Monthly Archives: November 2018

5, November 2018

Southern Cameroons: Over 80 people reportedly kidnapped in Bamenda ⁰

Cameroon’s military said on Monday more than 80 people, mostly children, were kidnapped from a school in the city of Bamenda, and located in the Anglophone Northwest region.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the abduction in the English-speaking region where separatists are fighting to form a breakaway state.

The separatists have imposed curfews and closed down schools as part of their protest against President Paul Biya’s French-speaking government. In total 81 people were kidnapped including the principal. They were taken to the bush.

“In total 81 people were kidnapped including the principal. They were taken to the bush,” a military source told Reuters. A government spokesman said it was keeping track of an event but that it could not comment further.

The separatist movement gathered pace in 2017 after a government crackdown on peaceful demonstrations. Many people have fled Bamenda and other centres to seek refuge in more peaceful Francophone regions.

Source: Africa News

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5, November 2018

The Attack on the Cameroon Development Corporation ⁰

Armed groups in Cameroon’s restive English speaking regions have been attacking and chopping off fingers of workers of the country’s second largest employer, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), in what has been described as renewed efforts to destabilize the central African state ahead of the Tuesday inauguration of President-elect Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

Four men and two women were rushed to a government hospital Saturday in the English speaking southwestern town of Tiko. Nurse on duty Stephanie Ako said she is waiting for directives on what should be done.

‘What we have to do now is to clean their wounds and stop blood from oozing out while waiting for doctors and laboratory technicians. They are the ones to decide if the fingers have to be amputated or not, but their lives are not in danger even though some of them have completely fractured phalanges, metacarpal and carpal bones,” she said.

The six are workers on a rubber plantation near Tiko owned by the Cameroon Development Corporation. 27-year old Christopher Ongene said armed men attacked them Saturday evening.

“The people arrived when we were packing our bags and farm tools to leave. One of them shouted, how many times have we asked you not to work here again. Then one of them ordered us to put our hands on tree trunks and they started cutting. Some of our colleagues who wanted to escape were shot,” he said.

Ongene said they were accused of defying instructions from the separatists not to go to work on the farms to protest President Biya’s reelection and his expected inauguration on November 6.

The CDC runs banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations in Cameroon’s troubled southwest and northwest regions. In August the agro-industry said that more than 6,000 of its 20,000 workers had fled sporadic attacks, killings and kidnappings from armed separatists seeking an independent English-speaking state.

Governor Bernard Okalia Bilai of the southwest region said the armed groups aim to create social tension.

He said the military has been deployed to stop the terrorists from attacking workers as part of their strategy to create tension and destroy the regions two main agro-industries, the Cameroon Development Corporation and the Palm Oil Plantations Company. He said besides inflicting wounds and suffering, some workers have been killed, others kidnapped and held hostage and some plantations have been completely destroyed.

Separatist groups had vowed on social media to make the English speaking regions of Cameroon ungovernable. They consider the state-run CDC a legitimate target.

Conflict began in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon in 2016 when teachers and lawyers complained of discrimination from the French-speaking majority in education and the justice system. The government responded with a crackdown and separatists fought back.

Source: VOA

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5, November 2018

US: 30 million vote early in midterm elections ⁰

More than 30 million Americans have cast early ballots ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, eclipsing the 2014 early totals nationally and suggesting a high overall turnout for contests that could define the final two years of President Donald Trump’s term.

At least 28 states have surpassed their 2014 early votes. And perhaps even more indicative of the unusual enthusiasm this midterm cycle, some states are approaching their early turnout from the 2016 presidential election.

Here’s a look at some highlights:

Massive turnout

The 30.6 million ballots includes data from 48 states, with several of those still collecting absentee ballots and welcoming in-person early voters. The total early vote in 2014 was 28.3 million in an election where more than 83 million Americans voted. That was a low turnout (about 36 percent) even by usual standards of a midterm, when there’s an expected drop off from presidential elections.

Forecasters aren’t predicting that overall turnout this year will hit 2016 levels (137.5 million; more than 60 percent of the electorate), but Democratic and Republican analysts, along with independent political scientists, say turnout could approach 50 percent, levels not seen for a midterm since the turbulent 1960s.

