Monthly Archives: September 2018

Another Rwanda is silently playing out in Cameroon and the AU is doing nothing

9, September 2018

Another Rwanda is silently playing out in Cameroon and the AU is doing nothing 0

For close to two years, the situation in Southern Cameroons has continued to deteriorate and nobody, not even the government, believes that it is time to change course.

The killings have continued on both sides, but the government still holds that a swift military victory is possible before the presidential election that will take place next month. The hardship in the two English-speaking regions of the country has increased exponentially over the last year and all what is on the minds of government authorities is keeping the people in check.

Yaoundé authorities seem to be frozen in time. In other places, the rule is for dialogue to ensure that things do not deteriorate, but ever since the conflict started, the government has kept on insisting on using an iron fist instead of an olive branch.

Many analysts are wondering when the killing and madness will come to an end. They hold that a different approach could have produced different results and this issue could have been laid to rest a long time ago.

The little infrastructure the two regions possess is deteriorating on a daily basis as both parties do what they can to prove that they have an upper hand. Today, the road leading to Bamenda from East Cameroon has been destroyed by Southern Cameroonian fighters and this is going to cost the region a huge fortune.

Many people agree that Southern Cameroonians have suffered a lot, but the killing of fellow Southern Cameroonians by Ambazonian fighters and the willful destruction of roads and other economic infrastructure has left many people wondering.

Some observers are calling for those in charge of the fighters on the ground to take a second look at their strategies.  The burning and destruction of scarce infrastructure is clearly affecting innocent civilians and it is calling into question the objective of those who are committing this act.

The prime suspects in this are usually the Amba boys. It is believed that they want to wreak as much havoc as possible in order to bring the government to the negotiating table. But there are also some doubts as the government has been caught several times in the act of destruction in order to wreak havoc on innocent people.

Many people have been asking lots of questions. First of all, why would Amba boys commit such an act on a Sunday morning? Why would Real Amba Boys Attack travelers and make themselves hated as the Cameroon Army whose modus Operandi has always been to disrupt movement  in fake claims of checking and enforcing security?

However, while these acts must be strongly condemned, the condemnation should be put in perspective. These extreme measures by the fighters are a reflection of the people’s frustration with a regime that has for long despised its own people.

Ever since the crisis started, many eminent people across the world have called on the government to change its strategy but the president of the country, Paul Biya, and his collaborators still see military action as the only option and this is what is causing the escalation.

The devil seems to be at work in Cameroon. Power and money have caused the government to lose its decency. In normal environments, peace talks will be going on to avert the worst. In Cameroon, that is not happening. Even when the country’s economy is taking the heat, the Yaoundé regime still holds that it can only crush opposition by force.

Many state corporations are going under because of this conflict, but the regime is still not changing its position.

PAMOL, CDC and SONARA located in Southern Cameroons are all facing tough times and many employees of these corporations have lost their jobs as a result. But this is not cutting ice with the government.

When is the government going to figure out that dialogue can produce more results than military action? When will it know that innocent civilians are being killed for crimes they have not committed?

When will it understand that to live in peace with other people, it must not use brute force?  Why has the government taken a position that is not tenable? The more it wants to destroy the fighters, the more the fighters want to prove that they can stand the test.

These extreme positions are not helping anybody. A shift in thinking and mentality could bring about peace and unity instead of military action. Cameroon is on the brink. The devil is at work in Cameroon. Many lives have been ruined. Many young men and soldiers have been rushed to an early grave.

Many people have been displaced and the suffering in Southern Cameroons is gradually spreading to East Cameroons as the number of displaced people increases by leaps and bounds.

The world cannot continue to play spectator to a situation that is resulting in thousands of deaths. Another Rwanda is silently playing out in Cameroon and the AU is doing nothing to check this madness that is being encouraged by the government.

Cameroon needs help. The world has to come in to stop the blood flow. The country is heading to the bottom of the abyss and if something is not done, the entire sub-region will be destabilized.

By Kingsley Betek


Turkey urges nations to form united front against US

9, September 2018

Turkey urges nations to form united front against US 0

Turkey has called on world nations to form a united front against the US which has imposed sanctions on Ankara, a close ally of Washington in the Middle East.

Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak said US President Donald Trump is using sanctions and tariffs to sabotage the economy of other countries.

“It is clearly in the interest of most countries to cooperate in resisting unilateral economic decisions by powerful actors that are motivated by narrowly defined national interests,” he wrote in an article published on the Foreign Policy magazine.

“By acting together with Turkey now, other countries can also help it create a common strategy to avoid artificial crises in the future,” read the article titled America Can’t Be Trusted to Run the Global Economy.

