company had sponsored Neymar, 29, since he was a 13-year-old prodigy.

The superstar announced in September 2020 that he had signed an endorsement deal with Puma to become the German sportswear giant’s new poster boy.

Earlier this month, Neymar signed a contract extension with French champions Paris Saint-Germain that will keep him with the club until the end of the 2024-2025 season.

The Brazilian said he had “grown as a person, as a human being” since joining the club in 2017 from Barcelona for 222 million euros ($270 million) in what remains the most expensive transfer in history.

Neymar has claimed three Ligue 1 titles and two French Cups with PSG, although he has also provoked hostility from fans by saying he wanted to return to Barcelona.

His image as an eternal spoiled child was revived late last year by rumors, which he did not deny, of a giant year-end party he organized in his homeland in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

A young woman also filed a complaint against him for rape in 2019 — a case he vehemently denied and that was eventually dropped.

Source: AFP

28, May 2021

Yerima: French Cameroun genocide against Southern Cameroonians must stop ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has urged the government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the Commonwealth of Nations to adopt policies to put an end to the French Cameroun genocidal campaign going on in Southern Cameroons.

Comrade Dabney Yerima made the remarks while addressing members of the Ambazonia war cabinet on Thursday.

“The Southern Cameroons Department of Foreign Affairs has written letters to Her Majesty’s Government and to many governments in the Commonwealth and this important war cabinet meeting is simply to brief members on the progress of the Big Rubbergun Project that was designed to support the legitimate rights of the Southern Cameroons people and the Ambazonian nation … and to examine ways and means that the international community can come up with basic solutions to end the killings going on in our homeland” Yerima said.

The exiled Southern Cameroons leader pointed out that all Southern Cameroonians who believe in the Prince of Peace and justice are duty-bound to support the Ambazonian resistance in their endless battles against the occupying French Cameroun aggressors and offer all Ambazonia Restoration Forces all the support they need in order to help them restore the sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Vice President Dabney Yerima added that the Biya French Cameroun gang running political affairs in Yaounde only understands the language of force and noted that the Amba fighters have shattered La Republique du Cameroun’s armee des terre’s invincibility.

Yerima furthered that the French Cameroun military recently sustained a heavy defeat in Bui County, Akwaya and Batibo.

The War in Ambazonia has already claimed at least 40 000 lives, almost all of them civilian children, men and women, murdered by Cameroun troops in a series of targeted killings, organized massacres, and killings by fire in over 400 villages burnt down to ashes across Ambazonia. Over half a million people have been forcibly displaced as refugees living in various countries and especially in refugee camps in Nigeria.Over another half a million people have become IDPs hiding in forests, caves and hills due to forced displacement. Additionally, over 1.5 million people are facing a humanitarian disaster.

Republique du Cameroun uses not only arson and the destruction of food, livestock, and crops in the fields as weapons of war. It also uses rape. Rape of Ambazonian women and girls by Cameroun troops is systematic and widespread. This agonizing situation is compounded by the fact that a high percentage of Cameroun troops are HIV positive and also has other STDs. When they rape they infect the women and girls. This appears to be part of the genocide agenda of Cameroun. Reports are now emerging of scores of school girls raped, impregnated and infected by Republique du Cameroun’s troops. This poses a nightmare not only of the HIV and STD infections but also of rampant teenage pregnancies. Cameroun troops have burnt down health facilities and killed health workers in rural and semi-urban areas. Accessing health facilities or health practitioners is a huge challenge for rural and semi-urban folks.

By Isong Asu

28, May 2021

President Macron implicated in genocide against Ambazonians through military relationship with Biya ⁰

The long and historic military relationship between France and La Republique du Cameroun, including providing training and logistics is playing a key role in the killings in English speaking Cameroon.

Several senior army officials in the French Cameroun military have been trained in France, and the CEMAC French speaking countries regularly carry out military exercises under the direct supervision of French army generals.

Since independence, France has been running a multi-million-dollar military project in Francophone Africa particularly in Sub Saharan region which today includes the creation of Boko Haram. The French government ignores crimes committed by French backed regimes in Cameroon, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, and Equatorial Guinea against its citizens and it is regularly shifting all the blame on ordinary citizens and resistance groups.