Booms in states not used to exciting midterms

It’s one thing to see Virginia more than doubling its 2014 early turnout. Voters there showed their intensity last year in their governor’s race, with record absentee ballot requests and returns and a solid turnout for both parties.

But then there’s Tennessee. The state has settled firmly into Republican-dominated territory. In 2014, there wasn’t a single statewide race that received national attention or a truly competitive House election.

But with an open Senate seat thanks to the retirement of Republican Bob Corker, voters are more than eager this year. Through Thursday, early turnout was 217 percent of what it was in 2014. It’s even approaching early turnout from 2016, at 80 percent of that presidential-year mark.

Several other states with competitive Senate or governor’s races — Texas, Nevada, Georgia, among others — are nearing double the 2014 early totals.

Democrats edging Republicans nationally

In states that require party registration, Democrats have cast 41 percent of the early ballots, compared to 36 percent for Republicans. Party strategists on both sides say they are far exceeding their usual numbers in key locales — urban strongholds for Democrats and more rural counties for Republicans.

A word of caution from prognosticators: The party analysis isn’t always an indicator of final outcomes. There are crossover voters, even in this hyperpartisan era. And there are independents and third-party voters, as well. For the record, those latter groups account for about 23 percent of the ballots in party registration states.

For the scorekeepers, though, Virginia, among the states that doesn’t have party registration, is replicating its 2017 voting boom — and Democrats swept the top offices last year even amid strong GOP turnout.

Young voters in Florida

Trends in Florida’s early voting suggest a surge in young voters, a group that historically has low turnout in midterm cycles.

Of the 124,000 Floridians aged 18 to 29 who had voted in person at early polling stations as of Thursday, nearly a third did not vote in the presidential election in 2016, according to analysis by University of Florida political science professor Daniel Smith. About half of those new voters were newly registered.

“There are newly energized voters who sat out in 2016, or have registered since then, who are turning out. There’s no question about that,” Smith said.

In contrast, for people 65 and older who had voted early and in person, about 7 percent didn’t vote in 2016.

New voters in Georgia

It cannot be said enough: It’s the voters who don’t often participate in midterms who can make the big difference. There’s plenty of evidence that both major parties’ bases are enthusiastic, but a frequent Election Day voter being so excited that they vote early doesn’t change the math.

So candidates like Democrat Stacey Abrams and Republican Brian Kemp in the Georgia governor’s race are keeping their eye on how many non-2014 voters have cast ballots.

An analysis by Georgia-based data analyst Ryan Anderson finds that 36 percent of the 1.8 million early votes in Georgia are new voters. If that held through Election Day, it would be a huge number. Abrams’ campaign believes it would benefit them, though Republicans nationally note that President Donald Trump brought many new voters to the polls in 2016 — and those voters are still “new” midterm voters.

That said, at least in Georgia, the racial and gender breakdown of the new voters bodes well for Abrams, who is trying to spike turnout among nonwhites, women and millennials.

Anderson’s analysis finds that barely more than half of the new voters are white in a state where the GOP wants the white share of the electorate to be push toward the mid-60s. Among the other findings: new female voters outnumber men by more than 70,000.

The bright spot for Kemp: More than half of early votes come from voters over 65 (though that total includes all races), and there is intense turnout in many of the state’s most conservative areas beyond metro Atlanta.

(Source: AP)

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5, November 2018

Prof Kamto’s Victory: A nation in denial ⁰

When he entered the Bakassi affair, he did not demand a contract or fees, he was a CAMEROONIAN

When he risked his life 3 times as part of the trip for the Cameroonian border studies in the context of this case, he was CANEROONIAN

When he brilliantly led the technical delegation to The Hague, which led to a favourable verdict on October 10, 2002, he was a CAMEROONIAN

When he was appointed Minister Delegate to have the same official rank as the Nigerian Chief Negotiator, he was a CAMEROONIAN

When he refuses to be in the government car service and fly in first class, he was seriously Cameroonian.

When he brilliantly managed the negotiations that led to the GREEN TREE agreements, he was a CAMEROONIAN

When he decides to run for the supreme office, to be the Head Of State, one suddenly remembers that he is BAMILÉKÉ, and that despite his competence, his is impeccable and the project of our society and his almost perfect political program, can’t come fruiting because he is BAMILEKE.

