Monthly Archives: December 2019

12, December 2019

No more visa for any African visiting Nigeria from 2020 ⁰

The Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS) said the Federal Government has approved that all Africans could come to Nigeria without Visa from January 2020.

The Comptroller General, NIS, Mr Muhammad Babandede, disclosed this at the inauguration of the Africa–Frontex Intelligence Community (AFIC) on Wednesday in Abuja.

News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that European border and Coast guard Agency also known as Frontex is an agency of European Union (EU) tasked with border control of the European Schengen Area, in coordination with border and coast guard of Schengen area member states.

“The announcement would be made soon by the President of the Federation.

”But we cannot succeed without a tool like AFIC. This tool is key if we want to implement an effective free movement across our border.

“The tool is actually coming at the right time. AFIC would help African countries especially Nigeria that want to open its border for all Africans to enter at will. And now that tool is available, it would make the work easier for us,” he said.

Babandede said that it was important to acknowledge the different forces in Nigeria curbing crime and insecurity.

“But our duty is unique and you may not see it as it is in Chad, Benin or Cameroon.

“The essence is that we are very keen and we have been working with EU for a long time. Frontex is in charge of border before they got another responsibility called coast guard which is also very keen to Africa especially checking member state of ECOWAS,” he said.

The CGI commended the EU and Frontex delegates for establishing the risk analysis centre, adding that analysis could not be done physically without analytical system.

“I was opportune to be at the Frontex headquarters, and I came with useful tools which are for border and control centre.

”This has brought about the building of border and control centre which will be inaugurated next year. So the analytical system from Frontex, border control system and even mobility would all be in one place,” he said.

Babandede assured the delegates that the service would maintain the equipments and called for more training of officers.

“We assure you of the site maintenance if we have a technical know how of maintaining this system. We have done that with IOM very well.

”All the equipments donated for e-Migrants registration are already been installed by all our trained officers,” he said.

Roman Fantini, the head of sector, Frontex, assured the immigration service of training the officers as requested to help maintain the system and usage.

Fantini said that AFIC was not a new development as it started nine years ago and had since grown to what it was today.

He commended the EU and NIS for collaborating to ensure the security of the country.

Ms Eleni Zerzelidou, EU head of delegates, appreciated the immigration service for beefing up the collaboration by taking a step further to ensure border opening for all Africans by 2020.

Zerzelidou added that the EU would continually support the service in delivering its mandate and ensuring the safety of the country.

She said that the long standing partnership with NIS resulted into border management such as NIS border management strategy, MIDAS, among others.

“But we believe Frontex would do more to compliment all we have done so far in assisting the service and the county at large,” she said.

Source: PMNEWSNigeria

12, December 2019

French Cameroun: Biya regime shuts down hundreds of schools ⁰

The Cameroon government has shut down more than 260 schools that had been operating informally in the country’s francophone regions.

The schools had been opened to help absorb students fleeing the separatist uprising in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

I travelled to Douala where around 100 unregistered institutions have been closed.

The pupils who have fled the fighting in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions have painful memories.

“I left Bamenda because there was a war. They were killing people and they were shooting guns,” says one student.

“We couldn’t study in Bamenda because of the crisis. Anytime we are in school, bullets falling on top our classrooms, gunshots everywhere,” another adds.

A mother, Kerin Kongdem, told me how hard it is to find a school.

“The first school was closed by the authorities because they said it wasn’t authorised. So we’ve had to find a new one this year – just to pay the registration fee was not easy for us,” she says.

The school she found was also operating illegally and is one of many that have opened to accommodate the influx of English speaking learners displaced from the north.

We visited one of the illegal schools and the owner declined to speak to us for fear of closure.

Critics of the government say it’s not offering any alternatives for the children when they close the schools.

But the official for secondary education in Doula’s Wouri district, Sylvestre Fils Moukalla, denies this.

“The Minister of Secondary Education gave Parent Teacher Associations the express authorisation to build more classrooms in various schools. These PTAs mobilised enormous resources to build new classrooms. As a result, the problem of the influx has been resolved. In the Wouri for instance, all the children have found a classroom,” he says.

Some of the newly displaced parents are turning to home tutors to make sure their children don’t have to go back a school year.

“Even to feed the children isn’t easy so I decided to get a private teacher to see how we can manage to educate these children at home. I have just pleaded with this teacher. I don’t have money. I pleaded that whatever I have, I would give him. It’s too difficult for us. We are suffering,” Claude Ngwa, a father of seven told me.