Turkey’s Treasury and Finance Minister Berat Albayrak looks on during a press conference in Ankara on August 29, 2018. (Photo by AFP)

 

The US has imposed sanctions on two Turkish ministers and doubled steel and aluminum tariffs, which have led to a sharp decline in Turkey’s currency.

Washington took the punitive measures in protest at Ankara’s detention of American Pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been accused of having links with terror organizations in Turkey.

The lira has fallen more than 40 percent against the dollar this year, driving up the cost of food and fuel and sending inflation soaring to 18 percent, its highest in a decade and a half.

To put a floor under the lire, the government ordered exporters last week to convert 80 percent of their foreign exchange revenue into lira. Turkey’s exports totaled $157 billion last year, according to official data.

In his article, Albayrak said the chaos which has afflicted financial markets has nothing to do with economic fundamentals, adding the turmoil has been driven by Washington.

Last week, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan lashed out at the US for behaving like “wild wolves,” saying Ankara would pursue non-dollar transactions in trade with Russia, Iran and other countries.

Governor of the Central Bank of Iran said on Saturday the Islamic Republic, Russia, and Turkey had agreed on a number of economic measures like removing the US dollar from their mutual transactions.

The agreement was made on the sidelines of a key trilateral summit on Syria held in Tehran on Friday and attended by Iranian, Russian and Turkish presidents.

Last month, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Moscow was stepping up efforts to abandon the US currency in its transactions with other countries.

“The time has come when we need to go from words to actions and get rid of the dollar as a means of mutual settlements and look for other alternatives,” Ryabkov said.

Like Iran and Turkey, Russia has been slapped with sanctions by the United States, prompting retaliatory measures by Moscow.

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei told President Vladimir Putin on Friday that US sanctions against Russia, Iran and Turkey create a strong common ground for expanding cooperation, including trade without using the US dollar.

The Russian president said the Americans are making a “major strategic error” by restricting financial transactions for short-term political gains as this will eventually diminish trust in the dollar and weaken the currency.

Source: Presstv


Philippines: 2 Cameroon nationals in ‘black dollar’ scam arrested

9, September 2018

Philippines: 2 Cameroon nationals in ‘black dollar’ scam arrested 0

If an offer is too good to be true, most probably it’s a scam. A Quezon City businessman almost fell victim to a “black dollar” scam offering to triple his money.

But operatives of the National Capital Region Police Office-Regional Special Operations Unit (NCRPO-RSOU) arrested the perpetrators—two Cameroon nationals and a Filipino woman in Makati City on Thursday night.

The suspects—Samuel Djumba, 47; Patian Libukan, 36, both from Cameroon but temporarily staying at a condominium in Mandaluyong; and Sarah Miranda, 47, of Caloocan—were caught in an entrapment operation inside Room 2615 of City Garden Grand Hotel, at the corner of Makati  and Kalayaan Avenues in Makati City at 8:55 p.m.

The 53-year-old businessman filed a complaint against the suspects after he smelled fraud when the suspects promised to triple his money if he could produce $50,000. Like other black dollar schemes, the suspects told him they had piles of dollar bills stored in a safe but were dyed with black ink to avoid detection by authorities. They then asked him to pay for fees to clear it from customs and to buy chemicals that could wash the dye off, and promised to get a 50-percent share from the total proceeds.

Source: Inquirer


Francophone soldiers kill four Southern Cameroons civilians in Ekona

9, September 2018

Francophone soldiers kill four Southern Cameroons civilians in Ekona 0

Cameroon government forces have reportedly killed a man and his three sons in Ekona some few miles from Buea the capital of the Southern Zone in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Troops loyal to the Biya Francophone regime carried out the massacre on Friday evening as the family were returning from the farm. Our correspondent in the Fako County gathered from local sources that the late Bezeng Jonas who moonlighted as the Secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Ekona and his three sons were shot by Francophone soldiers.

Their remains were abandoned beside their family vehicle by the soldiers fighting Southern Cameroons separatists in the area. It is more than a year since the start of the French Cameroun military campaign in Southern Cameroons, but that is unlikely to be an occasion for celebration in Yaoundé. Cameroon Intelligence Report sources have all opined that the war has created several military and CPDM billionaires and is estimated to have cost the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime billions of FCFA.

Correspondingly, the Southern Cameroons war has eroded the international image of the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon and failed to achieve its objectives of containing the Ambazonian revolution and quest for an independent state.  At the same time, the people of Southern Cameroons have suffered immensely from the French-backed French Cameroun military campaign, which has claimed the lives of some 2000 Southern Cameroonians, destroyed Ambazonian towns and villages and has led to widespread disease and hunger.