Southern Cameroons’ natural resources have been entirely for the benefit of France and its surrogates in La Republique du Cameroun. French Cameroun’s 60-year colonial occupation, oppression and repression has been experienced by the people of the Southern Cameroons as far worse than anything ever experienced under British colonial rule.

Before exiting the Southern Cameroons on 1 October 1961, Britain transferred powers to Republique du Cameroun rather than to the Southern Cameroons as ought to have been the case and as required under international law. This British self-confessed transfer resulted in the recolonization, rather than the decolonization, of the Southern Cameroons. Spain may have borrowed a leaf from Britain’s bad and illegal conduct when in 1975 it transferred administration of the Western Sahara to both Morocco and Mauritania and hurriedly left the territory. On 14 November 1975 there was concluded a Declaration of Principles on Western Sahara between Spain, Morocco and Mauritania, whereby the powers and responsibilities of Spain, as the administering Power of the Territory, were transferred to a temporary tripartite administration.

By Chi Prudence Asong with Concord files

28, May 2021

CPDM Crime Syndicate drives abandoned mental health patients off the streets ⁰

Mengueme says she is making it clear that mentally ill patients should not be removed from the streets as refuse. She says local councils in Cameroon have social affairs services that will assist in the treatment of all abandoned mental health patients in the company of family members. Among those listening to Mengueme is 49-year-old secondary school teacher Theresia Mbiteh. Mbiteh says her 19-year-old son became violent in the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda in 2017. She says his son began taking illegal drugs when separatist fighters prohibited children from going to school.

“I have done a lot, many people can testify. He escaped from here (Cameroon} and trekked to Nigeria,” said Mbiteh. “A person picked (found) him in Nigeria, called me one day after six weeks of his stay there and then told me. I had to borrow money to go collect him from Nigeria. When I brought him back here I thought things were going to be better, but nothing changed.” “There are several reasons why people who are developing mental illnesses are increasing,” said Ngwen. “Some of them are very eminent including the sociopolitical crisis in the northwest region, the southwest region and the Boko Haram crisis in the north. This has given an opportunity for a lot of abuses, violence and trauma and these traumas can result to the development of mental illnesses. We also have schools where teenagers are using a lot of drugs and all these drugs are contributing to the development of mental illnesses.”

Frankline Ngwen is supervisor of the mental health department of the Cameroon Baptist Convention Health Services. He says abuse and trauma from the various crises Cameroon faces has led to an increase in the number of psychiatric patients. Traditionally, many Cameroonians believe that mental health crises are divine punishment for wrongdoing. Some say witchcraft or spiritual possessions are responsible for mental illness.

The health ministry reported that the number of abandoned psychiatric patients increased from 50 to more than 300 in Yaounde within two years. At least 2,700 patients are on the streets all over Cameroon with more than 400 in the commercial capital city Douala. Cameroon counted 1,300 such patients in its territory in 2019. Mbiteh said she travelled from Bamenda to Yaounde when Cameroon state radio reported that the government was helping families take their loved ones off the streets.

“They should not be beaten. Patients with psychiatric conditions should not be tied up. Some kind of brutal force should not be meted on them,” said Fonbe. “We encourage families to avoid taking them to places where they think that they {pastors} will just pray for these patients and they get miracle healing or to traditional healers who will think that they will do some concoctions and these patients will get well. This is our message to all the families and all the communities.” Fonbe Hedwick runs Living Vine Mental Health Center in the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda. He is part of the campaign to remove mental patients from the streets. Fonbe says some patients are escaping from the homes of African traditional healers and Pentecostal pastors who abuse them, claiming that they are chasing evil spirits.

The health ministry is asking family members to take relatives with mental health problems to hospitals for treatment. Source Fonbe said with the arrival of the coronavirus in Cameroon in March 2020, many families have lacked the resources to care for psychiatric patients at home, putting them on the streets.

Source: Bollyinside

28, May 2021

Biya regime uncovers over 7,000 ghost workers on gov’t payroll ⁰

Cameroon’s Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform Joseph Le said on Wednesday a national physical headcount of civil servants has identified 7,622 fictitious workers on the state payroll, a fraud which had been plaguing the economy for years.

“It is almost four years since the state has been trying to get clarification from these personnel. Since the investigation has come to an end, it is high time that the repressive measures should be implemented,” Le told reporters at a media briefing in the capital, Yaoundé.

