Monthly Archives: November 2017

8, November 2017

Southern Cameroonian killed in Bafut checkpoint attack named ⁰

Janet Ngwafor has been named as the Ambazonian civilian victim of the attack on the gendarmerie checkpoint in Bafut. She died at a military hospital in the Bamenda County late yesterday.

She succumbed to her wounds inflicted by a bullet on Tuesday night in Bafut. In this attack, two gendarmes were also killed making a total of three deaths in this incident attributed to Southern Cameroons militants who in recent days are multiplying attacks against Francophone law enforcement officers.

In its latest report published last October, the International Crisis Group called on French Cameroun political authorities and international partners to find “strong” measures to prevent the birth of armed insurgency in Southern Cameroons. Speaking on the Southern Cameroons Television, Prof. Carlson Anyangwe blamed the Bafut attack on forces loyal to the Biya Francophone regime and called on the UN to investigate the killings.

Beyond the electoral issues pending the 2018 presidential elections, the sporadic violence of recent months and communications in social networks have shown that Ambazonians are bracing up for an armed struggle.

By Sonne Peter, CCN

8, November 2017

Ambazonian elected Chairperson of the Executive Committee of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association ⁰

An Ambazonian serving as deputy speaker of the national assembly of La Republique du Cameroun, Emilia Monjowa Lifaka has been elected as the next chairperson of the executive committee of Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) for the next three years.

Lifaka got 107 votes out of 192 in the election held at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre on Tuesday.

The other candidates for the CPA chairperson were Niki Raffle, speaker of Cook Islands, Pacific got 70 votes while Shirly M Osborne, MLA of Montserrat, got 17 votes.

All three candidates who contested for the chairperson post were female. CPA secretary general Akbar Khan announced the results of the election.

8, November 2017

Message to Ambaland: Catalonia on standstill amid pro-independence protests ⁰

Catalonia has been brought to a standstill as hundreds of pro-independence protesters blocked the main roads and halted transportation in the Spanish region.

On Wednesday, crowds blocked roads in the regional capital of Barcelona and caused heavy traffic jams on the highways leading to the regional capital. They also brought to a halt the high-speed train service in the region.

Holding Catalonia’s flags and banners, which read “Free political prisoners,” protesters also broke into police lines and gathered in front of Catalan and local government buildings in Barcelona.

Across the region, schools were closed, roads were blocked, and trains ran on a reduced service.

Catalans block a highway near Sitges, during a general strike, on November 8, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The general strike was called by pro-independence groups and the CSC trade union to protest the imprisonment of members of Catalonia’s ousted government, which used to be headed by Carles Puigdemont.

The biggest labor unions, CCOO and UGT, said they did not support the strike but would hold protests outside their workplaces.

Pro-independence civil organizations ANC and Omnium as well as students are expected to take to the streets throughout the day.

The Spanish central government sacked Puigdemont and dissolved the regional parliament after legislators passed an independence declaration on October 27. It has called early elections to be held on December 21 to replace the sacked regional government.

Two secessionist parties fail to form coalition

Meanwhile, Catalonia’s two main secessionist parties have so far failed to form an alliance to contest the snap regional elections.

The two main secessionist parties, Puigdemont’s PDeCAT and the ERC Party, could not resolve differences that emerged after a declaration of independence last month.

“It has been impossible to form a joint list and we will therefore have to create a joint front from various candidacies,” said ERC lawmaker Sergi Sabria in a statement.

Protesters block the nudo de la Trinidat access road to Barcelona, November 8, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

On Tuesday, Puigdemont called on Catalonia’s political groups to unite against Madrid.

“The ideal would be a broad regional list of parties… that stand for democracy and freedom,” he said.

The ousted leader said that he might be in jail by the time of the elections, “but prison doesn’t deprive anyone of legitimacy.”

On Sunday, Puigdemont turned himself in to Belgian police. Spain had issued an arrest warrant against him on charges of rebellion and sedition. A Belgian judge, however, released him and four of his former ministers on bail.

Source: Presstv

8, November 2017

Gunmen kill 11 traders in Nigeria ⁰

Gunmen have killed at least 11 traders in central Nigeria, police said Wednesday, in the latest violence in the region, which has been hit by decades of ethnic and sectarian strife.

The traders were returning from a rural market in the Riyom district of Plateau state when they were ambushed by “unknown assailants” on Tuesday, said police spokesman Tyopev Terna.

“Eleven people who were returning from a weekly village market in Makera village were shot dead at about 7:30 pm (1830 GMT) yesterday”, he told AFP.

Four other traders were injured in the attack, which happened some 30 kilometers (19 miles) south of the state capital, Jos, heh added.

An investigation has been launched to establish the motive for the attack and to identify the victims, who are believed to be from the Fulani ethnic group.

Plateau state lies in Nigeria’s so-called Middle Belt that separates the predominantly Muslim north from the largely Christian south.