By Sama Ernest in Buea


Southern Cameroons War: Women protest abuses

9, September 2018

Southern Cameroons War: Women protest abuses 0

Hundreds of women gathered for an angry protest in Cameroon on Friday against abuses committed in months of fighting between the government and Anglophone separatists.

With some singing, weeping, crying out or praying, the women described the rapes of their daughters and killings of family members as civilians are caught in the crossfire. Nearly 200,000 people have fled.

The women who gathered in a stadium in Bamenda city in the heart of the conflict called for an urgent dialogue on peace. They say they want to leave their homes and go without fear to the market and fields as before. They say they cannot remain silent and want to denounce what they call a dirty war.

The unrest in the southwest and northwest is a major issue as largely French-speaking Cameroon faces elections in October, with 85-year-old President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, running again.

The unrest that began in 2016 with teachers and lawyers demanding respect for the regions’ English education and justice systems led to a government crackdown and the emergence of armed separatists seeking an English-speaking state.

Tensions rose further in Bamenda on Thursday when a headmaster and three teachers were kidnapped by armed men.

“We are calling on the powers that be that women want peace,” said a protest organizer, Adah Mbah. “We do not have any hidden agenda anywhere. We are tired. For more than two years, we cannot be quiet.”

Many women at the protests carried leafy branches of so-called peace plants. Others clutched rosaries or dressed in black. They sat on the ground.

“The women are the ones mourning. The women are the ones managing their homes … they are struggling in all ways to survive,” said another organizer, Akouoh Aline. “We want our leaders to see our pain.”

In July, then-United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was deeply alarmed by reports of abuses in the southwest and northwest. Human rights groups have accused both the government and separatists of abuses including torture and the burning of homes.

The government has condemned separatist attacks and defended its security forces, saying all alleged atrocities are investigated.

AP


Angola’s former president steps down as party chief after 4-decade rule

8, September 2018

Angola’s former president steps down as party chief after 4-decade rule 0

Angola’s former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has handed his position as the leader of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (PMLA) party to incumbent President Joao Lourenco after more than four decades of political rule.

Dos Santos handed the PMLA leading position to Lourenco in an official ceremony at the party headquarters in the Angolan capital of Luanda on Saturday.

The 76-year-old veteran politician marked the ceremony by addressing the crowd, “Today, with my head up, I leave and pass on the baton to comrade Joao Lourenco,” marking the two men’s long-lived party affiliation.

The PMLA was born fighting against the Portuguese colonial rule over the country, gaining Angolan independence in 1975. The party dominated the Angolan political scene ever since, defeating other rival anti-colonial parties over the course of a bloody and prolonged civil war that lasted for over 26 years.

President Lourenco had served as defense minister under dos Santos’ presidency.

The announcement of dos Santos stepping down as party leader was not unprecedented. The former president had declared his intent to do so many times before, ultimately declaring in 2016 that he would resign in two years.

After dos Santos’ presidential tenure ended in 2017, the PMLA chief handpicked Lourenco as president, ending speculation on his successor. Many observers had speculated that the outgoing president was seeking to appoint a puppet, one that would preserve the lucrative business and political monopoly dos Santos had built up for his family.

The incumbent president has, however, shown himself as an independent leader, depriving many of the previous president’s affiliates of their positions, hoping to stifle corruption and ensure economic stability for foreign investors.

“Lourenco is already entirely autonomous as shown by his sacking of the dos Santos children, all of the country’s sectors have been purged,” said Benjamin Auge, an analyst with the French Institute for International Relations.

The firing of the former president’s daughter Isabel dos Santos from heading the state-owned oil company Sonangol by Lourenco is among the most important instances of the new president reining in on dos Santos’ economic monopoly.

The dos Santos resignation as PMLA leader signals a smooth handover of power in the country, leaving Lourenco in full power of state institutions.

Angola, a member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), is Africa’s second largest oil exporter after Nigeria. The country’s economy fell into recession in 2016 with the unemployment rate reaching 25 percent. Despite being one of Africa’s richest states per capita, Angola remains one of the world’s most unequal countries with much of its population living in poverty.

Source: Presstv


Efforts to stop Congo’s Ebola outbreak yield mixed results

8, September 2018

Efforts to stop Congo’s Ebola outbreak yield mixed results 0

Health workers trying to control the Ebola outbreak in the city of Beni, in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), have met resistance and hostility from residents who refuse to accept their city has been hit by the virus.

Yet the Health Ministry has identified Beni as the new flashpoint and two people who died in Butembo, just over 50 km from Beni and an important trading hub, have been confirmed Ebola cases.