BBC

12, December 2019

French Cameroun: Measles Vaccination Team Attacked, Motives Questioned ⁰

Members of measles vaccination teams in southern Cameroon have been attacked and beaten by locals who say the serums triggered side effects that sent 12 children to local hospitals.

Many rural Cameroonians distrust vaccination campaigns, which have been organized as part of a national initiative to stop a measles outbreak that has afflicted a number of children.

Thirty-four-year-old Samuel Amougou, a vaccination team member in Cameroon’s commercial town of Ebolowa, is still recovering from wounds he sustained from angry parents who oppose the vaccination campaign. He says Roman Catholic clergy transported him and five other vaccination team members to Ebolowa regional hospital after angry parents harassed them last Friday in front of a local government school.

“They [the parents] did not want to hear any explanations. They did not allow me to speak. I just got blows [to] my face and all over my body, severe beatings on my face and all over my body,” Amougou said.

A hand of a child is being treated after swelling up following vaccination, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA) — A hand of a child is being treated after swelling up following vaccination, in Ebolowa

At the same hospital, Etala Suza, a 35-year-old trader and father of two, says his son also suffered side effects of the vaccine and has been hospitalized for several days.

Suza said after his son came home from school feeling tired, running a fever and vomiting, he, Suza, was told about the vaccination campaign for children in all schools. Suza said he was told by the child’s driver that the youngster threw up several times in the car.

Cameroon organized the national vaccination campaign last week to contain the current measles outbreak it said had infected more than 3,000 people, especially children. The health ministry reported that the most affected area was in the central African state’s northern border with Nigeria and Chad, where 17 children had died this month.

The government said but for the south region where the towns of Ebolowa and Sangmelima are located, the vaccination campaign went well in the country’s nine other administrative regions.

Nurse Christelle Manedji is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA) — Nurse Christelle Manedji is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon

Nurse Christelle Manedji of the Ebolowa regional hospital said medical staff attended to 12 children who suffered side effects of the vaccine. She said none of them died, as some people had claimed on social media.

Manedji said the first case they received was that of a 2-year-old whose diarrhea and vomiting led to severe fatigue; the second was that of a 3-year-old who had a convulsion and fever a day after she received a dose of the measles and rubella vaccine. She says they had been told to be ready to handle such cases during the vaccination campaign because there are normal reactions for some vaccinated babies.

Many parents in Cameroon’s south region do not trust vaccinations. They say traditional healers carry out traditional treatments that protect children. Many prefer African traditional medical practitioners, who are more accessible and available than hospitals, which often are very far from home, understaffed and lack medication. Others say Western countries create vaccines to stop children from being able to have babies when they are of child-bearing age. Some say the vaccinations are trial drugs that may paralyze their babies. Others claim their religious practices prohibit them from having children vaccinated.

Dr. Jeudi Debnet, superviser of the vaccination drive in southern Cameroon is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA) — Dr. Jeudi Debnet, supervisor of the vaccination drive in southern Cameroon is seen at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon

Dr. Jeudi Debnet, the highest government officer supervising the vaccination campaign in Cameroon’s south region, says such allegations are unfounded. He said officials have given instructions for all affected children to be taken to the nearest health centers.

“All the children who go to the hospital [are admitted] with some effects of the vaccines should be taken care free of charge. We use vaccines that are going to expire in 2021. There are the vaccines that we are already using in routine immunization programs, so we just took the same vaccines to use during the campaign,” Debnet said.

Cameroon’s health ministry reports that progress has been made in persuading parents to have their children vaccinated. Vaccination coverage in towns is estimated at 80 percent, but in some villages in the country’s hinterlands, barely have three out of every 10 children are vaccinated.

Measles vaccines are displayed at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon, Dec. 9, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA) — Measles vaccines are displayed at Ebolowa regional hospital, in Ebolowa, Cameroon,

The last vaccination campaign, between Dec. 4 and Dec. 8, targeted 3.3 million children between the ages of nine months and five years of age. The government says it is still considering launching a catch-up exercise for measles. The disease is caused by a virus that is spread through the air by breathing, coughing, or sneezing.

Measles is said to be highly contagious and can remain in the air, ready to infect, for up to two hours.

