10, September 2019

Little help on the horizon for France’s poor from Macron ⁰

Thirty-seven of France’s top charities issued a report on the fight against poverty, describing a situation which continues to dramatically worsen seemingly every year during the age of austerity.

The report called the Yellow Vest protests a, “long overdue expression of a real social unhappiness to the highest levels of society.” They noted that a majority of those who accessed their charity services supported the anti-government and anti-austerity movement.

The report found that the biggest problems the poor face are access to their legal rights, followed by decreased wages which are further compounded by inflation, isolation from society, poor health care and poor lodging.

There seems to be little help on the horizon for France’s poor from Macron. He has begun his unpopular efforts to roll back the pension system, with the unemployment system to be targeted next.

Right-wing economic austerity continues to cut social services just as the French need them more than ever, while also failing to produce the long-promised economic growth. Over the previous “lost decade” French inequality rates have soared even as their corporate profits have set records repeatedly.

Homelessness has hit new highs, as have evictions, while France has been repeatedly condemned internationally for failing to lift their small refugee population out of makeshift slums.

Source: Presstv

10, September 2019

US: Trump says Taliban talks dead, war back on agenda ⁰

US President Donald Trump has declared as “dead” so-called peace talks with the Taliban, saying Washington is back at pounding the group’s positions in Afghanistan as part of its 18-year-long war in the country.

“They are dead. As far as I am concerned, they are dead,” Trump said at the White House on Monday, when asked about the long-running talks with the militant group in Qatar.

The talks produced a draft agreement last week that included a substantial US military drawdown from the country after 18 years of occupation, putting in sight an end to what has become the longest war in America’s history.

However, the prospect of peace in Afghanistan collapsed on Saturday, when Trump said he had called off a secret meeting with Taliban leaders in Camp David, outside Washington to discuss the deal.

The decision, Trump said, was his response to a deadly bomb blast by the Taliban, which killed 12 people in the Afghan capital of Kabul on Thursday, including an American soldier.

Trump put another nail in the coffin of the draft agreement, saying his military commanders had already stepped war against the militant group to the highest levels in a decade.

“Over the last four days, we have been hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last ten years!” he wrote in a tweet.

Trump’s comments were echoed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said a day earlier that the talks were “dead” because the Taliban “tried to use terror to improve their negotiating position.”

He, too, noted that America’s military operations in Afghanistan were now back on full throttle.

“We’ve killed over a thousand Taliban in just the last 10 days,” he claimed.

PressTV-Pompeo: US-Taliban talks ‘dead for the time being'

Meanwhile, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees Washington’s military operations in Afghanistan, said the US military was likely to accelerate the pace of its operations against the Taliban.

US Marine General Kenneth McKenzie, the head of CENTOM, said during a visit to Afghanistan the Taliban overplayed its hand in the negotiations by resorting to violence.

Seemingly unrepentant, the Taliban, which is today in control of more territory than at any time since 2001 when its rule ended over the country, said Sunday that more American lives would be lost in Afghanistan if the peace talks stop.

McKenzie declined to comment on the Taliban statement but said US troops would not hesitate to hit back.

“We’re certainly not going to sit still and let them carry out some self-described race to victory. That’s not going to happen,” McKenzie told reporters during a stop at Bagram Airfield in northeastern Afghanistan on Monday.

The CENTCOM chief said pledged a “spectrum” of attacks against the Taliban, which will also include airstrikes and raids involving Afghan commandos.

Any increase in US military action would correspond to an acceleration of Taliban attacks, he added.

According to a United Nations report that came out on September 3, airstrikes by US-led foreign forces and Afghan aircraft in Afghanistan reached 506 between May 10 and August 8, around 57 percent increase from the same period in 2018.

Source: Presstv

10, September 2019

Biya regime jails senior opposition figure ⁰

Cameroon on Monday handed a two-year jail term to Mamadou Mota, first vice-chairman of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon led by Maurice Kamto.

Mota told AFP his punishment was “purely political” after he was tried over his role in a July 22 insurrection at Yaounde’s central prison where he has been held since June after participating in anti-regime protests.

The court found Mota guilty of “group rebellion” — but he insisted: “I am not a rebel.

“When the mutiny happened I was called on by the governor to calm the inmates,” Mota told AFP.

“We are going to appeal this sentence as no proof has been offered to back this accusation,” MRC lawyer Emmanuel Simh said.

Twelve other people, including another member of Cameroon’s Anglophone minority, Mancho Bibixy, also received a two-year term, with two others handed three-year sentences.

Most of those sentenced were Anglophones, with the remainder from the MRC.

The July 22 mutiny, which saw inmates demand better conditions, came at the height of opposition protests following the re-election in October last year of President Paul Biya, in power for 36 years.