The Ebola death in Butembo, a city of almost a million on the border with Uganda, dampened hopes that the spread of the disease was close to being brought under control. Butembo straddles a major trading route for consumer goods entering Congo from East Africa and for Congolese exports of artisanal gold, coltan, timber and other materials to East African ports via Uganda.

Taxi drivers plying the Beni-Butembo route have a different opinion about the epidemic, claiming they would have been the ones to have been infected as they always meet and mix with both Beni and Butembo residents.

“We hear people talking about Ebola but we have never seen anyone suffering from it. I am a resident of Beni and I don’t think there is Ebola”, said Moses Tekela, a taxi driver.

Some areas close to the epicentre of the outbreak, which is believed to have killed 89 people since July and infected another 40, have been off-limits to health workers due to their proximity to rebel-controlled territory. Most have been in villages but about 20 cases have been in Beni, a city of several hundred thousand people with close links to Uganda.

Unlike the taxi drivers, teachers in Beni fear the worst and many have stayed away from schools due to start after the summer break this week. Parental concern over possible infection also has stopped some pupils from attending classes at the start of the school year.

The health ministry has advised those in high-risk areas to observe strict hygiene rules such as washing their hands before entering supermarkets, schools and other public places.

Health officials say they have made progress slowing the virus’s spread with experimental vaccines and treatments. But they cannot be sure the situation is under control due to difficulties accessing some areas.

Congo has experienced 10 outbreaks of Ebola since it was discovered in the country’s forested north in 1976. The disease causes haemorrhagic fever and kills about half of the people it infects.

Reuters


Obama attacks Trump, Republicans over ‘abuses of power’

8, September 2018

Obama attacks Trump, Republicans over ‘abuses of power’ 0

Former US President Barack Obama has assailed his successor Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers ahead of the upcoming mid-term congressional elections, urging Democrats to curtail the administration’s “abuses of power” and restore a sense of sanity to US politics by voting in November.

In an unusually blistering attack on Trump, Obama said Friday that Americans were living in dangerous times and accused the president and other Republicans of threatening US democracy, dividing the country and undermining Washington’s global alliances.

“In two months we have the chance, not the certainty, but the chance to restore some semblance of sanity to our politics,” he said in a speech at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “There is actually only one check on bad policy and abuses of power, and that’s you and your vote.”

Obama also mocked Trump for taking credit for the recent economic growth that began under Obama’s administration, and said Trump was exploiting economic anger and cultural fears that have grown in recent years amid societal upheavals.

“In the end, the threat to our democracy doesn’t just come from Donald Trump or the current batch of Republicans in Congress,” he said. “The biggest threat to our democracy is indifference. The biggest threat to our democracy is cynicism.”

Trump was dismissive of Obama’s speech. “I’m sorry, I watched it but I fell asleep,” he said during a fundraiser in Fargo, North Dakota. “I found that he’s very, very good for sleeping.”

Other Republicans also shrugged off Obama’s criticism. “In 2016, voters rejected President Obama’s policies and his dismissiveness towards half the country. Doubling down on that strategy won’t work in 2018 either,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Michael Ahrens.

Both major political parties are urging their supporters to vote in the November 6 midterm elections, when Democrats need to gain 23 seats in the House of Representatives and two seats in the Senate to gain majorities in both chambers of Congress and frustrate Trump’s agenda.

The November elections have been seen as a referendum on Trump, who faces a widening federal investigation over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election and growing questions about his fitness for office, even by some within his own administration.

The White House has been shaken by an explosive, anonymous article on The New York Times that has plunged Trump’s presidency into its worst crisis yet.

The unsigned article published Wednesday, claimed that senior US officials were quietly working within the Trump administration to frustrate the president’s “worst inclinations.”

Trump has slammed the “gutless coward” who wrote the article and suggested he might take action against the newspaper.


Cameroon Reopens Schools Threatened by Boko Haram

8, September 2018

Cameroon Reopens Schools Threatened by Boko Haram 0

 

Children at the Government Primary School Limani dance with joy as they meet each other in class for the first time in several years.

Cameroon has re-opened 40 schools on its northern border with Nigeria that were sealed four years ago because of threats from Boko Haram insurgents. But while students are happy returning, many of their teachers are absent and have been replaced by troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force still fighting the Islamist group.

The children’s school in Limani is one of the forty near northern Cameroon’s border with Nigeria that authorities reopened this week, citing improved security.

Cameroon closed around sixty schools in the area beginning in December 2014 because of the threat from Boko Haram.

