Monthly Archives: July 2016

Chaldean Catholic Priest charged with gambling away refugee funds

16, July 2016

Chaldean Catholic Priest charged with gambling away refugee funds 0

A Catholic priest in Canada has been legally charged with theft and gambling away more than 500,000 Canadian dollars (US$380,000) in donations for the resettlement of Syrian and Iraqi refugees arriving in the country.

The 51-year-old clergyman of the Iraq-based Chaldean Catholic church, identified as Amer Saka, had allegedly collected the funds from over 20 donors under the pretext of providing support for the refugees, Canadian police authorities said.

“This investigation spanned throughout the province of Ontario, the United States and other countries where refugees were attempting to come to Canada,” police in London, Ontario, said in a statement.

This is while the head of Canada’s Chaldean Catholic church Bishop Emanuel Shaleta told the local London Free Press that Saka had contacted him to confess he had indeed gambled and lost all of the collected funds.

According to the report, the Catholic priest had been involved in a sponsorship program for refugees for a number of years. He was reportedly sacked by the diocese of Hamilton, Ontario, after local police launched a probe into the case back in February.

Presstv

The race for the White House: Donald Trump picks Indiana Governor to be his running mate

15, July 2016

The race for the White House: Donald Trump picks Indiana Governor to be his running mate 0

Presumptive US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen Indiana Governor Mike Pence to be his vice presidential running mate. “I am pleased to announce that I have chosen Governor Mike Pence as my Vice Presidential running mate,” Trump tweeted on Friday. Trump said he would make a formal announcement about his VP pick at a news conference on Saturday. Pence, 57, was elected as the governor of the state of Indiana in 2012. Before his current job, he spent 12 years in Washington in the US House of Representatives at the Congress. Pence’s popularity with many Republicans and religious conservatives makes him a target of Democratic opponents.

After the announcement, presumptive US Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton issued a warning about Pence, saying he favors policies that hurt minorities and favor the wealthy and powerful — people like Trump. “By picking Mike Pence as his running mate, Donald Trump has doubled down on some of his most disturbing beliefs by choosing an incredibly divisive and unpopular running mate,” said John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. Pence’s legislative experience in Congress as well as his position as governor of a Midwestern state could give Trump advantages in November’s presidential election.

The vast majority of Americans say they feel afraid if either Trump or Clinton is elected to the White House, a new poll shows. The Associated Press-GfK poll released Thursday found that 81 percent of US voters were worried by the idea of a Clinton or Trump presidency. On Wednesday, a poll by the Quinnipiac University showed that Trump has also overtaken Clinton in three swing states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania

Presstv

Biya’s continued stay in power: CPDM barons disagree on holding early presidential elections

15, July 2016

Biya’s continued stay in power: CPDM barons disagree on holding early presidential elections 0

A huge political divide has developed inside the presidency of the republic among senior government officials wanting to guarantee Biya’s continued stay in power. Cameroon Concord News has been reliably informed that it is a war between those supporting the holding of early presidential elections before 2018 and the followers of the serene continuation of the current seven-year term so that the election is held on the date as prescribed by the constitution.

Martin Belinga Eboutou, Director of the Civil Cabinet of the Presidency of the Republic, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Minister of Higher Education, Paul Atanga Nji, Minister of Special Duties at the Presidency of the Republic and Henri Eyebe Ayissi, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development are among other personalities supporting a constitutional amendment to shorten the presidential term and call for early general elections.

The group started a trend to please President Biya with multiplying calls claiming that it is the desire of the people to see him stay in power forever. However, some political opinions have indicated it was the head of state that inspired and sponsored the petitions.  The followers of a presidential election to be held as scheduled referred to by our informant as the conservative group includes Grégoire Owona, Minister of Labour and Social Security, Martin Mbarga Nguele, Delegate General for National Security, and a good bunch of Beti-Ewondo CPDM members of the Government.

Sama Ernest (Cameroon Concord News Group)

Biya’s Cameroon: 31 years old Cameroonian sentenced in France for attempting to collect money from the Bataclan terror attacks fund

15, July 2016

Biya’s Cameroon: 31 years old Cameroonian sentenced in France for attempting to collect money from the Bataclan terror attacks fund 0

A 31 years old Cameroonian has been given a 6 months suspended sentence by the Court of First Instance in Bobigny in France and ordered to pay a token of one euro to the Bataclan Memorial Fund for posing as a victim of the Bataclan terror attacks.  She was sentenced on Wednesday. She reportedly demanded the sum of 10,000 Euros from the fund for victims of the Bataclan attacks using falsified medical certificates and false testimony.