Source: VOA

12, December 2019

English speakers fight for equality in French-run Cameroon ⁰

Tamanjong Stella is upset because her children‘s school is closed, a victim of a bitter dispute between English-speaking protesters and the government of this largely French-speaking central African nation.

“The teachers say they cannot start classes until the government has removed the security forces that are posted everywhere,” said Stella, who lives in Bamenda, the capital of one of two English-speaking regions of Cameroon. “I do not know what is going to become of my children without school.”

Months of protests and clashes with government troops have not only forced schools to close, but the Internet also has been shutdown and dissidents have been jailed as English-speaking citizens demand equal rights.

Although English and French are both official languages, the English speakers say President Paul Biya, 83, discriminates against them by installing French teachers, judges and officials in their regions.

“Francophone teachers who teach English-speaking children must be removed and replaced by English-speaking teachers,” said Wilfried Tassang, executive secretary of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Unions, whose members walked out of their schools three months ago. “Francophone judges must also be removed to have English-speaking judges.”

In December, police killed at least four people in a market in Bamenda after a strike by teachers and lawyers. A month earlier, police killed one person and arrested more than 60 during violent protests there.

The conflict stems from Cameroon’s colonial past, when separate parts of the country achieved independence from Britain and France in the early 1960s and the English-speaking regions opted to join Cameroon rather than neighboring Nigeria. The resulting country was supposed to draw strength from its linguistic diversity.

“We should never forget that we are walking in the footsteps of our country’s founding fathers, our national heroes, who shed their blood to bequeath to posterity a nation that is united in its diversity,” Biya said late last year in a rare statement about the conflict. “Cameroon’s unity is therefore a precious legacy with which no one should take liberties.”

Critics said Biya could quell the protests by granting more powers to the English-speaking regions. “President Biya said that the founding fathers wanted a rich country with its diversity, but this diversity is also linguistic,” said George Ngwane, who has written books about Cameroon‘s politics.

A week before Biya issued his statement, security forces arrested the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, a banned group, without making the charges public. The group had organized “ghost town” demonstrations, where people refused to leave their homes or go to work.

Joseph Ayeah Chongsi, executive director of Human Rights, Peace and Advocacy, said Biya needed to hold accountable police who had killed citizens at protests or in jail or locked up activists without explanation.

“The Cameroonian government must set up an independent commission to investigate all suspected cases of death, particularly those arising during custody,” said Chongsi.

The problem has disrupted the economy of the two English-speaking regions, especially after Biya shut down the Internet in those provinces in mid-January.

Travel agent Awah Francis in Buea, capital of the southern English-speaking province, said he can’t book tickets or make financial transactions without Internet access.

“It is absolutely unacceptable,” Francis said. “I am obliged to travel to the capital to make money transfers, to receive my salary or even to consult my (email) mailbox. The banking establishments do not have a connection. We are tired of this suffering.”

The Roman Catholic Church, a powerful force in the country, offered to mediate the dispute, but so far Biya has instead asked chiefs, religious authorities and trade union leaders to find a solution to the crisis.

“There is need for dialogue, because violence, separation or anger never solves any problem. People must sit at the table to talk,” said Kwai Amos, a Catholic priest in the English-speaking Northwestern province.

That isn’t enough for many young adults who say they are missing opportunities and see a bleak future ahead.

Edmondo Bayo, 24, from the English-speaking Northwestern province, left Cameroon last year to find more opportunities in Europe and hopes to join his brother who is studying in England.

Bayo took part in the December protests, but says he was arrested and tortured for three days. He escaped his captors and made his way to Lesbos, Greece, along with about 30 other English-speaking Cameroonians who are living in a refugee camp waiting to be granted asylum in Europe.

”They call us young rebels, saying that we want to divide the country,” he said. “But as English-speaking people in Cameroon, we can‘t find a job.”

Edmondo Bayo, an English-speaking refugee from Cameroon inside the Moria refugee camp that was snowed in the beginning of January. He escaped his country to search for more opportunities in Europe.

Culled from Livingston Ledger

11, December 2019

UK Elections: The Conservative Party has come on top in every poll ⁰

As the campaign period draws to a close, there is every indication that the Tories are set to score a small victory and thus remain in power.

The latest opinion poll by YouGov (released yesterday evening) suggests that the Conservative party is set to secure a majority of around 28 seats in the House of Commons, enough to form a government.

However, YouGov was anxious to stress that the margin of error cannot rule out either a hung Parliament, or conversely, a larger Conservative majority.