The Islamist militant group, whose name roughly translates as “non-Islamic education is a sin,” had launched an all-out assault on villages near the Lake Chad area.

Cameroon says hundreds of Boko Haram fighters attacked and torched schools, including the Limani primary school.

Ibrahim Nassourou was nine years old when the school was shut. He and his parents fled to a neighboring village where Nassourou was unable to attend school.

He says when he was told that their school in Limani had been reopened he shouted with joy because he can now again persue an education.

Cameroon authorities are touting the absense of a major Boko Haram attack for the past year and are urging parents to return their children to the re-opened schools. Troops are protecting the schools, they say.

Cameroon Reopens Schools Threatened by Boko Haram
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Cameroon Reopens Schools Threatened by Boko Haram

But parents are reluctant to trust promises of safety. Only about 20 percent of the students have come back.

Teachers are also noticeably absent.

At the Limani Primary School’s Class Five, troops from the Multinational Joint Task Force have traded their weapons for teaching manuals and chalk.

Cameroon-born staff corporal Blaise Fonkon says teaching is part of their social outreach program.

“We have [a] humanitarian line of operation. In that humanitarian line of operation, we have of course the school situation. Through their school, if they actually know what they are supposed to do here, they will be engineers, they will be teachers, they will be doctors and I am sure that they will change this country,” Fonkon said.

Classroom teacher Edison Abunaw says despite assurances of their safety, most of his teaching colleagues do not wish to return.

And between Boko Haram’s attacks and kidnappings, and villagers hiding in fear, he says, the fate of many former students is still not known.

“We used to have about 500 to 600 pupils, but we have about two hundred [now]. Most of the parents, they don’t tell us what happened to their children so we are confronted with situations where we cannot easily explain what happened to the child,” Abunaw said.

Abunaw notes classes only started September 3, so he says it is too early to say if more teachers and students will return.

Cameroon is giving absent teachers two weeks to come back to their jobs.

Mayor of Fotokol town Abouzari Mahamat says the government has promised to rebuild schools that Boko Haram damaged.

He says the engineering corps of the Multinational Joint Task Force, which is fighting Boko Haram, has promised to construct new classes and repair those that were destroyed. Mahamat says, thanks to the presence of the troops, peace is returning and children can now go to school.

But Mahamat acknowledges that reconstruction has been slow because contractors also worry that fighting could return.

VOA


Biya regime, Ambazonian Interim Gov’t Trade Blame for School Attacks, Kidnappings

8, September 2018

Biya regime, Ambazonian Interim Gov’t Trade Blame for School Attacks, Kidnappings 0

A steady flow of relatives, friends and well-wishers have been visiting Martina Afanwi at her home this week in Bamenda, an English-speaking town in Cameroon’s northwest.

They are encouraging the 40-year-old to have faith that her 11-year-old son, who was abducted Monday from the Presbyterian School of Science and Technology, will be found safe.

But Afanwi is worried because Cameroon authorities have yet to inform her of what they are doing to find her son.

“I feel horrible. My heart is bleeding. It’s not normal. Its horrible,” she says. “The government needs to take measures. I think they have been sleeping. Nothing is being done.”

Afanwi’s son is one of six students missing after gunmen attacked the school on September 3, the first day of Cameroon’s school year. The students are presumed kidnapped as they never returned home and no bodies were found.

The school principal was discovered unconscious with machete wounds and lapsed into a coma after being rushed to the hospital.

Cameroon authorities say a head teacher was murdered the same day in the northwestern village of Bamali.

The commander of government troops in the northwest, General Agha Robinson, blames armed separatists, who are seeking an independent, English-speaking state.

“About 837 weapons have been seized. The principal was shot with one of these weapons,” he tells VOA. “We have deployed our soldiers for patrols, we are securing schools, we have also reinforced security in our borders, where ammunition is being imported.”

In social media posts, the separatists denied responsibility for this week’s attacks and alleged kidnappings, instead blaming unspecified government-created armed groups.

“Let it be said loudly and clearly that our forces did not commit any act and they only arrived at the schools after the crimes were committed,” read one separatist posting. “Our forces were instead there to bring order and chase occupational troops from Cameroon.”

Activists like Yah Gladys Viban are calling on both sides to end the conflict.

“We are not name calling, we are not blaming, we are just saying that if we want to build this nation and if we want peace and prosperity for the generations ahead of us, we need to put all the guns down, sit on the table and talk about it. Nothing else will work,” she says.

Most schools in Cameroon’s restive northwest and southwest have been closed since 2016 because of attacks from the separatists.

In August, separatists said they would allow the schools to re-open but without a security guarantee and at a date of their choosing.

Culled from the VOA


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