The young lady, whose name the French judiciary refused to make public, arrived France in 2007 and seek political asylum. She fabricated documents painting herself as a victim of the Bataclan attacks on November 13, 2015.  In her account, the young Cameroonian said she managed to escape through a window and seriously damaged her finger.

A delay in the payment of the money into her account pushed her to write seven letters to the French Ministry of Interior accusing the French government of “discrimination.”  During her period in police custody, she admitted having invented everything.

She told the French Court that “I had problems; I could not pay my medical bills in a Paris hospital! I owed 144 Euros. And then I had problems of unpaid rents, I lost my job at Franprix “. The head of the Bataclan Memorial Fund, Barrister Jean-Francoise Laigneau noted after the trial that Cameroon is morally bankrupt.

Chi Prudence Asong (Cameroon Concord News Group)

 

CPDM government identifies the teaching of local languages as a tool for development

15, July 2016

CPDM government identifies the teaching of local languages as a tool for development 0

After failing to deliver best practice in economic and social development in the country, the government of Cameroon has identified the teaching and learning of local languages as a tool for development.

The idea was made concrete through a convention signed between the Ministry of Scientific Research and Innovation (MINRESI) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) International, on the 13th of July 2016.

The MINRESI boss, Madeleine Tchuinte signed on behalf of the CPDM regime while the Director General of SIL represented his organization.

The agreement comes to buttress other actions by Cameroon government to promote the teaching of many native languages in schools especially at the level of basic education.

 

CRTV

Morocco to rejoin the African Union

15, July 2016

Morocco to rejoin the African Union 0

Morocco is reportedly set to rejoin the African Union (AU) after leaving the pan-African organization more than three decades ago. An anonymous diplomatic source told Moroccan newspaper Akhbar al-Youm that the historic move is anticipated to be announced during the 27th AU Summit scheduled to take place in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on July 17-18.

The source refused to confirm whether King Mohammed VI would attend the upcoming AU summit starting this Sunday. However, it said Moroccan Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar has recently been on a diplomatic trip to several African capitals, including Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Senegal, Tunisia Cameroon, Cote D’ivoire and Ethiopia, to inform them all of Morocco’s decision.

Morocco has access to services available to all AU states, but remains the only African UN member not to be a member of the AU. In recent years, several African officials have urged Rabat to return to its seat at the AU. “Morocco is a fully-fledged member of the African family, and no-one has the right to exclude the Kingdom from the AU,” Senegalese Foreign Minister Mankeur Ndiaye said during King Mohammed’s visit to Senegal in May 2015, adding, “We think that now is the time for Morocco to return to the African Union.”

The AU, which replaced the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in 2001, includes all 54 African states besides Morocco that are members of the United Nations. The country decided to withdraw from the continental organization in 1984 over the union’s decision to accept the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) as a formal member. Morocco considers the territory as part of the kingdom and insists its sovereignty cannot be challenged. Morocco annexed the vast, mineral-rich territory of the Western Sahara after Spain withdrew in 1975. It is currently viewed as Morocco’s “southern provinces” and the government continues to carry out multi-million-dollar development projects in the area.

However, neighboring Algeria, like numerous other African countries, recognizes the territory as the SADR, and hosts the headquarters of the Sahrawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front. Morocco has offered wide-ranging autonomy for the region; but the Polisario Front movement, which claims the disputed territory belongs to the ethnic Sahrawis, insists that a referendum be held so that the local population can decide their fate. For decades, the UN has been seeking to hold a referendum on independence for the territory.

 

Presstv

Sell Cameroon and share the money

14, July 2016

Sell Cameroon and share the money 0

Some few days after President Biya took over from the late Ahmadou Ahidjo, he announced that Cameroon will never go to the IMF or World Bank to beg for money. Biya had been handed over everything including the country’s reserves. Some months before the former head of state was lowered into an early grave in Dakar Senegal, Cameroon was already seeking first and second standby World Bank accords. Cameroon Tribune, the nation’s national daily newspaper wholeheartedly approved of the relations with the IMF and the World Bank.

