Monthly Archives: December 2019

French Cameroun: Distraught Christian community “laments” as Boko Haram violence consumes Far North Cameroon

18, December 2019

French Cameroun: Distraught Christian community “laments” as Boko Haram violence consumes Far North Cameroon 0

A distraught community is mourning and singing a new shared “lament” after Boko Haram violence claimed at least seven lives including Pastor David Mokoni and several Christian young people, in the latest spate of merciless Boko Haram attacks in Far North Cameroon.

A local Christian leader says the repeated attacks in Moskota village over the last month have left some families in the community in the worst state of extreme psychological distress he has ever seen.

The severe violence led a young Christian man to pen a lament describing the “ghost villages and ransacked shops” and asking, “And when a pastor falls in Africa doesn’t that mean anything?” All in the district are singing the song as they try to come to terms with their terrible suffering.

Caption
Pioneer pastor and church founder, David Mokoni, died in a Boko Haram attack on his church in Moskota village

“Moskota village has become the scene of the agonies of Boko Haram.
Only the dead, only the displaced;
Only ghost villages, shops ransacked and emptied;
Only health centres plundered and looted;
Only cattle taken away; empty buildings.
Boko Haram struck – our founder Pastor Mokoni paid the price.
And when a pastor falls in Africa doesn’t that mean anything?
Only … emptiness.”

Seven people were killed and 21 children and young adults were kidnapped in a series of attacks, which came just a month after a spate of similar atrocities targeted mainly-Christian villages.

At least 300 homes were looted and more than 140 oxen stolen. Vital crops such as millet, peanuts and cotton were destroyed and left to rot.

The attacks in Mayo Sava district began on 1 December when gunmen opened fire on mourners at a funeral in Kotserehé, forcing them to flee. An eyewitness said, “It was a total rout … women have fled without being able to take their children with them.” The attack left four Christians dead and three wounded. The witness added, “A place of mourning has turned into a theatre of war that has ended in carnage.”

The following night, an attack on Zangola village left three dead and caused untold destruction. With food, clothing and livelihoods taken, the defenceless people “had only their eyes to cry” said a local contact.

In a third attack, the village of Mbreche was targeted at around 2 a.m. on 5 December. Militants searched from house to house and kidnapped 21 young people – nine girls and twelve boys, aged between 12 and 21. Four of the young people, including a girl aged 13, managed to escape.

It is thought that those abducted will be forced to become Boko Haram “soldiers” and fight on behalf of the extremists. Only weeks earlier, on 19 November, a 12-year-old Christian boy was hacked to death for resisting militants’ attempt to abduct him as a “child soldier” in Tourou district.

Boko Haram often strikes in the middle of the night in gangs of up to 200 militants and lays waste to villages. By now, most villagers, especially men and young people, no longer go to bed in their homes but “hide out” in the mountains. Those with motorbikes or bicycles travel to nearby towns to spend the night in greater safety there. Some people no longer really sleep at all, said our contact.

Barnabas Fund

Ambazonia: The lies the 11 Grand Masters of Maryland tell themselves about the Swiss Peace Initiative

18, December 2019

Ambazonia: The lies the 11 Grand Masters of Maryland tell themselves about the Swiss Peace Initiative 0

Ever since the so-called Swiss Peace Initiative was made public to the international community, several Southern Cameroons civilians have been killed by the French Cameroun army deployed to Ambazonia. Recently, three French Cameroun soldiers were killed in the Northern zone of Ambazonia. The three were reportedly killed in a firefight with the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces. The three represented the 23rd and 24th French Cameroun deaths in Southern Cameroons since the attack on the late Retired General Tataw James convoy en route to Mamfe.

Correspondingly, that’s a modest count compared to the old days when the Manyu Odeshi Warriors and the Red Dragons of Lebialem were actively around in the towns of Mamfe and Fontem and the Great Nso Warriors ran the resistance in Jakiri and French Cameroun army deaths were three times higher. Nonetheless, French Cameroun military deployments have been limited to the urban towns with very little or no involvement in fighting in rural areas.  Still, there’s reason for concern. Through just some few months into the Swiss Peace Initiative, more Southern Cameroonian civilians have been killed than in any year since the revolution started— a peace initiative which was supposed to mark the end of the French Cameroun combat mission in Southern Cameroons.