Kamto, Cameroon’s main opposition leader and who unsuccessfully claimed victory in the election, went on trial with 88 others in a military court last Friday on insurrection, hostility to the motherland and rebellion charges — crimes which could carry the death penalty.

Their trial is scheduled for October 8.

The past two years have seen Cameroon mired in ethnic unrest leading to hundreds of deaths, with English-speaking separatists demanding independence in two western regions. Some 500,000 people have been forced from their homes as a result.

In a video posted to social media in the wake of the prison mutiny, Mota appeared among the demonstrators demanding better rations for prisoners.

He had been arrested in early June for attending an anti-government protest and for slamming the election result, which he termed an “electoral hold-up.”

(AFP)

10, September 2019

Latest hearing for Cameroonian musician Valsero postponed ⁰

The military court hearing case for Cameroonian musician Valsero which was to commence on 6 April in Yaoundé has been postponed once again to 8 October.

Valsero was presented to the court on 6 September along with chief opposition leader Maurice Kamto and 87 of his followers to face eight charges. The charges include insurrection, incitement to insurrection, group rebellion, criminal association, complicity, riotous assembly, disturbance of public order and hostility to the homeland, which carries the death penalty.

AFP reported that the court was forced to postpone the case after one of the accused Christian Penda Ekoka who is the ex-economic adviser to President Paul Biya, got sick.

“When he was arrested on 28 January, he was already sick, and the first days (in the cell), he did not have his medication”, the defendants lead council Sylvain Souop told the local journalists.

The accused persons were arrested about eight months ago in relation to the 26 January protests in Douala, known as the White Marches. The demonstrations were organised by the opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) following widespread suspicion of fraud during the October 2018 presidential election.

President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, won those elections with 71% of the vote while MRC leader Maurice Kamto garnered 14%.

Valsero was arrested on 26 January and taken to Yaoundé Principal Prison. Kamto and his allies Penda Ekoka, Albert Dzongang and Paul Eric Kingue were detained on 28 January.

The defendant’s French lawyer Antoine Vey told Africa News on 5 September that “There is no justification for Kamto and his supporters to be incarcerated for eight months in these conditions. None of them took part in acts of violence, none called for acts of violence or rebellion; there is no reason for their arrest outside the political alibi.”

Before the court hearing postponement, the lawyers to the plaintiff had forwarded to the military court a list of 31 witnesses, including two ministers, the chief of the police and other high-ranking army and police officers.

Human rights groups and activists, including musicians, have denounced the jurisdiction of the military court to try these civilians. Amnesty International launched an online petition in April 2019 that calls on the Cameroonian authorities to free Valsero and the other detained protesters.

Culled from Musicinafrica.net

10, September 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Nigerians Call for Help After Attacks ⁰

Nigerians living in Cameroon are asking both their government and their host country for help after at least 20 Nigerians were killed in separatist violence.

Ngozi Ester, 27, says she, her husband and three children escaped from the English-speaking northwestern town of Kumbo after suspected separatists attacked them one week ago.

Hundreds of Nigerians, in the company of Cameroonians, pray for peace in Cameroon's restive English-speaking regions, at Saint Joseph's Anglophone Parish in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, Sept. 6, 2019. (M.Kindzeka/VOA) — Hundreds of Nigerians, in the company of Cameroonians, pray for peace in Cameroon’s restive English-speaking regions, at Saint Joseph’s Anglophone Parish in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, Sept. 6, 2019. (M.Kindzeka/VOA)

“I pleaded with them that I am a Nigerian, but they insisted that since they are using the money for the taxes I pay to buy weapons and kill Anglophones, I am supporting the crisis, and they burned all of my goods and they destroyed everything I was doing,” she said from Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde.

Separatists in north- and southwestern Cameroon ordered all businesses to close to protest the lifetime prison sentence given to their leader, Ayuk Tabe, by a military tribunal in Yaounde.

Joseph Ukah Mbila, president of the Nigerian Union in Yaounde, says they have taken in at least 100 Nigerians who fled the crisis. He says many of them were kidnapped and released only after ransoms were paid.

“Nigerians in those two regions have suffered a lot,” he said. “You know, we do not depend on salaries; we depend on our business and when you see they are not doing business, they have children, they have house rents to pay, they have electricity bills to pay, water bills and other things, they are suffering a lot. Many of them have packed out to Yaounde, to Douala, to Bafoussam.”

North- and southwest Cameroon have been rocked by violence since 2017, when English-speaking separatists began pushing to secede from Cameroon and its French-speaking majority.