The country’s lead editorialists such as Charles Ndongo, Eric Chinje, Ful Peter, Boh Herbert, Lawrence EyongEchaw, Ntemfac Ofege, Abel Mbida,  Emmanuel Wongibe and Ebonkem Forminken went on to threaten anyone, like Paddy Mbawa and Chief Bissong Etahoben who campaigned against the IMF.  The super editors made sure positions and ranks were terminated as a result of any political discourse on the IMF/World Bank.

That was in the early stages of rigor and moralization when no one anticipated a vicious salary cut and an unprecedented devaluation of the FCFA including the emergence of Ni John Fru Ndi and the Social Democratic Front. Civil servants regularly told those in the private sector that “after all my salary is passing”. From what we now know, neither these Cameroon government media gurus nor the super editors have been charged for deceiving the Cameroonian people.

The celebration of the coming of the IMF’s privatization has continued ever since. So today we can sing with pride of the collapse of the Cameroon Shipping Lines, Cameroon Airlines, Cameroon Bank, Cameroon Railway Company, Cameroon Aluminum Company (CELLUCAM), the Public Works Department, Cameroon Transport Company (SOTUC), the Cameroon Cotton Company (SODECOTTON), Preventive Medicine Department, Produce Marketing Board, Chantier Naval, the CDC, SOCAPALM etc

The Supreme Court has been replaced with the Special Criminal Court. French speaking state counsels and judges with no mastery of the English language are being appointed to head courts in Anglophone Cameroon. Cameroonian prosecutors turned up in court because of fear for their jobs. Nationally, the arrest of highly placed government officials has been greeted with cold-hearted intolerance from rightwing CPDM politicians – several of whom say they got what they deserved for embezzling state funds.

The truth is all too clear. Who is responsible for the collapse of Cameroon as a nation? Some of the very politicians like Garga Haman Adji, Fru Ndi, Maigari Bello Bouba, Jean Jacque Ekindi, Diakolle Daisalla, Akoteh, Dr Aka Muan, lawyers and journalists who championed the cause of democracy and the rule of law against the Biya dictatorship. Now they support, or fail to speak up against anything about the Yaounde regime. Where is the movement that was seeking justice for Captain Guerandi? Where is the Union for Change? Where is the real UPC that represented the late Um Nyobe and Dr Felix Moumie? Where is Laakam? Where is the Anglophone National Congress? Where is the SDF? Where is the SCNC?

In a nation where laws are widely abused to settle personal scores and to discriminate against minorities, no answer is needed. Any anti Biya official can be sent to jail and yet Europeans and US diplomats are busy romancing with this consortium of CPDM crime syndicates operating in Yaounde, the nation’s capital. The French can free anyone sentenced in Cameroon and they are making a mockery of our already poor and corrupt judiciary system.

Former barons of the regime have spent years in Cameroon’s most hellish prisons some in solitary confinement. Amnesty International reported today Thursday the 14th of July 2016 that more than 1000 people are being detained in a prison facility in Maroua meant for 350 persons. Many have been killed while awaiting trial.

Cameroon now has two specific problems: what to do with an 83 years old frail leader and a government that has no succession plan. But Cameroon also has surely larger problems. Every time a Cameroonian civil servant, radio and television commentators, lawyers, judges, politicians, human rights activists, the business community and the clergy appease the leadership of the ruling CPDM party, the social space occupied by them grows widely. The only solution left is for us to sell Cameroon and share the money. If it does not work for you with money after the sale, former Cameroonian citizens will of course have the resources to relocate in other countries such as Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Nigeria, and Ghana and why not in the West.

The very slow and agonized fissuring of the state of Cameroon is to be measured not only in the arrests of senior government officials and Biya’s continued stay in power, nor only by entertainment coming from Brenda Biya and her mum, Chantal Biya. It can be measured, too, by a moral collapse and a cowed ambivalence of the silent majority. Those who are too frightened to confront the West backed Biya crime syndicate today will find themselves being consumed by it tomorrow. Inoni, Marafa, Mebara who is next? But before that happens, it will be good that we sell the country and share the money.