The findings of YouGov are consistent with polling by multiple sources over the course of the campaign which has placed the Tories ahead of Labour by at least six percent.

Most significantly, an opinion poll for The Observer last Friday placed the Conservatives ahead of Labour by 15 points.

The Observer poll placed the Tories ahead with 46 percent of the vote, Labour in second place with 31 percent and the Liberal Democrats in third place with 13 percent of the vote.

But pollsters have warned politicians and pundits alike to be cautious as recent elections in the UK, notably the Brexit referendum of June 2016 and the general election of June 2017, delivered unexpected results.

11, December 2019

Rohingya genocide trial: Suu Kyi defends Myanmar ⁰

Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, feted in the West as a heroine of democracy, has defended her country’s atrocities against Rohingya Muslims at the UN’s top court in the Hague.

The Nobel Peace laureate on Wednesday spoke for about 30 minutes at the courtroom in defense of the actions of the Myanmar military that for years had kept her under house arrest.

She claimed that the military’s actions, which have brought genocide allegations in a lawsuit filed by Gambia, were in fact a “clearance operation” in response to militant attacks against police stations in Rakhine State.

Suu Kyi then accused Gambia, acting on behalf of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, of making “incomplete and misleading” accusations and said the case should not be heard by the Hague.

Around 740,000 Rohingya fled to neighboring Bangladesh after a bloody crackdown by the Myanmar military in 2017 that UN investigators have already described as genocide.

On Tuesday, Suu Kyi listened with a stony face to accounts by lawyers of Rohingya victims, including a mother whose one-year-old son was beaten to death and an eight-month-pregnant woman who was stamped on and then repeatedly raped.

Dildar Begum, a Rohingya widow from Tula Toli village in Myanmar, broke down in tears while describing the killings in her village she says were carried out by the Myanmar army and militias.

Suu Kyi said while disproportionate military force may have been used and civilians killed, the acts did not constitute genocide.

“Can there be genocidal intent on the part of a state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers that are accused of wrong doing?” she claimed.

Last year, Myanmar’s military announced that seven soldiers involved in a massacre of 10 Rohingya men and boys in the village of Inn Din in September 2017 had been sentenced to “10 years in prison with hard labor in a remote area”.

They were the only security personnel the military has said it has punished over the 2017 operation. They were granted early release after less than a year in the prison.

One of the soldiers confirmed to Reuters that he had been released but declined to comment further, saying: “We were told to shut up.”

Two fellow inmates told the news agency that the release came in November – less than a year into the 10-year prison term.

Opening Myanmar’s defense, Suu Kyi said, “Gambia has placed an incomplete and misleading picture of the factual situation in Rakhine state in Myanmar.”

“Surely, under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis,” she told the panel of 17 judges.

World Court launches genocide hearings against Myanmar

Gambia’s legal team provided a photograph of Suu Kyi with three smiling generals who are also Myanmar government ministers. The lawyers argued that the picture is an evidence of her close ties to the military.

“All that The Gambia asks is that you tell Myanmar to stop these senseless killings, to stop these acts of barbarity that continue to shock our collective conscience, to stop this genocide of its own people,” Gambian Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou told the judges.

The final ruling on genocide may be years away, though.

A United Nations fact-finding mission has previously found that “the gravest crimes under international law” have been committed in Myanmar and called for genocide trials.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) recently approved a long-awaited full investigation into the crimes against the Rohingya minority.

Activists urge intl. boycott of Myanmar on eve of trial over Rohingya genocide

Soldiers and Buddhist mobs razed hundreds of villages in the remote western Rakhine State, torturing, killing, and raping the Rohingya people.

The Rohingya have inhabited Rakhine State for centuries, but the state denies them citizenship.

Source: Presstv

11, December 2019

Johannesburg: Ambazonia Vice President appeals to the world for help against French Cameroun military ⁰

Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has told leaders of the South Africa Communist Party that the French Cameroun military has killed more than 22,000 Ambazonians in his country and has brought it to a standstill noting that Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero have been weakened by 4 years of war.

Appealing for more international help, Vice President Dabney Yerima described the devastating effects of the French Cameroun imposed war on Southern Cameroons in a speech in South Africa that was broadcast by the Southern Cameroons Broadcasting Cooperation (SCBC)

Below is the full text of what Vice President Dabney Yerima delivered in South Africa:

Revolutionary greetings to all Comrades, Chairpersons & members of SACP! We address you on behalf of our people, the people of the Southern Cameroons, renamed Federal Republic of Ambazonia, and now in the 4th year of a liberation war after 58 years of recolonization by La Republique du Cameroun.