Men hand out flags to people praying for peace in Cameroon's restive English-speaking regions, at Saint Joseph's Anglophone Parish in Cameroon's capital, Yaounde, Sept. 6, 2019. (M.Kindzeka/VOA) — Men hand out flags to people praying for peace in Cameroon’s restive English-speaking regions, at Saint Joseph’s Anglophone Parish in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, Sept. 6, 2019. (M.Kindzeka/VOA)

Since Friday, a series of special church services has been organized in Yaounde to raise funds to assist stranded Nigerians. John Ibe, secretary general of the Nigerian Union in Yaounde, says the beneficiaries will include families of 12 Nigerians who died in a shipwreck in late August.

He says the 12 victims, like thousands of commuters between Cameroon and Nigeria, had avoided traveling to Nigeria by road for fear of being killed or kidnapped by fighters.

“In less than one year, we have had four shipwrecks between Nigeria and Cameroon. This kind of loss of life, this kind of wanton loss of material resources. … Nigerians cannot take it anymore,” Ibe said.

Mbila says Nigerians want their government to help the government of Cameroon find a lasting solution to the crisis.

“There should be dialogue because there is nothing in this world that cannot be resolved on a round table,” he said. “There should be an exchange of ideas so that peace will come back to this great nation. We suffered civil war in Nigeria and we know what it means.”

It is estimated that between four and five million Nigerians live in Cameroon, the majority living in the English-speaking regions. The government has advised foreigners who feel threatened to leave, but says it is protecting everyone.

Source: VOA

9, September 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Paul Biya speaks to the nation tomorrow ⁰

Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, will address the nation tomorrow at 8pm Cameroon time.

A source at the presidency has hinted that the Yaounde strong man will focus on the Southern Cameroons crisis.

He is expected to announce the formation of a commission to design the modalities for dialogue with Southern Cameroonians.

He will also underscore the importance of dialogue and forgiveness. He is expected to grant clemency to many Southern Cameroonians arrested within the framework of the current crisis and those in the Diaspora.

He will be cajoling the Diaspora by playing up the importance of the country’s vibrant Diaspora which, he thinks, can help with development efforts in the country, our source said.

He is also expected to put an end to the Kamto saga that has left the country with a bloodshot eye.

Mr. Biya, who has refused to listen international calls for dialogue, has finally caved in and wants peace to return to the two English-speaking regions of the country.

It should be recalled that some 3,000 Southern Cameroonians have been brutally murdered by Mr. Biya’s military and despite rumors about a possible reconciliation, the country’s military is still slaughtering innocent civilians in the two English-speaking regions of the country.

For more on this, go to the Cameroon Intelligence Report. Www.cameroonintelligencereport.com.

9, September 2019

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Four motorcycle taxi drivers abducted in Limbe ⁰

At least four motorcycle taxi drivers locally called “Okada” were kidnapped by separatists early Monday in Limbe, a seaside resort town in Cameroon’s crisis-hit English-speaking region of Southwest, according to police.

Local sources said the drivers were working when armed separatists stopped them mid-way and drove them towards a bush. Separatists said on social media the drivers were “arrested for disrespecting ghost town”.

For over two years now, separatists have imposed “ghost town” every Monday during which all sorts of activities in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest do not function.

An investigation has been launched by the police.

Since November 2017, government forces have been clashing with armed separatist forces who want the two Anglophone regions to secede from the largely French-speaking nation and form a new country they call “Ambazonia”.

Source: Xinhuanet

9, September 2019

French Cameroun: Internally displaced Ambazonia children struggle to continue schooling amid crisis ⁰

As early as 6:30 am on the day of school reopening, 10-year-old Cameroonian girl Kelsy Shinyuy was already on her way to meet her new teachers and classmates.

“I am very happy because I have not been to school for long. Very happy,” she said.

Shinyuy had to stay at home since 2017 due to a persistent crisis in the Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest, where separatists have been clashing with government forces in a bid to secede from the French-majority Cameroon and create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

In late August this year, Shinyuy and her family left their home in Kumbo in the Northwest to take refuge in Foumban, chief-town of Noun division in the Francophone part of Cameroon, about 100 km away from Kumbo. She was finally able to restart school at Saint Joseph Bilingual School of Foumban.

Her mother Lidwina Limunyuy was very excited that she managed to resend her child back to school, although for lack of money, the other two younger brothers of Shinyuy have to keep staying at home.

“We went through hardship. In fact we are lucky to be alive,” Limunyuy said.

A UNICEF report released in August estimates that insecurity spreading across Cameroon’s Anglophone regions has left more than 4,400 schools forcibly closed, affecting more than 600,000 children. According to the government, many of these schools were found being used as bases of the armed separatists.

According to UN estimations in July, the conflicts have resulted in about 530,000 internally displaced persons (IDP). Among them, many are children and teenagers struggling to resume schooling with very limited ressources.