It has long been a hotbed of ethnic, sectarian and religious tensions between indigenous Christian farming communities and the Muslim settler Hausa/Fulani cattle herders.

Tensions typically boil over into tit-for-tat violence over access to land and resources, and the struggle for political control.

Riyom district has been hit by waves of violence between farmers and herders.

A camel herder crosses Yobe river, which separates Nigeria from Niger, on the outskirts of the town of Damasak in North East Nigeria, April, 25 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Last month two people were killed in Jol village in the area after a young herder’s body was found nearby. The cattle drivers were blamed.

At least 29 were killed in an attack targeting people sheltered in a rural primary school in nearby Bassa district.

The attack was apparently in revenge for the death of six Fulani herders who were killed by unidentified assailants in the area.

(Source: AFP)

8, November 2017

Ambazonians urge to form self-defence groups against occupation forces ⁰

Tension is reportedly mounting in many counties in Southern Cameroons ever since the Governing Council renamed the territory as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Cameroon Concord News has learned that representatives of the Governing Council are urging locals to form self-defence groups against the “occupation forces”, after the government deployed thousands of soldiers to the various states.

A gendarmerie officer was killed while pursuing Southern Cameroons militants who attacked a school in Jakairi in the Bui County.

“Suspected Ambazonian militants gunned down a gendarme on (Monday) in Jakiri,” a town in the Ambazonia’s northwest, a source close to local authorities said, an account confirmed by the Biya Francophone government. “They killed him with the officer’s own gun,” the sourced added.

Gendarmes were in pursuit when the officer found himself cut off and encircled by the attackers in a forest, the source said. Citizens of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia say they suffer inequality and discrimination, and last month the interim head of state, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe issued a symbolic declaration of independence which was met with a French Cameroun government crackdown.

International monitors say the Southern Cameroons conflict has created a refugees crisis in the Cross River State in Nigeria. At least 255 people have been killed in clashes since late September, but those figures are disputed by the government of the 84 year old President Paul Biya.

By Chi Prudence Asong, CCN

8, November 2017

UK: Prince Charles’s offshore investment revealed ⁰

New documents have revealed that British Prince Charles’s private estate invested hugely in an offshore firm that lobbied to alter deals on climate change.

Leaks from the newly-released Paradise Papers indicated that the Prince of Wales’s private estate, the Duchy of Cornwall, invested millions of pounds in offshore funds and companies to change climate agreements and allow “carbon credits” from rain forests to be traded.

Reports said the investment was regarded as highly sensitive and members of the estate had been sworn to secrecy about the Prince’s involvement.

This comes as the Prince of Wales has long been a vocal speaker on the issue of climate change, making speeches and writing books on the environment since the 1980s.

The main purpose of the Duchy of Cornwall is funding the “public, charitable and private activities of the Prince of Wales and his family.”

Some 53,000 hectares of land in 23 counties belong to the Prince of Wales’s private estate, with latest accounts showing it had assets of 913 million pounds in April.

Many of the leaked documents reveal how politicians, multinationals, celebrities and high-net-worth individuals use complex structures of trusts, foundations and shell companies to protect their cash from tax officials or hide their dealings behind a veil of secrecy.

The Paradise Papers also revealed that about 10 million pounds of the private funds of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth were placed in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda.

The tax evasion controversy adds to the debate on the Queen’s income that is estimated at around 100 million dollars for 2017.

Source: Presstv

8, November 2017

President Trump says he never knew there were so many countries ⁰

US President Donald Trump has candidly revealed his ignorance of geography and international politics, saying he never knew there were “so many countries” until he was elected president.

Trump dropped the clangor while delivering a speech to Japanese dignitaries on the first leg of his Asian tour on Monday, admitting that he had been unaware of the number of countries in the world until he became president and received congratulatory phone calls from world leaders over his election victory.

The US president also referred to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe by his first name as he was recounting how he first became acquainted with the premier during a meeting in New York in November last year, just over a week after his surprise election win.

“So my relationship with Shinzo got off to quite a rocky start because I never ran for office, and here I am. But I never ran, so I wasn’t very experienced. And after I had won, everybody was calling me from all over the world. I never knew we had so many countries,” Trump said.

US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe review an honor guard during a welcome ceremony at Akasaka State Guest House in Tokyo on November 6, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

The businessman-turned politician continued to explain how inexperienced and ill-informed he had been when he assumed the office, once again proving his incompetence for the post of presidency.

“I didn’t know you were supposed to not see world leaders until after you were in office which was January 20th,” he said.

“You were just not supposed to because it was considered bad form. It was not a nice thing to do and I understand that from the standpoint of the president whose place you were taking,” Trump added. The US president’s offhand comments in Japan went viral on social media and faced massive outrage and mockery.

