25, April 2020

Ambazonia Crisis: UN rights chief rejects killings acknowledged by Cameroon ⁰

The UN’s human rights chief has been weighing in on recent killings committed by State authorities, or by rogue members of State military forces, emphasizing that all Governments must strictly abide by international law and hold those who serve, accountable for any violations.

In a statement released on Wednesday, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, welcomed the acknowledgement by the Government of Cameroon – following a national investigation – that members of its military were involved in the deaths of at least 13 people in a village in the country’s northwest region, as well as the announcement of new legal proceedings against them.

Allegations began to circulate in February that three Cameroonian soldiers were involved in the killing of members of an armed separatist group, along with others, in the village of Ngarbuh, in the country’s northwest. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced there in recent years by clashes between national forces and separatists.

OHCHR was among a range of voices calling on the Government to ensure that its security forces conduct themselves in strict accordance with international law during all operations.

A commission established to investigate the killings found that two soldiers and a gendarme, aided by 10 members of a vigilante committee, stormed Ngarbuh and shot dead five members of the separatist group.

When the servicemen discovered that women and children had been killed as a result of the operation, they panicked and burned down houses to try to cover up their actions.

“I welcome the Government’s decision to set up a national commission of inquiry…to look into these killings,” said the OHCHR chief. “It is now essential that all those responsible for the deaths of the people in the village of Ngarbuh are held fully to account in a fair and transparent judicial process.”

Cameroonian authorities have said that legal proceedings are being initiated against the three servicemen and that they are continuing to search for the vigilante members.

Source: News.UN.Org

25, April 2020

Yaoundé suspends salaries of 8766 Southern Cameroons civil servants ⁰

The cash-strapped French Cameroun government in Yaoundé has suspended the salaries of 8,766 civil servants. The decision was made public today by the Minister of Public Service and Administrative Reform.

The Francophone minister pointed out in his statement written in the French language that the civil servants-a majority of whom are Southern Cameroonians fleeing the crisis in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia are suspended from pay as part of a policy he painted as “Physical Counting of State Personnel” operation, launched in April 2018 by the Ministry of Finance.

In a previous French Cameroun government communiqué, the Minister of Public Service stated that this involves 3721 state employees under the Labour Code and 5045 civil servants. They were accused of “irregular absence”, “resignation” or “death” and asked to contact with immediate effect the ministry of public service.

Biya regime agents say in two years, the physical counting operation of state employees launched in April 2018 has already identified and redacted some 10,000 fictitious civil servants. It led to savings of CFAF 30 billion in 2019, a figure disputed by opposition parties.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

25, April 2020

Disinfectant COVID-19 Statement: Hillary Clinton tells Americans ‘Please don’t poison yourself because Trump thinks it could be a good idea’ ⁰

Former US Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton has blasted President Donald Trump after he suggested scientists should investigate inserting disinfectants into the body as a way to cure COVID-19 caused by the novel coronavirus.

Clinton, Trump’s 2016 bitter presidential rival, warned on Friday that people not to poison themselves based on the president’s advice.

“Please don’t poison yourself because Donald Trump thinks it could be a good idea,” she wrote on Twitter.

Clinton’s comment comes as Trump faces criticism from medical professionals for his remarks. Doctors and health experts urged people not to drink or inject disinfectant.

Trump said at his daily media briefing on Thursday that medical experts should explore whether inserting light or disinfectant into the bodies of people infected with the novel coronavirus might cure the disease.

He also asked if there was a way to use disinfectants on the body “by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”

“Is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?” he said. “It would be interesting to check that.”

“Maybe you can, maybe you can’t … I’m not a doctor. But I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what,” Trump said, pointing to his head.

Trump claims remarks were ‘sarcastic’

On Friday, Trump on Friday said he was being sarcastic when he suggested a day earlier that scientists should consider exposing the body to light, heat and disinfectants the coronavirus patients.

“I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen,” Trump told reporters at the Oval Office in the White House.

“I was asking a sarcastic — and a very sarcastic question — to the reporters in the room about disinfectant on the inside,” he continued. “But it does kill it, and it would kill it on the hands and that would make things much better. That was done in the form of a sarcastic question to the reporters.”

When a reporter pointed out that the president had turned to experts next to the stage when he presented the idea on Thursday, Trump claimed he was asking those officials “whether or not sun and disinfectant on the hands … can help us.”

Trump’s explanation raised eyebrows among those who watched the Oval Office briefing.