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5, November 2018

Shaking off the Surrender Syndrome in Cameroon ⁰

Who still needs proof that the Biya regime corrupts virtually everything it touches? In Cameroon, if you are looking for Justice and truth, by now you know better than to go to court or even to church. Sheer bribery in cash or privileges has rendered the justice apparatus rustier than Tinman in the Wizard of Oz.

Even the mainstream churches who have hitherto claimed to be the conscience of the nation, and who should wield massive influence by the sheer numbers of their following, have been reduced to speaking with forked tongues.

Is it brown envelopes or the fear of reprisals for non-compliance that have made our men of God abandon the side of the truth? Or do they no longer believe their own sermons about the truth that sets us free? What has turned Christ’s dauntless transformers into gutless conformists?

But all is seemingly not lost, what with the existence of remnants like Monsignor Samuel Kleda of the Catholic Episcopal Council, who refuse to be cowed or bought. For his refusal to endorse what he saw as glaring falsehoods in the October 7 poll, one would have renamed him Daniel, if Samuel were not already so strongly anointed.

Like Cardinal Tumi as we once knew him (he is now wrestling with a certain gullibility over the way forward for Southern Cameroon), Kleda appears to be a lone bold voice of integrity in Cameroon’s moral wilderness. The logic of his doubt about the proclaimed results of the October election in Southern Cameroon is not just sound; it is as compelling as the media reports of his statement are shameless. After watching the video of his press pronouncement your heart bled for Cameroon as you followed the disgraceful disparities between private and public media reports of the same incident. And lest you conclude that the dissonance in the voices of the churches is a matter of denomination, Kleda’s own Roman Catholic Church was quick to hatch a new posture on the issue – one that is less critical of the conduct of the election, and hence less likely to step on the regime’s toes. So it seems that instead of uniting the politicians with truth, the Church is letting politicians dismember it, not least along tribal lines.

But Kleda was to be vindicated over the weekend by reports of the military shooting unarmed civilians and burning homes in Nyassoso, a small town in Kupe Muanenguba where It is claimed Biya won 90% of the vote. Maybe people like Minister Elvis Ngole Ngole, local elite by default, can volunteer a plausible reason why his boss would be killing people who had just voted so massively for him.

Under normal circumstances, the Church could justifiably claim the last word in Cameroon, not only by dint of its status as the nation’s divine compass, but also because Cameroon’s population is dominantly Christian, and its key institutions are manned by Christians. But because of its obsequious quibbling it has lost that last word to an individual who moral compass no longer knows the north, that’s if it ever did.

What makes the church’s abdication truly calamitous is that it has created a surrender syndrome. When Cameroonians talk about the way their country is run, they always end up shrugging their shoulders and saying in French, “on va faire comment?” (what shall one do?)

This is the hopelessness that explains the willingness of many young people to undertake the perilous journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean – in the belief that life could not possibly be worse anywhere else.

It is this same desperation and the murderous disposition of the regime that have driven Anglophone separatism to a point of no return, with the vast majority taking a psychological one-way ticket to Ambazonia.

It is the rejection of this “on-va-faire-comment” syndrome that has fired up the droves of young Southern Cameroon restorationist fighters who, with nothing but dane guns and machetes, are standing up to the regime’s armoured cars, AK47s and Zastavas.

It is that same rejection that fuels the mammoth marches in Cameroon’s embassies abroad and the President’s embarrassing encounters with his compatriots protesting against him in Europe and elsewhere in the world.

He may have the force of experience but the people’s experience of inescapable brute force has done to them what it had to do. It has transformed them from hopeless to dauntless.

Seseskou Shey Ebini Christmas

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4, November 2018

UK:Prime Minister May denies Brexit deal reached with all-British customs mechanism ⁰

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s office has dismissed as “speculation” a newspaper report that suggests an all-UK customs deal will be written into the legally binding agreement governing Britain’s withdrawal from the EU.

A spokesman at May’s office said Sunday that a report in the Sunday Times suggesting that the EU had agreed to include the entire United Kingdom in its customs union after Brexit was not entirely true.

“This is all speculation. The prime minister has been clear that we are making good progress on the future relationship and 95 percent of the withdrawal agreement is now settled and negotiations are ongoing,” said the spokesman.

The EU and Britain are at odds over how to treat the border between Ireland, an EU state, and Northern Ireland, a UK province, after Brexit so that there will be no return to a hard border on the island.