Viva Comrade Chris Hani Viva

Viva SACP Leadership & Members of Viva

Viva Tripartite Alliance

Viva Socialism

Viva the Southern CAMEROONS

Viva the Freedom of Ambazonia

Comrades … we congratulate the SACP for keeping the Spirit of the revolution alive in SA & AFRICA at large

We thank the SACP for inviting us to Congress and for putting the question of the Freedom of Ambazonia on the table of Progressive Movements.

Comrades as some of you are aware, there is a genocide going on in the Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia right now. It is being carried out by the French Cameroun military. So far,

22,500 Ambazonians have been killed

350 villages burnt

120,000 are now refugees in Nigeria and Ghana

1.3 million are now IDPs

3,000 are in detention or missing

From our statistics, the Ambazonian war of independence can directly be painted as one of the most neglected conflicts in the world.

Our struggle is that of the liberation of our people.

Ambazonians have suffered suppression, operation and failed assimilation by La Republique du Cameroun that continues to practice Black on Black colonialism almost 60 years after 1960 on our people through brutal military suppression like was the case of apartheid South Africa before liberation.

Cameroon is a false production of imperial forces. By law, by history and by fact, it is made up of two countries. French Cameroon that had independence on 1st January 1960 and the British Southern CAMEROONS renamed Federal Republic of Ambazonia that had independence on the 1st of October 1961, almost 2 years after the Independence of Colonial French CAMEROON.

On 30th November 2017, Mr Paul Biya declared war on the people of Southern CAMEROONS and has since turned our country into a war zone. Thousands are in French Cameroun prisons, thousands are refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDP), thousands have disappeared and thousands have been slaughtered by soldiers loyal to the regime in French Cameroun.

For almost four years now, our children have not gone to school due to the war. This is one of our biggest pains.

A free South Africa as a result of your sacrifices and struggle has continued to give back to our people their dignity as human beings. The people of Southern Cameroons are going through fear, abuse, death and hopelessness.

What are our expectations and appeal to the South African Communist Party:

1. Help us alongside alliance partners and other progressive movements to ask South Africa to table for the United Nations to send an independent fact finding mission to Southern Cameroons in order to establish the facts and start holding perpetrators to book so that the killings by cameeoon military stop in our communities

2. Our struggle for freedom as an undecolonized United Nations trust territory dates back to 1961 and we plead the SACP help our young movement by pushing for its solidarity and alliance partners to pay attention to our peoples struggle and help as mentors in our liberation process.

3. That the SACP issue a statement or start a campaign demanding the release of our leaders from la republic du Cameroon jails abducted from Nigeria and illegally refueled to Cameroon where they continue to suffer inhumane treatment. We demand for their unconditional release in accordance with the recent Abuja high court judgment that the abduction was illegal.

4. We appeal the Southern CAMEROONS liberation be made a policy item of the SACP so more attention is accorded it.

African Liberation Father Nkwame Nkrumah said no African must rest until all of AFRICA is free.

Long Live the SACP

Long Live South Africa

Long Live the Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Long Live Africa

Dabney Yerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

11, December 2019

French Cameroun: Far North recorded 275 deaths by Boko Haram ⁰

Boko Haram militants have killed at least 275 people this year in Cameroon’s Far North region despite government claims back in January that the Islamic extremist group had waned in the area, Amnesty International said Wednesday.

More than 80 percent of those victims between January and November were civilians, the international human rights group said following a two-week mission to the volatile area.

People in Cameroon’s Far North “are living in terror,” said Samira Daoud, Amnesty International’s Acting Regional Director for West and Central Africa.

Many of them have already witnessed Boko Haram attacks and lost family members or friends. They no longer ask whether there will be further attacks but when they will take place – they feel completely abandoned by the authorities.

Boko Haram’s decade-long insurgency began in northeastern Nigeria and has spilled across borders into Cameroon, as well as Niger and Chad. The group has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

In recent years some fighters have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, creating a new threat. Amnesty said the resurgence in northern Cameroon comes after longtime President Paul Biya had called the group “a residual threat” back in January.

There was no immediate comment from the government though in the past it has sharply criticized reports from international human rights groups.