“It didn’t seem like it was coming off as sarcastic when he was talking and turning to Dr. Birx on the side,” Fox News anchor Bret Baier said on air after Trump’s retraction.

We have a ‘quack medicine salesman’ on TV

“We seemed to have a quack medicine salesman on television. He’s talking about things like disinfectant in the lungs,” Schumer said.

“We need real focus in the White House on what needs to be done. Instead of talking about disinfectant the president should be talking about how he’s going to implement testing. Which every expert says is the quickest path to get us moving again,” he added.

Trump’s dangerous comments forced Lysol manufacturer Reckitt Benckiser to issue a statement that “under no circumstance” should its products be administered into the human body.

The company said in a statement on its website that “due to recent speculation and social media activity,” they had “been asked whether internal administration of disinfectants may be appropriate for investigation or use as a treatment for coronavirus.”

“As a global leader in health and hygiene products, we must be clear that under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route). As with all products, our disinfectant and hygiene products should only be used as intended and in line with usage guidelines. Please read the label and safety information,” the company said on Friday.

Culled from Presstv

25, April 2020

French government announces ‘historic’ €7 billion aid package for Air France-KLM ⁰

France said on Friday it was readying a “historic” package of multi-billion euro loans to help carmaker Renault and flag-carrier Air France through the crisis caused by the coronavirus.

For Air France, a seven billion euro ($7.5 billion) package is planned and for Renault five billion euro ($5.4 billion), Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced.

He said the package was needed to save Air France amid an unprecedented industry crisis but warned the money would come with strings attached, with the airline notably having to improve its environmental credentials.

For Air France, the loan package is made up of four billion euros in bank loans guaranteed by the state and a three billion euro loan direct from the state, he told TF1 television.

“We need to save our national company and the 350,000 direct and indirect employees affected,” he said, while describing the plan as “historic support”.

“We are behind Air France, behind the employees of Air France to guarantee our independence and save jobs,” he added, while denying that nationalisation was on the cards.

But he warned that the help was not a “blank cheque” and would come with “conditions” linked to its profitability but also environmental factors.

“Air France should become the most environmentally respectful airline in the planet. This is the most important condition for me.

“Air France needs to present a plan for reducing CO2 emissions and transforming its fleet to be less polluting,” he said.

In The Hague, Dutch Finance Minister Wopke Hoekstra announced the government plans to support KLM with an aid package worth between two to four billion euros.

“We are currently working out the exact form and details,” the finance minister said Friday.

‘Crisis will last years’

For Renault, a five billion euro ($5.4 billion) bank loan package guaranteed by the state is being worked on, Le Maire said.

“What is at stake here is our automobile industry. Renault is an industrial flagship that belongs to our culture and history,” he added.

The French state retains shareholdings in both Renault and Air France of 15 and 14.3 percent respectively.

Le Maire had previously warned that he expects GDP in France to contract 8 percent this year due to the effects of the lockdown against the coronavirus, which is due to last in France until May 11.

“This crisis is historic. It will last years. It will be long. It will be difficult. I want every businessperson to know that… the state will be beside them,” he added.

He said France would do everything “to save its companies and start again with an economy that is more respectful for the environment.”

Source: AFP

25, April 2020

Coronavirus pandemic: Hopes grow for antibody tests, but experts urge caution ⁰

The sun is only just rising in Berlin but Lothar Kopp, 65, is already standing in line outside a clinic in the district of Reinickendorf.

Along with a handful of mask-clad people standing two metres apart, he is here to give a blood sample — for antibody tests in the hope of finding out if he has previously contracted the coronavirus and since developed immunity.

“If I’ve already had corona then I’m not infectious,” said Kopp, hoping to test positive for antibodies as it could allow him to visit his elderly mother without the risk of spreading the disease.

As nations around the world look to ease curbs on public life, some experts have mooted the possibility of so-called “immunity passports” to allow those who have antibodies to return to work first.

In Germany, tens of thousands of tests have been performed and large studies are ongoing.

Elsewhere in the world, efforts are also under way to determine the so-called level of immunity in the population.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said last week that the state will be launching tests “in the most aggressive way in the nation” to find out how many have already had the disease.

In a rush to catch up with testing, the US regulator had even taken the extraordinary decision to allow commercial manufacturers to market their tests without formal authorisation.

But experts including from the World Health Organization have urged caution over the accuracy of the nascent tests.

Among the unknowns of the virus is how long immunity could last — meaning that even positive antibody tests may not be meaningful for long.

– ‘Nonsense’ –

Urging prudence, a WHO spokeswoman noted that there is “much discussion” over the antibody tests.