May has resisted EU’s plan for including Northern Ireland in its customs union for a two-year transition period and beyond that until a permanent solution is found for trade.

The premier says that will separate Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK, insisting the EU could instead include the entire UK in the customs union as an interim solution.

British housing minister James Brokenshire said on Sunday that differences still remained on the Irish border, saying British and EU negotiators had yet to finalize a “backstop” arrangement.

“That very much remains our focus and attention in getting that deal,” Brokenshire told the BBC.

May relies on Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in her minority government. The DUP has threatened that it would stand against any Brexit deal that would include Northern Ireland in EU’s customs union.

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4, November 2018

CPDM Crime Syndicate: House Speaker condemns post-electoral disorder ⁰

Cameroon’s speaker of the National Assembly Cavaye Yeguie Djibril on Friday criticized post-electoral “disorder and division” in the country.

“I strongly oppose to any call for civil disobedience and division. I therefore appeal to your collective sense of responsibility.” Djibril said at the opening of the November ordinary session of the National Assembly.

Djibril stressed that the Oct. 7 presidential election which saw incumbent Paul Biya re-elected unfolded in “calm and serenity” .

The condemnation came following frequent protests by supporters of Maurice Kamto of Cameroon Renaissance Movement who claimed to have won the election.

Djibril also expressed concerns over comments by the president of the National Episcopal Conference, Archbishop Samuel Kleda, questioning the authenticity of the results in favour of Paul Biya in war-torn English-speaking regions of Southwest and Northwest.

“Moral authorities, men of God in general in my opinion, have the sacred duty to preach peace, unity and co-existence and not to sow the seeds of discord. They have the sacred mission to convey a message of togetherness and appeasement, not to incite violence and confrontation.” Djibril said.

The National Assembly was meeting after nearly four months of recess. The president-elect Paul Biya is expected to be sworn-in by the National Assembly early next week.

Xinhua

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4, November 2018

The killing of an American missionary is pulling the US into the Anglophone conflict ⁰

The shooting of a American missionary on Monday (Oct. 30) has for the first time publicly pulled the United States into Cameroon’s long-drawn conflict raging in the English-speaking parts of the country.

Charles Truman Wesco, who had barely spent two weeks in the central African nation, died in hospital after being shot as he and his family drove through Bambui, on the outskirt of the city of Bamenda. Wesco and his family were reported to have been caught in crossfire between armed separatists and the armed forces.

Over the past two years, the country has seen peaceful protests by English-speaking minorities against what they claimed was marginalization by the French-speaking led government of president Paul Biya escalate into outright conflict in recent months. The Anglophone fighters now seek to carve out their own state called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia (Southern Cameroons). The US Embassy in Yaounde has previously issued warnings to its citizens against traveling to the troubled regions in Cameroon’s southwest and northwest.

Hundreds of unarmed civilians have lost their lives in similar circumstances but the latest killing has provoked a ferocious trade in accusations, with each side blaming the other for the death of the American. It has also put an unwelcome international spotlight on the Biya government, which has been in power for 36 years.

Joseph Beti Assomo, Cameroon’s minister delegate at the presidency in charge of defense said a group of “terrorists” [separatists] who had taken cover shot and killed the US citizen. The defense minister said the army swiftly riposted and four separatists were gunned down, while a student and soldier were wounded. He warned all foreigners in the country to always inform the authorities and security forces of their movement in the north-west and south-west regions “due to the actions of terrorist groups.”

Separatists for their part, especially those in the diaspora on social media, have been blaming the army for Monday’s shooting.

As US officials became aware of the incident Cameroon’s government recruited Washington DC-based communications firm Glover Park Group to tell US and international reporters that authorities are urgently looking into the incident, “but as of yet, despite claims by pro-separatist sources on social media, the culprit and circumstances behind the shooting have not yet been determined.” But citing initial reports, the statement also claimed the weapon used in killing the US citizen was a shotgun and that such a weapon is commonly used by separatists, not by the military.

Wesco’s brother, Timothy Wesco, told ABC News their family believe the killing was targeted “quite probable because he was a white, English-speaking American.” He however did not specify which party perpetrated the “targeted” killing.