“The situation is sad and touching…We have asked all the school authorities to admit all the internally displaced children. We are very focused to make sure they go to school hitch-free,” said Amidou Mbouombouo, divisional delegate of the secondary education ministry in Noun.

Magdaline Abongmbuh, a teacher at Government Bilingual High School of Foumban, said 33 IDP students registered in her class.

“Some of the students came to school without uniforms and books and school fees. When I asked them to go home and dress properly before coming to school, they burst into tears and insisted that they are ready to study in any condition,” said Abongmbuh. “They cried, Madam, we have suffered a lot and we want to go to school.”

Humanitarian agencies like the Red Cross are also taking actions.

Last academic year, the Red Cross helped about 7,000 displaced children register in primary and secondary schools in Noun, where there are currently 38,940 IDPs, according to Ibrahim Pouamoun, divisional secretary of the Red Cross in Noun.

Local elites make their contribution too. Members of Bamoun Kingdom, a major chiefdom in Noun, visited displaced families before school resumption to donate learning equipments.

To provide IDPs with sustainable sources of income, the sultan king Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya has made available 600 hectares of farm land, according to Inoussa Ngoupayou, first deputy to the sultan king.

On this first day of school, Shinyuy was already making new friends. All children have been instructed to be kind to their mates coming from crisis-hit regions, school headmistress Caroline Yaah told Xinhua.

“I will study hard to become a doctor,” Shinyuy said.

Culled from Xinhuanet

9, September 2019

WHO says suicide kills one person every 40 seconds ⁰

Across the world, one person takes their own life every 40 seconds, and more people die by suicide every year than in war, the World Health Organization says.

Hanging, poisoning and shooting are the most common suicide methods, the WHO said as it urged governments to adopt suicide prevention plans to help people cope with stress and to reduce access to suicide means.

“Suicide is a global public health issue. All ages, sexes and regions of the world are affected (and) each loss is one too many,” the WHO’s report said.

Suicide was the second leading cause of death among young people aged between 15 and 29, after road injury, and among teenage girls aged 15 to 19 it was the second biggest killer after maternal conditions. In teenage boys, suicide ranked third behind road injury and interpersonal violence.

Overall, close to 800,000 people die by suicide every year – more than are killed by malaria or breast cancer, or by war or homicide, the WHO said.

Global rates have fallen in recent years – with a 9.8% decrease between 2010 and 2016 – but declines were patchy. In the WHO’s Americas region, for example, rates rose by 6% in between 2010 and 2016.

The report also found that nearly three times as many men as women die by suicide in wealthy countries, in contrast to low- and middle-income countries, where the rates are more equal.

“Suicides are preventable,” said the WHO’s director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.”We call on all countries to incorporate proven suicide prevention strategies into national health and education programs.”

World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivers a speech at the opening day of the World Health Assembly on May 20, 2019 at the United Nations Offices in Geneva. (Photo by AFP)

The WHO said restricting access to pesticides was one of the most effective ways of reducing suicide numbers swiftly.

Pesticides are commonly used and usually result in death because they are so toxic, have no antidotes, and are often used in remote areas where there is no nearby medical help.

The WHO pointed to studies in Sri Lanka, where bans on pesticides have led to a 70% drop in suicides and an estimated 93,000 lives saved between 1995 and 2015.

(Source: Reuters)

9, September 2019

“Every Southern Cameroonian in Ground Zero should keep arms” ⁰

A senior adviser to the Ambazonia Vice President whose name we are withholding on Sunday indicated that the Southern Cameroons Interim Government would allow every Ambazonian citizen in Ground Zero to keep weapons in line with the policy of resistance against French Cameroun.

Members of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government began discussing a new policy which focuses on educating Ambazonian children while resisting French Cameroun occupation and aggression.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that Vice President Dabney Yerima informed the Southern Cameroons exiled cabinet of his intention to reform the management of Ambazonia state finances and back to school for Southern Cameroons kids and weighed options for moving Ambazonian children to schools in neighboring Nigeria.

Rival Southern Cameroons groups involved in the Ambazonia struggle for independence long locked in disagreement over the makeup of the Ambazonia Interim Government are now supporting Vice President Dabney Yerima after weeks of backroom deals, as Southern Cameroons’s woes keeps mounting.

The Ambazonia Interim Government was formed under the guidance of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe to combat French Cameroun. It has been the Southern Cameroons diaspora most successful investment ever since British Southern Cameroonians took up arms against French Cameroun some three years ago.

The Ambazonia Interim Government dominates the political and military landscape of Southern Cameroons and possesses tens of thousands of untrained fighters but it’s extremely lacking in sophisticated armaments.

By Chi Prudence Asong