The connection of Guterres-favored China and Cameroon continues: “Fifty-nine students from the Confucius Institute in Cameroon received a scholarship on Friday from the Chinese ambassador Wang Yingwu.  The scholarship was shared among the students who performed exceptionally well in the Chinese proficiency test (HSK) and during the class.

Ariane Zetchounag, 24, level 2 student at the Confucius Institute and a receiver of the Chinese ambassador scholarship, said the prize will assist her in learning Chinese language more proficiently.  “By studying China and its culture, these young Cameroonians will be carriers of the message of friendship between our two countries,” ambassador Wang said.

Friday’s ceremony also congratulated the outstanding Chinese teachers of the 2018-2019 school year.  One of the awardees was Gao Yajia, who is leaving Cameroon after volunteering for two years.  “It’s an unforgettable moment, and I’m so grateful to my students, my colleagues, and my family who I missed so much during my stay abroad,” Gao said. She was very attached to his Cameroonian students, “one day we would meet again in China.”   Yeah.

Others are bought in, including the EU. On June 13, state media of China which props up Biya and has essentially purchased Guterres and the UN he runs reported: “YAOUNDE, June 13 (Xinhua) — A European Union (EU) official on Thursday praised efforts by the Cameroonian government to initiate dialogue to end the conflict in the country’s troubled English-speaking regions.  “We welcome the statement by President (Paul) Biya and the declaration that the Prime Minister (Joseph Dion Ngute) made in the regions showing opening for dialogue,” said Gerardus Gielen, head of the European External Action Service Central African Division.” The EU, which allows Guterres to rough up and ban the Press right in the UN, is hitting a new low with this.

Source: Inner City Press

Officials with UNICEF, the United Nations children’s agency, warned Friday that conditions in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions continue to deteriorate with 1.3 million people now needing humanitarian aid.

The armed violence and attacks have forced 450,000 people from their homes, about half of them internally displaced children, said UNICEF spokesman Toby Fricker during a press briefing in Geneva.

“Thousands of people lack access or have reduced access to basic services such as healthcare and safe drinking water, and livelihoods have been destroyed,” he said. “As of December 2018, an estimated 40 percent of health facilities in the South-West region were not functioning.”

More than 80 percent of schools in the English-speaking regions of the country’s northwest and southwest have been closed, with some children out of school for three years now. At least 74 schools have been destroyed and more than 300 students and teachers have endured abductions.

“The targeting of education is putting the future of an entire generation of children at risk, children who with the right support and opportunities can build a more stable and prosperous future,” Fricker said.

The aid workers, based in centers in Buea and Bamenda, need US$20 million to respond to the emergency, and UNICEF is appealing to donors and the international community for help.

Cameroon’s crisis began with peaceful protests, led by lawyers, teachers and other professionals, against structural discrimination in October 2016. Their calls for reforms sparked a wider movement that was crushed by 86-year-old President Paul Biya, who has been in power for nearly four decades.

An armed separatist movement evolved in response to the political and social tensions, which have warranted the concern of the African Union, European Union and others in the international community.

Source: Africa Times

A tribute was held Friday at an army headquarters in Yaounde to the 17 soldiers and eight civilians killed June 10 by Boko Haram in Darak, on Cameroon’s northern border. Retired teacher Clement Ndzana was among the hundreds who came to honor the fallen soldiers. He said the sacrifices made by the military were not in vain because Cameroon has remained united and none of its territory is under the terrorists’ control.

The government of Cameroon also celebrates its military for protecting state institutions and defending the country against Boko Haram and separatist forces in the northwest and southwest.

But not everyone in the country approves of the military’s actions. Some accuse the military of heinous crimes, including the killing of civilians and burning of homes.

Mary Yekong, 60, said her family of four has lived in a room in Obili, a neighborhood in Yaounde, for five months. They fled from the northwestern village of Meluf, which she said government soldiers attacked. The soldiers torched at least 30 houses, including hers, she said.