The latest Southern Cameroons deaths occurred in the midst of ongoing and reportedly intensive and productive discussions between the Swiss government, a Southern Cameroons group known as Sako’s IG, and, to a lesser extent, the Ambazonia Interim Government. To his credit, and based especially on his public statements, the Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima appears serious in his desire to end the more than three year old indecisive French Cameroun war in Southern Cameroons. The complete absence of any French Cameroun delegation appointed by President Biya, the early withdrawal from the talks by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the continues attacks on Southern Cameroons civilians, demonstrate that while Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government are working from a position of strength as they pursue a “talk-and-resistance” strategy eerily reminiscent of that of the ANC in South Africa, the 11 Grand Masters of the so-called Sako IG are simply seeking for relevance and cheap Ambazonia money.

It’s highly unlikely, if not impossible, for Southern Cameroons to win in any meaningful sense this war of liberation if something is not done and done in a hurry to put an end to this international childishness being demonstrated by the disgraced Samuel Ikome Sako and his gang using a group of half-baked Southern Cameroons intellectuals in the USA. This is obvious as all the empirical evidence, from statements from US lawmakers, members of the UK House of Commons, the African Union, and deliberate neglect by major Southern Cameroons donors’ points to impending Yaoundé victory or perpetual stalemate.

Two recurring problems best explain the poor international image of the Southern Cameroons war of liberation: Sako, Chris Anu and their acolytes serving as anti-anything-President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and Vice President Yerima and the fear that Southern Cameroons may just be another South Sudan.  This is why the 11 Grand Masters in Maryland are still trading the Swiss Peace Initiative to many ill-informed Southern Cameroonians while the Ambazonia Interim Government including Vice President Dabney Yerima long found the Swiss peace talks both insulting and intellectually bereft.

Leaving aside all the high-level, macro analysis and wealth of available information being put out there by the renowned Boh Herbert, the one million dollar question is: Southern Cameroonians and the Swiss are talking in Geneva, but is anyone in Yaoundé listening?

Day-by-day, the French Cameroun army is flooding in more troops and stationing them in key Southern Cameroons locations and the Ambazonia Restoration Forces are essentially under siege and facing daily attacks often within sight of their camps.  It is shameful that young Southern Cameroons boys and girls are in Ground Zero desperate to break the French Cameroun army siege, protect women and children including the old and the sick, and resist just a bit more for help to come from the Amba Bonds Project and others in the diaspora passing for front line leaders are instead playing dangerous political games with some like Cho Ayaba creating local militia, arming and paying them, and positioning them (with Francophone advisers) in Southern Cameroons villages.

Like Dr Cho Ayaba of the ADF, Minister Paul Atanga Nji of French Cameroun is also empowering local warlords, favoring some Southern Cameroons tribal fighters over others and Southern Cameroonians who are putting themselves first before the resistance are indirectly helping the French Cameroun surrogate.

Most of the Ambazonia semi illiterates that were  incorporated into the defunct Restoration Council headed by Mr. Kometa have transformed into warlord-led militias in Europe and the US and are using social media to send out wrong signals about the Ambazonia Vice President and the Interim Government in Ground Zero now littered with locally controlled armed bands.  And slowly but surely, Ground Zero is beginning to view as illegitimate anything coming from the diaspora with whom they had far more in common under President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe.

The whole charade of people seeking attention and staging swearing-in ceremonies and issuing medals of honour to cronies and publicizing them on social media has left many both in Ground Zero and in the diaspora frustrated, angry, and, finally, deeply disoriented which is why we of the Cameroon Concord News Group find the whole conversation over the Swiss peace talks a little ridiculous, and very absurd. To be accurate, shameful, disgusting and disgraceful!

The only reason why the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is still in this war since the arrest of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides in Nigeria is the character and determination of this new generation of Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero who understand that the French Cameroun military cannot win, cannot even marginally alter the outcome in troubled Southern Cameroons and to a greater extend the poor handling of the crisis by French Cameroun’s 86 year old President Biya and his Beti Ewondo kinsmen.