Trump’s visit to Japan was part of a 12-day Asian tour aimed at urging the international community to place maximum pressure on North Korea over its nuclear and missiles program. On his five-nation Asia tour, the US president will also visit South Korea, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Source: Presstv

7, November 2017

Biya fires top French Cameroun diplomats ⁰

President Biya has signed a decree today, Tuesday the 7^th of November 2017, appointing new officials in almost all embassies of La Republique du Cameroun. New ambassadors and high commissioners have been appointed to Cameroon’s diplomatic missions in Belgium, Russia, Nigeria, the United States, Canada, Germany and many other countries, as well as on the African continent.

In the Biya decree, we also note the arrival of new Consulate Generals in Paris and Marseille. In the same text, the 84 year old dictator retired several diplomats. In a typical CPDM pattern, Biya appointed the wife of Prof. Maurice Kamto, the leader of the MRC opposition party as Inspector General in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It should be noted that this Tuesday’s decree came in a context in which Canada and Great Britain had called for Cameroonian diplomats to be recalled to Yaounde. Cameroon diplomats were accused either of sedentarisation or of activities contrary to their status. In Britain, the authorities openly accused Cameroonian diplomats in London of drug trafficking and feeding a network of illegal immigration.

By Eyong Johnson, CCN

7, November 2017

Ambazonians Have a Fundraising Problem ⁰

The momentum is all on Ambazonia’s side. President Biya and his gang of Francophone political elites are historically unpopular. The Ambazonia political base is angry and activated, with regular mass protests and the killing of a gendarme all testifying to the seriousness of the Southern Cameroons resistance. The ruling CPDM crime syndicate has been banned in Southern Cameroons and above all, listed as a terrorist organization. Consequently, it is widely expected that French Cameroun opposition will make gains in the 2018 presidential elections, and that Biya himself will face an extremely tough re-election battle and may end up in exile. But by some strange happenstance this momentum has not translated into the currency that matters most in every liberation struggle: cold, hard cash.

The Governing Council of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has a fundraising problem and it is lagging far behind its French Cameroun counterpart which is the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime that still has complete and total control of Southern Cameroons oil revenue and the Bakassi oil and gas fields.

The main difference is that La Republique du Cameroun has a sitting head of state that runs the nation as a private estate and who can drive huge-dollar donations from the French government, the French dominated International Monetary Fund and rich European corporations. Any African dictator heading a consortium of crime syndicates such as the one headquartered in Yaoundé is an ATM machine. That’s something that Ambazonians and their Governing Council don’t have right now. But Southern Cameroonians are also presiding over a fractured and scattered resistance regime, which the international community thinks they are divided in terms of both tactics and priorities.

There is no denying that the many Southern Cameroonian groups in the USA have contributed immensely to the struggle. But by providing Ambazonians a leader and a political base in Nigeria, SCACUF has done what Napoleon left undone for the West Cameroon resistance. The Nigerian structure is what the struggle had been missing over the years and what the Governing Council is sorely missing now is the North American group, who proved to be an especially talented force ever since the revolution started.

With the declaration of independence and the creation of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, His Excellency President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his French Cameroun counterpart, Paul Biya are roughly neck-in-neck overall in various diplomatic push. The quest for attention by some Southern Cameroons leaders in the Diaspora has frustrated many Ambazonians, who see Biya’s health issues, his sinking favorability and stalled Francophone agenda and wonder why Ambazonians can’t take advantage of that and stay united in the Ambazonia struggle.

Some are spending precious time raining attacks on the Governing Council and have argued that Southern Cameroonians can wage the liberation war “together differently”. Mindful of the present difficulties confronting Southern Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria. Considering that the overall levels of cash swimming around La Republique and the Governing Council are not similar and that the Ambazonian Governing Council has more issues to deal with before the 2018 presidential elections and beyond, there is an urgent need for every Southern Cameroonian group to rally behind the Head of State of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. Southern Cameroonians back home including the thousands that have left the homeland to neighboring Nigeria have been incessantly flashing out signals that the Anglophone Diaspora doesn’t stand for much other than opposing Biya.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon Concord News Group

7, November 2017

La Republique: Far North inhabitants fear escalating Boko Haram incursions as troops leave for Ambazonia ⁰

At least seven people have been killed in the Far North region of French Cameroun in the space of three days, in several attacks attributed to the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram. Cameroon Concord News gathered that in Bogo, a small locality in the Diamaré constituency, a rich merchant was killed on the night of Thursday, November 2, 2017, by unidentified men.

According to security sources, three men aboard a motorcycle shot the merchant at close range in his home. The militants did not take anything from his residence. On the night of 4th November, 3 people were also killed in Mahola, a town located in the Mayo-Sava Division, just over 30 km from Mora, targeted by Islamist armed incursions. Before disappearing, the attackers took away cattle and 8 motorcycles. The attackers arrived on board motorcycles and fired shots.

The French Cameroun security forces have always attributed these murders to Boko Haram fighters. Troops have been withdrawn from the Far North region and deployed to Southern Cameroons leaving the inhabitants vulnerable to attacks coming in from neighboring Nigeria.

By Sonne Peter, CCN