“We have already sacked 493 personnel but the process is just beginning,” he added.

The ghost workers were mostly state employees who had either left to go and work for other organizations or simply left the country to work overseas.

The minister also cited the cases of 315 civil servants who had died but were still on the payroll of the state with family relations receiving their salaries.

Prosecutions could follow, but for the moment the priority was to get stolen money repaid, Le said.

So far, the government has recovered 30 billion CFA francs (about 55.86 million U.S. dollars), Le said.

Source: Xinhuanet

27, May 2021

Zidane resigns as Real Madrid coach ⁰

Zinedine Zidane resigned as Real Madrid manager with immediate effect, the Spanish club said Thursday, just days after the club were beaten to the La Liga title by Atletico Madrid.

The Frenchman’s departure came at the end of a disappointing campaign for the 13-time European champions, who also lost to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-finals as they failed to win a trophy for the first time in 11 seasons.

“Real Madrid announces that Zinedine Zidane has decided to bring an end to his current spell as coach of our club,” said a Real Madrid statement.

“Now’s the time to respect his decision and show our respect and gratitude for his professionalism, dedication and passion in the last few years and for what he represents for Real Madrid.

“Zidane is one of Real Madrid’s all-time greats and his legend goes beyond what he has done as a coach and player for our club. He knows that he is always in the heart of the club’s supporters and that Real Madrid will always be his home.”

Zidane had a contract through June 2022.

He left the club for the first time after leading Madrid to one of its most successful runs from 2016-2018, with three consecutive Champions League titles. In his two years and five months in charge, Madrid won a total of nine trophies, including two Club World Cups, two UEFA Super Cups, one Spanish league and one Spanish Super Cup.

He only won the league title once and a Spanish Super Cup in his second stint.

ZIdane quit the first time less than a week after leading the team to its third straight Champions League title, saying it was time for a change and that he didn’t see it clearly that the club would keep winning with him in charge.

He had been dismissing talks about his future recently, saying that he would discuss it with the club. He said he believed that Madrid could do well without him as coach.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)

27, May 2021

Mali’s transitional president, prime minister released after military detention ⁰

Mali’s interim president and premier have been freed from military detention, senior military and government officials said Thursday. Their release came three days after President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane were detained and stripped of their powers in what appeared to be the country’s second coup in nine months.

“The interim president and prime minister were released overnight around 1.30am [local time]. We were true to our word,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Family members confirmed that President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane had been freed.

The two men have returned to their homes in the capital Bamako, those close to them said, though the conditions of their release were not clear.

The development came a day after military officials said the country’s transitional president and prime minister had “resigned” while in detention, a move the UN called “unacceptable”.

Ndaw and Ouane, tasked with steering the return to civilian rule after a coup last August, were detained by the military on Monday in what the international community called a military coup.

Over the past few days, the UN, along with the African Union and other international bodies, as well as the US, have repeatedly urged Mali’s military to release the transitional leaders.

Ndaw and Ouane had been heading the interim government with the declared aim of restoring full civilian rule within 18 months.

The leader of Mali’s 2020 coup, Col. Assimi Goita, who has been serving as the transitional vice president since September, seized control of the West African country earlier this week by deposing the two leaders in an unprecedented move.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP and AP)

27, May 2021

Football: Rashford racially abused online following Man Utd Europa defeat ⁰

Marcus Rashford says he was racially abused on social media following Manchester United’s defeat in the Europa League final.

The 23-year-old, who has previously been a victim of online attacks, said he had received “at least 70 racial slurs” following United’s penalty shootout loss to Villarreal in Gdansk on Wednesday.

United, who lost 11-10 on penalties, later tweeted to say their players had been subjected to “disgraceful racist abuse”.

“At least 70 racial slurs on my social accounts counted so far,” Rashford wrote on Twitter. “For those working to make me feel any worse than I already do, good luck trying.

“I’m more outraged that one of the abusers that left a mountain of monkey emojis in my DM is a maths teacher with an open profile. He teaches children!! And knows that he can freely racially abuse without consequence…”

Last month English football, along with other sporting bodies, united for a four-day social media boycott to urge the companies to take a stronger stance over racial abuse.