But “once we have validated tests we may still not know how well a positive result correlates with protection against disease or for how long the protection will last,” she told AFP.

Matthias Orth, a board member of the Professional Association of German Laboratory Doctors (BDL), said inaccuracies are a big problem.

People can test negative even if they have had COVID-19, he said.

“There are also quite banal coronaviruses that do not cause serious illness, and they can give a positive result.”

As for so-called rapid antibody tests — home kits that extract blood from your finger and promise a result within 15 minutes — Orth’s verdict: “They’re nonsense.”

More accurate tests will come within weeks, he said, but he stressed that “it’s a little too early to give patients a clear statement that they are definitely immune”.

– 70,000 tests –

Nevertheless, the studies, including one that started in Munich over the weekend with scientists picking 3,000 households at random to test for antibodies, are being closely watched.

A separate study is ongoing in Gangelt, in the Heinsberg district — where Germany’s first major cluster of infections was uncovered. So far, researchers have determined that 14 percent of the population had previously been infected.

Beyond studies, several pharmaceutical companies in Germany have also begun marketing such antibody tests — which must be analysed in a laboratory.

And around 70,000 tests have so far been processed by 54 laboratories, according to the ALM association of accredited medical laboratories.

Doctor Ulrike Leimer-Lipke of the Reinickendorf clinic, which has been offering antibody tests since mid-March, said: “I think it makes a lot of sense, because this way we can find out if people have immunity.

“It is very important for people if they have a grandmother or a mother or father who they care for, to know if they are already immune.”

Source: AFP

25, April 2020

Cameroon: Where are the leaders? ⁰

Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic that has put everything in life on hold, many in Cameroon thought they were second only to God.

Due to their being around for too long, some Cameroonians were already thinking that they were immortal.

But the Coronavirus has changed all of that. The country’s president who has been making a mockery of his critics for years has been hiding at the Unity Palace.

Sources at the Unity Palace say he sometimes hide under the bed for fear that the insidious virus might show up at the Unity Palace to look for him.

The virus does not like fat and old people. It has run amok in Italy and America where it has been on a cleanup campaign.

Nature has a way of ensuring that there is equilibrium in the world and in this case, it has sent a virus to rid the world of old people who have had a long life.

This is a reason for Cameroon’s Lazarus to be hiding. He knows that if the virus runs into him, he will not stand a chance.

He is not the only person hiding. Even people like Rene Sadi are all hiding in their homes, refusing to even receive their collaborators.

Times have changed and many people around the world have suddenly discovered the emptiness of life.

Ever since Atanga Nji was appointed as the country’s Territorial Administration minister, he has been conducting himself as if he was above death.

He has plotted the death of many young Southern Cameroonians just because he wants to prove a point.

He has been urging the Southern Cameroonian fighters to drop their arms without conditions and has even attended ceremonies where those fake Amba fighters have dropped their guns as a strategy to woe others to follow suit.

For more than three weeks now, a group of Amba boys has been struggling to meet the authorities so that they can drop their weapons, but nobody wants to meet with them.

The group contains some guys infected with the Coronavirus and they really want to meet with Paul Atanga Nji and the Northwest regional governor, Adolphe Lele L’Afrique, but the most powerful guys in Cameroon are not in any mood to meet them. Nobody toys with COVID-19 and Atanga Nji is in no rush to leave this planet.

The virus has cut the Yaoundé strong men to normal human proportions. Atanga Nji who loved going to Bamenda every week no longer wants to meet Amba Boys who want to help him stage his normal show.

The weapons are in the jungle and until he meets with them, the boys will not down their weapons. They may be observing the global ceasefire, but downing their tools will only happen when they shake hands with the all powerful territorial administration boss.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman/Editor-In-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

24, April 2020

CEMAC designates Cameroon a country at risk with 1430 COVID-19 cases ⁰

Countries in the CEMAC region have now classified their Cameroonian neighbour as a nation at risk because of the high number of people infected with the COVID-19 pandemic. Late on Friday, the sick man of the Sub Saharan region Central African Republic (CAR) announced that people coming from Cameroon into CAR have to be tested for COVID-19. A move welcomed by members of the CEMAC group.

The Central African Minister of Public Health Dr Pierre Somse went a step further by making public a toll-free number 1212 and observed that it is imperative for anyone coming from the Republic of Cameroon to the Central African Republic within the last 14 days to urgently visit health centers to carry out the COVID-19 screening test.