Maybe President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe will actually be the one to end Southern Cameroons’s longest war; maybe he won’t. But what is actually passing for a Swiss Peace Initiative in Geneva will not change anything in Southern Cameroons. The civil war will wage on, the Ambazonia Interim Government under Comrade Dabney Yerima’s stewardship will generally emerge triumphant. Thus, when Southern Cameroonians finally get to Buea, whether soon or years from now, expect most Ambazonians to target men and women like Sako Ikome, Chris Anu, Elvis Kometa and Irene Ngwa.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cardinal Sarah’s profound meditation on the God of love

18, December 2019

Cardinal Sarah’s profound meditation on the God of love 0

Having mentioned an interview between the late Sir Jonathan Miller and Norman Lebrecht in a recent blog on Advent, I am now thinking of another cultural giant who has recently died: Clive James. A friend has drawn my attention to an interview first broadcast in 2001 between James and the novelist Piers Paul Read in the former’s TV series, “Talking in the Library”.

James makes an interesting contrast to Miller, for whom religious belief appears to have been a matter of utter indifference. James, a cultural and literary highbrow – and a serious poet – who spent much of his life and energies in a lowbrow milieu such as television, recognised the power of the Christian faith, even admitting to Read that “If I were capable of belief, I’d be a happier man.” For him, as with so many of those who reject faith, the “insoluble problem” is how to square evil and the God of love: where was God in Nazi Germany, he wanted to know, further stating “I am with Ivan Karamazov” – a reference to the passage in Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that always haunts those who read it, whether Christian or not. Describing himself as a Manichean, he believed “Evil has a mind” and that Hitler was “Satan’s representative”. Yet it seems James had not chosen, or been driven, to pursue the matter any further.

Such comments always make me ponder the gap between Christians and someone like James, prepared to go so far in recognition of the mystery of evil, but no further. It reminds one that faith is truly a gift, something utterly outside and beyond mere human and intellectual understanding, however rich and well-informed it might be.

As I am a book blogger I should mention here that I have been reading the third volume of Cardinal Robert Sarah’s trilogy, titled The Day is Now Far Spent (Ignatius). For those who have not come across the first two books, they are God or Nothing, and the Power of Silence. Like them, this volume is framed in a long “conversation” with the French journalist Nicolas Diat, and also like them it is in a different league from almost all current spiritual books, probably because it is written in a very direct and personal style by a man who is patently holy.

Sarah is not writing as a theologian or an academic but as someone whose life is simply immersed in prayer. His triptych (as he prefers to describe his three books) is a profound meditation on the God of love, alongside his palpable anguish at the current sexual abuse crisis in the Church – the “mystery of betrayal”, as he describes it. Indeed, his foreword is headed “Alas, Judas Iscariot” and he calls his writing “the cry of my soul!” It is not the territory of a TV show.

Sarah is conscious that “In a little while I will appear before the eternal Judge…what will I say to him then?” Addressing the faithful directly, he challenges them: “If you think your priests and bishops are not saints, then be one for them. Do penance [and] fast to make reparation for their defects and their cowardice.” Accusations against particular individuals are not part of the Cardinal’s vocabulary, as they might in other hands have been; he writes as a saint would write, asking his readers to become saints themselves, for the sake of the Church. “How much God loves us!” he points out, qnd marvels that “he consents to handing over his Eucharistic Body into the sacrilegious hands of miserable priests.” This is plain speaking indeed.

Addressing in particular the “spiritual and religious collapse” in the priesthood, Sarah makes it clear that priestly celibacy should never be regarded as a discipline that can be changed but “the seal of the Cross on our lives as priests.” He goes on to say that “Anyone who would dare to break and ruin this ancient treasure…by seeking to separate the priesthood from celibacy would hurt the Church and the priesthood of the poor, chaste and obedient Christ.”

On the kind of false ecumenism that appears to romanticise paganism the Cardinal, who was born and who grew up in Guinea, gives a note of warning: “You have to be an African to dare to say…that these pagan “traditional religions” are zones of fear and lack of freedom”. He is also critical of the phrase, “anonymous Christians”, coined by Karl Rahner, stating that it “runs the risk of extinguishing our sense of the urgency of mission. Do we still have the anguish about salvation that gripped St Dominic?” Reminding the lay faithful of how we should participate at Mass, Sarah draws attention to the Our Lady and St John at Golgotha: “They were there, silently allowing themselves to be penetrated, imbued and shaped by the mystery of the Cross.” Such quotations provide a brief taste of the tenor of this profound book.