Speaking before the latest incidents of abuse, England boss Gareth Southgate praised the job players had done in highlighting the issue.

“I do think there has been progress over the last year on the issue of racism because social media is just in general a poor reflection of what happens through society,” he told the BBC.

“But the reality is if it wasn’t social media these situations are happening on our streets at certain times.

“(The players) have used their voice in a very positive manner, in particularly the last 12 months. We have to keep fighting racism.”

Source: AFP

27, May 2021

Macron seeks reset with Rwanda on historic visit ⁰

French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Rwanda on Thursday for a highly symbolic visit aimed at turning the page on a quarter century of diplomatic tensions over France’s role in the country’s 1994 genocide.

Macron is the first French leader since 2010 to visit the central African country, which has long accused France of complicity in the mass killings of Rwandan Tutsis.

The French president arrived in the capital, Kigali, early Thursday and is set to hold talks with Rwandan President Paul Kagame.

He will visit a memorial to the 1994 slaughter that left an estimated 800,000 people dead, mainly minority Tutsis and moderate Hutus who tried to protect them from Hutu extremists.

Two reports completed in March and in April that examined France’s role in the genocide helped clear a path for Macron’s visit.

The French report, which was commissioned by Macron and released in March, included a adamning indictment of Paris’s role in the bloodshed.

In findings accepted by the French government, the historians accused Paris, which had close ties to the ethnic Hutu regime behind the massacres, of being “blind” to preparations for the genocide and said it bore “serious and overwhelming” responsibility.

The commission found no proof, however, of French complicity in the bloodshed.

For Kagame, who led the Tutsi rebellion that ended the genocide and had led the charge against France ever since, the report was a game-changer.

On a visit to France last week, Kagame, who at one point broke off relations with France, said the report had paved the way for France and Rwanda to have “a good relationship”.

A ‘renewed’ relationship

Ahead of Macron’s visit to Kigali, both sides have spoken enthusiastically of a “normalisation” of ties.

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal on Wednesday called the visit “a particularly meaningful act” for Macron.

“It signals, I think, a memory that is pacified and a relationship that is renewed,” he told reporters after a weekly cabinet meeting.

“It is proof that the president’s willingness to face our history, our past, in complete transparency is the best way forward,” he said.

French officials say Macron could also use the visit to name an ambassador to Rwanda, filling a post left vacant since 2015.

But some in Rwanda want France to go further in facing up to the past and officially apologise for failing to help stop the killing of 800,000 Rwandans between April and July 1994.

They will be listening closely when Macron delivers a speech on Thursday at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, the final resting place for over 250,000 genocide victims.

Kagame has downplayed the importance of the issue.

“It’s not up to me, or anyone else to demand apologies,” he told Le Monde newspaper in a recent interview, insisting that any such expression had to be spontaneous on the part of the French.

French ‘blindness’

From Rwanda to Algeria and the colonial-era looting of African art, Macron has gone further than his predecessors in shining a light on unsavoury chapters of France’s past in Africa.

The last French president to visit Rwanda was Nicolas Sarkozy, who attempted to break the ice by admitting to “serious mistakes” and a “form of blindness” on the part of the French during the genocide.

His remarks fell short of expectations in Rwanda and relations between the countries continued to fester.

Macron has presented himself as the standard-bearer of a new generation that came of age after the colonial period and is not afraid to admit to past wrongs.

While campaigning for president, the (now) 43-year-old declared that the colonisation of Algeria was a “crime against humanity” — an admission that deeply upset conservatives in France, where colonial rule has long been portrayed as relatively benign.

He has also acknowledged that France instigated a system that facilitated torture during Algeria’s war of liberation from France, and he agreed to return art looted by colonial forces from Benin and Senegal.

Analysts say these gestures are aimed at wooing young Africans who view France with suspicion, convinced that it is still pulling the strings in former French colonies where it propped up strongmen for decades.

“The fact of being from a new generation and a young president does not change the course of relations between France and African countries,” Gilles Yabi, president of Senegal’s WATHI think-tank, told AFP after the release of the Rwanda report in March.

To counter allegations of French paternalism, Macron has made a point of trying to nurture ties with English-speaking countries in Africa that lie outside of France’s traditional sphere of influence.

After Rwanda, he will travel to South Africa.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and REUTERS)