Since April 6, one month after the confirmation of the first case of the coronavirus, Cameroon has entered the top 5 African countries most affected by the pandemic. It has thus become the first in CEMAC followed by the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea.

According to statistics updated Friday after an evaluation meeting by the French Cameroun Minister of Public Health Dr Manaouda Malachie, 1430 people have contracted the coronavirus.

Among those who tested positive, 692 are active. And, 120 are hospitalized including 20 under respiratory assistance. The Francophone Health Minister also announced on Thursday evening that some 668 patients have recovered from the virus with 43 deaths recorded.

Several special centers for the care of patients with COVID-19 have been set up including 2 in the French Cameroun’s political capital of Yaoundé. The Biya regime has also included the military stadium in Yaounde as one of the specialised centers for the care of COVID-19 patients. Douala in the Littoral region has 2 special centers while 1 currently operates in Garoua.

The ruling CPDM crime syndicate received last Saturday, 100 ventilators and 300 thousand diagnostic kits.

By Oke Akombi Ayukepi Akap in Glasgow with files from Rita Akana

24, April 2020

Trump’s coronavirus disinfectant comments ‘dangerous’ ⁰

Doctors and health experts urged people not to drink or inject disinfectant on Friday after US President Donald Trump suggested scientists should investigate inserting the cleaning agent into the body as a way to cure COVID-19.

“(This is an) absolutely dangerous crazy suggestion,” said Paul Hunter, a professor of medicine at Britain’s University of East Anglia.

“You may not die of COVID-19 after injecting disinfectant, but only because you may already be dead from the injection.”

Trump said at his daily media briefing on Thursday that scientists should explore whether inserting light or disinfectant into the bodies of people infected with the new coronavirus might help them clear the disease.

“Is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning?” he said. “It would be interesting to check that.”

Parastou Donyai, director of pharmacy practice and a professor of social and cognitive pharmacy at the University of Reading, said Trump’s comments were shocking and unscientific.

She said people worried about the new coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes should seek help from a qualified doctor or pharmacist, and “not take unfounded and off-the-cuff comments as actual advice”.

Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and a former US labor secretary, added on Twitter, “Trump’s briefings are actively endangering the public’s health. Please don’t drink disinfectant.”

Reading’s Donyai said previous comments by Trump had already been linked to people self-administering medicines or other products in ways that make them poisonous.

“We have already seen people mistakenly poisoning themselves by taking chloroquine when their hopes were raised by unscientific comments,” She said.

Reckitt Benckiser, which manufactures household disinfectants Dettol and Lysol, issued a statement on Friday warning people not to ingest or inject its products.

(Source: Reuters)

24, April 2020

US Politics: Joe Biden thinks Trump will try to postpone election ⁰

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has predicted that US President Donald Trump will try to postpone the country’s November election in an attempt to win.

“Mark my words, I think he is gonna try to kick back the election somehow, come up with some rationale why it can’t be held,” Biden said during an online fundraiser Thursday.

The 77-year-old former vice president said it is “the only way he thinks he can possibly win.”

Six months before US voters head to the polls, Trump’s mind is already in election mode.

But with a pandemic raging and job losses climbing to 26.4 million on Thursday, Trump’s path to victory may be harder than he anticipated.

Biden, highlighting Trump’s recent threat to veto emergency funding for the US Post Office, claimed it was an example of the president’s intention to “do all he can to make it very hard for people to vote.”

While mail-in voting and absentee ballots remain methods many say could help limit voters spreading coronavirus, Trump maintains they create the potential for fraud.

Meanwhile, dozens of US states have postponed their primary races, which will officially determine who will be the presidential nominee.

The 73-year-old Trump has been criticized for turning his daily White House coronavirus briefings into campaign events — rallying his base and taking swipes at his detractors such as Biden, who is sheltering at home.

“We have a sleepy guy in a basement of a house that the press is giving a free pass to, who doesn’t want to do debates because of COVID,” Trump said during the Thursday briefing.

Source: AFP

24, April 2020

Biya regime says 668 cases of coronavirus cured ⁰

According to the Minister of Public Health, of the 1134 cases that tested positive for coronavirus disease, 668 are now known to be cured.

The recommendations of the Scientific Committee of Emergencies in the Ministry of Public Health recommends the use of the combination (hydroxy) Chloroquine/Azythromycin for free therapeutic care of patients with Corvid-19 in Cameroon.

There are currently 43 deaths related to Corvid-19 in the Francophone dominated nation. Several patients are using local herbs for their Corvid-19 treatment.

By Rita Akana