Cardinal Sarah’s triptych should be on the shelves of every Catholic, to remind us that the Christian faith, unlike politics – of which we have had our fill these last few days – is not about focus groups, Twitter trends and catchy slogans; it is about self-transformation, self-sacrifice and the pursuit of holiness. In a fanciful way, I ask myself: what if Clive James had happened to interview this holy cardinal for his TV series rather than the Catholic novelist Piers Paul Read. As it was, these two clever, bookish men chatted in a cordial and civilised way, comfortable in each other’s company, neither of them seriously challenging the other, though Read did say at one point that he was “very conscious of the grace of God and my need of God.” One had the impression that as a well-brought up Englishman he felt it would not be proper to go into more detail on so personal a subject; and as a maverick Australian polymath, more comfortable in the world of books and authors than any spiritual preoccupations James did not pursue the question further.

Cardinal Sarah, an African who was converted from pagan animism as a child, alongside his parents, would not have played by the implicit rules of the interview format: he would gently but insistently have forced James out from his comfort zone, into the real world of good and evil that Dostoyevsky understood so insightfully. Perhaps even a talker as brilliant as James might have paused to contemplate the meaning of life and mortality; what might lie beyond the blandishments of fame and his millions of fans.

Source: Catholic Herald

Biya, money, morality and State-owned enterprises in French Cameroun

18, December 2019

Biya, money, morality and State-owned enterprises in French Cameroun 0

Ernest Ela Evina holds the record as the longest serving general manager of a public company in French Cameroun. To be sure, Evina was appointed in 1974 by the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo as general manager of the National Center for Studies and Experimentation in Agricultural Machinery (Ceneema). Mr Ernest Ela Evina was only replaced last Friday by the French Cameroun head of state Paul Biya after 45 years as General Manager. No one knows the current bill of health of CENEEMA.

According to the Paul Biya decree signed last Friday, December 06, 2019, Evina got replaced by Mrs. Mebande Bate née Ekotto

A failed State

The French Cameroonian law of July 12, 2017 and certain provisions of laws 2017/10 and 2017/11 relating to the status of public enterprises and public establishments limit the duration of a general manager at the head of the company to 9 years (three terms of 3 years). This had nothing to do with the Biya-Evina relationship.

On June 19, 2019, President Biya signed another decree specifying the terms of application of certain provisions of the laws of 2017, on the general status of public establishments and public enterprises as well as the remuneration, allowances and benefits of their leaders.

Last July, Jean-Pierre Kédi, general manager of the Electricity Sector Regulatory Agency (Arsel) announced his intention to step down after 9 years at the head of the public company to remain in compliance with the law. But his announcement was perceived as a thunderbolt in a country where resignation is not in the habits of barons of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate.

Mindful of the numerous cases of Biya loyalists who have gone far beyond their mandates as general managers, it is evidently clear that French Cameroun is a one man show.

The local French Cameroun press recently cited extensively the cases of many other general managers and Board Chairs who are still in office. They include:

Camille Mouthe  Bidias, CEO of the National Employment Fund (FNE) since 1991, 28 years old

Adolphe Moudiki, General Manager of the National Hydrocarbons Company (SNH) since 1993, 26 years

Yao Aissatou, General Manager of the National Investment Company (SNI) since 2003, 16 years

Marie Claire Nnana has been 12 years at the head of the Cameroon Press and Publishing Society (SOPECam)

Christol Georges Manon has also been 12 years at the head of the Mission for the Development and Management of Industrial Zones (MAGZI).

While Olivier Mekulu Mvondo Akame is the General Manager of the National Social Insurance Fund (CNPS), since 2008, 11 years ago.

It is vital to include in this report that the Board Chairs have served several decades in their respective public companies.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files

Rwanda’s Kagame ‘most likely’ to step down in 2024

18, December 2019

Rwanda’s Kagame ‘most likely’ to step down in 2024 0

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame says it is possible that he will not be a candidate when next citizens go to the polls in 2024.

The 62-year-old was attending a summit in Doha when he was asked about whether he will run for office again, Bloomberg quotes him as saying he personally wanted to give way to others.

“Most likely no. I want to have some breathing space but given how things are and how they have been in the past, I have made up my mind where I am personally concerned, that it is not going to happen next time.”

Kagame has been been president of the tiny East African nation since 2000. He won his current mandate (his third term) in 2017 elections in which he scored 99% of the vote.