In 2014, Boko Haram drew the world’s attention with the mass kidnapping of nearly 300 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok. While many of the schoolgirls have since been freed, countless other people abducted over the decade remain lost to their loved ones.

Amnesty International said it interviewed women in northern Cameroon who also had been abducted by Boko Haram and had later escaped. They recounted having been forced to convert to Islam under threat of death.

“They were told that their villages could live in peace if all the inhabitants did the same and that they would be able to go home to collect their children,” Amnesty said, citing two women who had managed to get away in July.

Biya, who has been in power since 1982, has had to deal not only with Islamic extremist violence in Cameroon’s north but also with attacks by separatists in the country’s English-speaking regions.

Nearly 3,000 people have died since 2017 in fighting in those regions where English-speaking separatists say they have been been marginalized by the federal government. The violence has forced more than 500,000 people from their homes.

11, December 2019

Bomb explodes at gate of largest US base in Afghanistan ⁰

A bomb explosion near the largest US military base in Afghanistan has left at least five injured, officials say.

The attack which took place on Wednesday near the entrance to Bagram Airfield has also damaged a hospital that was under construction.

“The explosion happened in front of the gate of the Korean hospital which is almost adjacent to Bagram airfield,” said Wahida Shahkar, spokeswoman for the governor of Parwan province.

“So far five injured civilians have been transferred to the hospital,” Shahkar said, adding that all five wounded in the attack were Afghans.

“A 30-minute clash also happened between the attackers, who obviously wanted to enter the base, and foreign forces,” she said.

There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast so far.

NATO’s mission said in a statement that there were no US or coalition casualties and “the attack was quickly contained and repelled.”

However, a future medical facility being built for locals was badly damaged, the statement added.

Wednesday’s attack comes as the United States has resumed talks with the Talibanmilitant group, three months after President Donald Trump abruptly halted negotiations aimed at ending America’s longest war.

Washington resumed talks with the Taliban in Qatar’s capital Doha on Saturday.

Trump ended yearlong talks with the Taliban in September, when an agreement appeared imminent that could end America’s longest war.

The US invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 and overthrew a Taliban regime in power at the time, vowing to bring stability to the war-ravaged nation.

However, US forces have remained bogged down there through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.

More than 14,000 US troops remain in Afghanistan and Trump has repeatedly expressed his frustration with their continued deployment.

On Monday, a confidential trove of US government documents made public by The Washington Post revealed that American officials have “constantly lied to” the US public about what has been going on in the now 18-year war on Afghanistan.

Source: Presstv

11, December 2019

US: Trump pays $2 mn in damages to charities after court ruling ⁰

Donald Trump on Tuesday paid $2 million in damages as part of a settlement over use of his former charity to further his political and business interests — the latest item on the US president’s list of legal woes.

Trump had been accused of using foundation funds to settle lawsuits, promote his Trump-branded hotels, and for personal spending, including the purchase of a portrait of himself to display at one of his golf clubs.

The $2 million was paid equally to eight different charities, including the Children’s Aid Society, the United Negro College Fund and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, according to a statement from New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat.

“Charities are not a means to an end, which is why these damages speak to the president’s abuse of power and represent a victory for not-for-profits that follow the law,” she said in the statement.

The payments were made the same day that Democrats in Congress unveiled two articles of impeachment against Trump, a momentous step asserting that he abused his office and deserved to be removed.

James filed the lawsuit against the Trump Foundation in June last year, accusing it of “persistently illegal conduct” that included improper coordination between the charity and his campaign team during his 2016 White House bid.

Trump agreed to shut down his personal charity in 2018, but the suit moved ahead regardless, as prosecutors sought millions of dollars in restitution and penalties.

The suit also said that in early 2016 while Trump was running for president, he organized what was billed as a Trump Foundation fundraiser but was actually a campaign event.

Trump had pushed back against the lawsuit, defending his organization’s work and lauding its financial responsibility.

“It has been 4 years of politically motivated harassment,” he said in a statement after the court ruling. “All they found was incredibly effective philanthropy and some small technical violations, such as not keeping board minutes.”

Trump faces ongoing legal troubles on multiple fronts. Courts have ordered that two banks must hand over to Congress documents related to the president’s finances, and he is fighting an attempt by a New York prosecutor to compel the release of eight years’ worth of tax returns, among other battles.

Source: AFP