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai (Cameroon Concord News Group)

President Assad of Syria: “History will remember me as a ruler who defended the territorial integrity of his country”

14, July 2016

President Assad of Syria: “History will remember me as a ruler who defended the territorial integrity of his country” 0

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad says he will be remembered in history as a ruler who defended the territorial integrity of his country in the face of foreign-sponsored militancy. “I hope that history will see me as the man who protected his country, from the terrorism and from the intervention, and saved its sovereignty,” he told NBC News television network in an exclusive interview to be broadcast on Thursday. He added, “When you protect your country from the terrorists, and you kill terrorists, and you defeat terrorists, you’re not brutal. You are a patriot.”

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. UN special envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura estimates that over 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict. The UN has stopped its official casualty count in Syria, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources. While most European countries have been voicing opposition to the government of President Assad, some of them are gradually making a shift in their policies as they realize the importance of Damascus’ efforts in fighting terrorism.

No Putin proposition of transition 

In the interview, Assad also said Russian President Vladimir Putin has never talked to him about leaving power, despite pressure from Washington for the Syrian president to step down. “They never said a single word regarding this,” Assad said when asked whether Putin or Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had talked to him about a political transition in Syria.

Assad also said he is not concerned that Putin and US Secretary of State John Kerry, who travels to Moscow Thursday, will make a deal that would force him from power. “Because their politics, I mean, the Russian politics, is not based on making deals. It’s based on values,” Assad said. Kerry is heading on Thursday for his third visit to Moscow this year to resume Syria peace talks.

Despite appearing increasingly at odds over the way forward, Russia and the US are nominally co-chairs of international efforts to end the conflict in Syria. Foreign-backed militant groups abandoned the last UN-brokered talks in Geneva in April after declaring a new war against the Syrian government.

US foreign policy

The Syrian president further played down the lack of foreign policy experience of presumptive US Republican nominee Donald Trump, stating that neither the incumbent US President Barack Obama nor his predecessors George W. Bush and Bill Clinton had such a capability.

“Who had this experience before? Obama? Or George Bush? Or Clinton before? None of them had any experience,” he said. “This is the problem with the United States. You have to look for a statesman who has real experience in politics for years. Not because, to have position in Congress for few years, or minister of foreign affairs, for example, that doesn’t help you have the experience,” Assad pointed out.

 

Presstv

 

Chantal Biya says she will return to Cameroon if General Ivo Yenwo, Martin Belinga Eboutou and Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh are sacked

14, July 2016

Chantal Biya says she will return to Cameroon if General Ivo Yenwo, Martin Belinga Eboutou and Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh are sacked 13

First Lady, Chantal Biya has reportedly set certain conditions for her return to Cameroon. She has been absent from the country for three months now and all attempts by her husband, President Biya who has been incessantly flashing out signals for her to come to him, Cameroon Concord News has now gathered that the youthful first lady has tabled  a number of requirements to her illustrious husband so she can return to Cameroon.

A source at the presidency of the republic hinted that Chantal Biya fervently believes it is urgent and beneficial to infuse new energy around the elderly statesman. We learnt she has even gone further by suggesting a list of those who have to be giving matching orders among them Martin Belinga Eboutou, Minister Director of the Civil Cabinet of the President of the Republic. The first lady also asked her husband to sack General Ivo Desancio, Director of presidential security and the current Secretary General at the Presidency of the Republic, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh.

Sama Ernest (Cameroon Concord News Group)

Amnesty International says 6 to 8 people die every month in the Maroua Central prison

14, July 2016

Amnesty International says 6 to 8 people die every month in the Maroua Central prison 0

The latest Amnesty International report on Cameroon released this Thursday, July 14, 2016 shows an alarming situation of human rights violation. Amnesty International say prisoners’ detention conditions are deplorable. The report hinted that over 1,000 people were arbitrarily arrested and are held in appalling conditions, and dozens of them die from an illness, malnutrition or torture by law enforcement operations targeting captured Boko Haram militants.

The Amnesty International report singled out the situation in the Maroua prison and reported that more than 1000 people accused of supporting Boko Haram are currently being held in extremely overcrowded and unsanitary prisons, where malnutrition is rife. The authoritative human rights organization revealed that the Penitentiary Maroua prison records each month six to eight deaths.

Amnesty warned that  water is not sufficient in many of the detention centers and added that even  the construction of new cells in the Maroua prison has failed to alleviate the sufferings of nearly 1 500 people held in a building meant for 350.

Rita Akana (Cameroon Concord News Group)

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