A controversial referendum in 2015 allowed the two-term constitutional limit to be lifted allowing him to contest in 2017. When the current seven-year term ends he could seek two more five-year terms according to the constitution.

In an interview with Jeune Afrique news website in 2017, Kagame stressed that Rwanda could thrive even in his absence, in response to whether or not he will contest beyond the 2017 elections.

‘I think so, yes. And it is likely that I will clarify this point soon when I enter the election campaign. There is a sort of contract between me, on the one hand, the RPF party and the Rwandan people, on the other.

“The fear you express would be justified if the Rwandan society was static, frozen. But it’s just the opposite. Like our economy, our institutions and our skills, our society evolves and enters into a virtuous dynamic.

“They wanted me, through the constitutional referendum of December 2015, to continue my work, which I accepted. But the time has come to tell them that they must start thinking, beyond my person,” Kagame said in response to stepping down.

But in 2012, Kagame expressly ruled out running for a third term. He told the World Policy Journal he was ready to respect constitutional limits and give way when the time came.

“We have the constitution in place. We have term limits. I’m serving my second and last term. I’m just hoping that another suitable person will come and continue with the work we are doing and not reverse it or break it up.”

Kagame, who won a third term in 2017, has faced mounting criticism for what human rights groups say are widespread abuses, a muzzling of independent media, and suppression of political opposition. He denies wrongdoing. He first came to power in 2000.

Paul Kagame, 62 years
Profession: Soldier
Became President: 2000 – till date
Predecessor: Pasteur Bizimungu
Presidential reign: 19 years

he man Paul Kagame – A brief profile

Paul Kagame was born in October 1957 in Rwanda’s Southern Province. His family fled pre-independence ethnic persecution and violence in 1960, crossing into Uganda where Kagame spent thirty years as a refugee.

Kagame joined current Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and his group of guerrilla fighters to launch a war to free Uganda from dictatorship. Under the new government, he served as a senior military officer.

In 1990, he returned to Rwanda to lead the Rwandan Patriotic Front’s (RPF) four-year struggle to liberate the country from the autocratic and divisive order established since independence.

Led by Kagame, the Rwanda Patriotic Army defeated the government in July 1994 and the RPF subsequently set Rwanda on its current course towards reconciliation, nation building and socio-economic development.

Paul Kagame was appointed Vice-President and Minister for Defense in the Government of National Unity on July 19, 1994, and four years later was elected Chairman of the RPF, a partner in the Government of National Unity.

On 22 April 2000, Paul Kagame took the oath of office as President of the Republic of Rwanda after being elected by the Transitional National Assembly. He won the first ever democratic elections held in Rwanda in August 2003 and was re-elected to a second seven-year mandate in August 2010.

In 2015, two years to this years’ polls which he was not eligible to stand in, he proposed a constitutional referendum which was largely endorsed allowing him to contest in the upcoming elections.

Source: Africa News

US House Speaker Pelosi calls Trump impeachment letter ‘ridiculous’ and ‘really sick’

18, December 2019

US House Speaker Pelosi calls Trump impeachment letter ‘ridiculous’ and ‘really sick’ 0

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has blasted President Donald Trump’s insult-laden letter urging her to halt the impeachment proceedings, describing the letter’s content as “ridiculous” and “really sick.”

Pelosi, the highest ranking Democrat in Congress, told reporters on Tuesday that she had not gotten the opportunity to read the Republican president’s whole letter, which accused Democrats of waging an “unconstitutional abuse of power” by moving forward with an impeachment vote.

“It’s ridiculous,” she said. “I mean, I haven’t really fully read it, we’ve been working. I’ve seen the essence of it though and it’s really sick.”

The president’s letter accused Pelosi of putting on a “false display of solemnity” throughout the inquiry and declared that “no intelligent person believes what you are saying.”

In Trump’s letter to Pelosi earlier on Tuesday, he issued a stark warning to congressional Democrats, saying that if they pursue impeachment against him, they will be “declaring war on American democracy.”

Trump also called any impeachment effort an “illegal partisan coup.” He issued the charges one day before a possible House debate on approving articles of impeachment against Trump.

Trump is this week likely to become the third US president to be impeached.

The House is likely to take up impeachment on Wednesday, setting the stage for a vote this week on whether to approve charges stemming from his effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 23-17 on Friday along party lines to approve the two charges against Trump and to send the matter to the full chamber.