The recent developments could jeopardize bilateral relations between the US and Cameroon under long-serving Biya. In recent times, the US has increasingly given military assistance to Cameroon particularly in its battle with Boko Haram terrorists; providing training to the country’s elite military unit—the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR)—which has been deployed to the north-west and south-west regions. But that may change as the Cameroonian military has been racking up a record of human rights abuses.

In May, US ambassador Peter Barlerin accused government forces of ‘targeted killings’ and abuses in the fight against Anglophone separatists. But in Monday’s killing, the US State Department said the Wesco was caught in crossfire and was not deliberately targeted.

The tragic death has sparked outrage on Capitol Hill. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a senior member of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called on Cameroonian authorities to ensure transparency and thoroughness, and to strictly adhere to the legal process for swiftly bringing those implicated to justice. Meanwhile, Tibor Nagy, assistant secretary for US department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs has promised that the US government will provide all appropriate consular services.

Culled from Quartz

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4, November 2018

Unknown Ambazonian group chop off fingers of CDC plantation workers ⁰

Separatist militants attacked workers on a state-run rubber plantation in restive southwestern Cameroon, chopping off their fingers because the men had defied an order to stay away from the farms, authorities said Friday.

The attack is the second of its kind in less than a week by the militants, who have responded violently to a government crackdown on separatist activities in the English-speaking parts of the country.

David Epie, a 43-year-old worker at a rubber plantation, says armed men attacked him and three of his co-workers on Thursday evening.

“I do not know the fate of one of our workers who tried to escape and was shot on the leg,” said Epie, who lost several fingers. He bled as we fled when the attackers were leaving.”

South West governor Bernard Okalia Bilai said he has ordered the military to chase and arrest the separatists blamed for the two recent attacks on rubber plantation workers. On Monday, seven workers lost fingers when militants hacked them off at a plantation in the town of Tiko.

“We cannot allow groups of terrorists to continue to disturb the peace we badly need in this region,” he said. “They are going from farm to farm, terrorizing farmers and workers … they must pay for the crimes they are committing.”

Cameroon was once divided between British and French colonial powers. English speakers make up 20 percent of the population and have long complained of being marginalized by the French majority.

Those grievances erupted into conflict in 2016 when militant separatists took up arms following a series of protests by teachers and lawyers who cited discrimination in their fields of employment.

The militants have vowed to destabilize the English-speaking regions of Cameroon to win independence for the areas. Earlier this week an American missionary died in another restive part of the country after he was shot in the head amid fighting between armed separatists and soldiers in northwestern Cameroon.

The separatists consider the state-run banana, palm oil and rubber plantations in southwestern Cameroon to be legitimate targets. Vehicles, tractors, buildings and warehouses owned by the state’s Cameroon Development Corporation have been torched and some staff members have been kidnapped.

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4, November 2018

Ambazonia: Understanding President Ayuk Tabe’s first court appearance in months ⁰

A Cameroonian anglophone separatist leader was in court on Thursday, in his first public appearance since he was extradited from Nigeria in January, amid spiralling violence in English-speaking areas.

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, who wants Cameroon’s two anglophone regions to separate from the French-speaking part of the country and last year spearheaded a symbolic declaration of independence, appeared with nine other defendants at a brief hearing in the capital Yaounde.

“This day is a big day because all (ten) defendants were there,” lawyer Me John Feu Nsoh told reporters after the court appearance, which was about the group’s petition to be freed.

Ayuk Tabe, who pronounced himself the president of a new republic called “Ambazonia” in October 2017, was arrested with 46 others in Nigeria and extradited in January.

Cameroon has called the 47 “terrorists” and said they would “answer for their crimes”, as tensions mount in the Southwest and Northwest Regions, home to most of the country’s English-speakers.

Three lawyers filed a motion for the “immediate” release of ten of them in October, including Ayuk Tabe.

On leaving the courtroom the group waved at relatives held at a distance, before getting into a police bus, according to AFP.

English-speaking separatists complain of discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority in education, the justice system and the economy in the largely francophone central African nation.

In 2017 anglophone separatists took up arms, attacking security forces and torching symbols of the administration, such as schools.

The government has refused to engage in dialogue with separatists and has sent forces into the area to restore order.

The unrest has worsened this year, claiming the lives of more than 400 civilians and an unknown number of separatists in the year to September, according to the International Crisis Group think-tank.

More than 300 000 people have fled the violence, some to neighbouring Nigeria.

AFP

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