Yekong said the family ran, leaving behind their old and sick mother, when the Cameroon military arrived and began shooting indiscriminately in the air. She said that from where she was hiding, she saw two of the troops carry their mother out of the house before setting it ablaze. The government blamed separatist fighters for the burnings, in which nine people were killed, but Yekong said she thought the military was responsible because the attackers used armored cars, which separatist fighters lack.

Rights groups have accused Cameroon’s military of conducting extrajudicial killings and burning down of homes in its campaign against separatists and Boko Haram insurgents. In one of its reports, Amnesty International said investigators gathered credible evidence that Cameroonian soldiers were pictured in a video carrying out the horrific extrajudicial executions of two women and two children. The government insists the army is professional. However, Col. Jean Legrand Mvondo Akoutou, director of Cameroon military justice, acknowledged there had been some cases of alleged abuse that were being investigated by a tribunal. He said suspects were to be presumed innocent until found otherwise.

Akoutou refused to give examples but said many cases of abuse had been punished.

Source: VOA

Cameroonian authorities should immediately release journalist Paul Chouta and drop criminal defamation and false news charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On May 28, in the Cameroonian capital of Yaounde, five police officers arrested Chouta, who works as a reporter for the privately owned Cameroon Web news website, in response to a defamation complaint filed by French Cameroonian writer Calixthe Beyala, according to Cameroon Web editor-in-chief Emmanuel Vitus, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app, and a person with knowledge of the case who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal.

Chouta was detained at the local police headquarters following his arrest, and on May 31 was denied bail, according to his lawyer, Emmanuel Simh, who spoke with CPJ via messaging app. On June 10, he was charged with defamation, spreading false news, and hate speech; the hate speech charge was dropped the following day, and Chouta was sent to the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde to await trial, according to Vitus and the person with knowledge of the case.

His next court appearance is scheduled for July 9, Vitus said.

“Instead of holding Paul Chouta in a maximum security prison, authorities should release him and encourage Calixthe Beyala to seek redress through civil remedies, not criminal action,” said CPJ Africa Program Coordinator Angela Quintal in New York. “Criminal defamation and false news laws have no place in a fair and just country, and Cameroon should change such laws.”

If found guilty, Chouta could face up to six months in prison and a fine of 2 million Central African francs ($3,447) for the defamation charge, and up to five years in jail and a fine of 1 million francs ($1,723) for the false news charge, according to the Cameroonian penal code.

In several posts on Beyala’s personal Facebook page, which CPJ reviewed but which have since been deleted or set to private, Beyala alleged that Chouta and other unspecified individuals made defamatory allegations about her personal life on social media and on the Facebook news page Le TGV de l’info, which Chouta manages.

CPJ called Beyala and messaged her on Facebook and WhatsApp, but did not receive any response.

Cameroonian Deputy Justice Minister Jean De Dieu Momo told CPJ via WhatsApp message that he was “not aware if web journalist is a profession organized by Cameroon law,” and declined to comment further on the case.

CPJ called and sent messages to Charles Manda, an adviser to the country’s communications minister, and Joyce Ndjem, the national communications chief for the Cameroonian police, but did not receive a response.

Chouta received repeated anonymous threats in recent months, and was attacked outside his home in February by suspected government agents, as CPJ reported at the time.

Vitus told CPJ that he suspected that the government’s harsh charges against Chouta, along with denying him bail, were in retaliation for his reporting on the government. The editor described Chouta as a vocal critic of Paul Biya, Cameroon’s president since 1982. Chouta’s recent reporting covered topics such as the arrest of a former Cameroonian government official and abuse allegations against police and a pro-government journalist.

Cameroon is the third worst jailer of journalists in Africa, after Egypt and Eritrea, with at least seven journalists behind bars for their work on December 1, 2018, according to CPJ’s annual prison census. It is the second-worst jailer of journalists on false news charges in the world, after Egypt, according to the census.

Source: Committee to Protect Journalist