If the charges are approved in the House, the matter would be sent to the Republican-led Senate to hold a trial on whether to remove Trump from office.

Democrats, who enjoy a 36-seat majority in the House, are expected to win an impeachment vote, which requires a simple majority.

Republicans hold 53 of the 100 seats in the Senate, where they appear likely to prevail in any trial against Trump, which would require a two-thirds majority of those present to remove him from office.

No US president has been removed as a direct result of impeachment.

Richard Nixon resigned in 1974 before he could be removed, while Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were impeached by the House, respectively in 1868 and 1998, but not convicted by the Senate.

Democrats have accused Trump of endangering the US Constitution, jeopardizing national security and undermining the integrity of next year’s US presidential election by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in a July phone call to investigate Biden and his son Hunter Biden, who was on the board of a Ukrainian gas company.

Republicans have defended Trump and accused Democrats of a partisan effort aimed at overturning his upset 2016 victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump has branded the entire impeachment drive a sham.

Source: Presstv

Placating the International Community: Yaounde to begin secret trial for soldiers who killed civilians in viral video

17, December 2019

Placating the International Community: Yaounde to begin secret trial for soldiers who killed civilians in viral video 0

A military court sitting in the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé will begin hearing a case involving seven soldiers who killed two women and their children in 2018.

Hearing is scheduled to start in January 20. Authorities have disclosed that the hearing will not be open to the public.

A video of the killing was released and subsequently went viral on social media forcing the government to constitute a probe after having initially rejecting it as “fake news.”

The BBC Africa Eye’s in an investigative piece that dissected the gruesome killing of two women and their babies by security forces deployed in the fight against Boko Haram insurgents.

The piece employed technology – satellite imagery, available news footage and matched it with the video of the shooting that drew widespread condemnation when it surfaced on social media.

The BBC work tracked when it possibly happened – dating as far back as 2015 and identified two of the soldiers involved.

The other gruesome killing was also shot in the same region and involved soldiers opening fire on a dozen young men who were lying prostrate.

A lawyer defending the seven soldiers, Sylvestre Mbeng, said he believes the trial has been made private because the authorities fear there could be damaging revelations.

Human Rights group Amnesty International has called for justice for the women and their children. The United States government openly slammed the incident and asked that a through probe be held.

Source: Africa News

Douala: Central African experts meet over anti-poaching drive

17, December 2019

Douala: Central African experts meet over anti-poaching drive 0

Experts from central Africa met in Cameroon’s commercial capital Douala on Monday to work out a regional plan to combat poaching.

“Illegal wildlife crime continues to pose serious threats to wildlife populations. The forest elephant is especially in danger in Central Africa,” Cameroon’s Minister of Forestry and Wildlife Jules Doret Ndongo told reporters. “We want to fight against the growing trend of poaching, especially trans-boundary poaching and insecurity in protected areas.”

Ndongo said the meeting will review progress made in anti-poaching in the 10 member countries of the Central African Forest Commission.

The regional bloc is intensifying measures to enforce field wildlife crime units and set policies at the national and regional levels.

Central Africa owns the Congo Basin, the world’s second largest rainforest with almost 2 million square kilometers of humid forest.

According to World Wide Fund for Nature, Central Africa has experienced a 62-percent decline in the number of forest elephants between 2002 and 2011 due to commercial poaching, and it has been deteriorating over the years with cumulative losses of up to 90 percent in some landscapes in the region between 2011 and 2015.

Source: Xinhuanet

Ambazonia Restoration Forces arrest candidates to protest 2020 elections

17, December 2019

Ambazonia Restoration Forces arrest candidates to protest 2020 elections 0

Separatist fighters in western Cameroon have abducted at least 40 candidates for parliament and local councils, in an effort to derail elections set for February. The government is promising to free the hostages and protect candidates and election officials for what it says must be successful polls.

In an audio shared by separatist fighters, Samuel Nforba, a candidate for the February 9, 2020 local council election, says he is being punished by separatists for defying their warning that no one should vote or be a candidate in the joint local council and parliamentary elections.

Among those listening to the audio is 51-year-old teacher Wilson Bate. He says the separatists should free innocent Cameroonians who simply want to carry out their civic duties.

“It’s embarrassing. I feel very bad that politicians should be kidnapped for simply wanting to perform their fundamental rights,” he said. “Government should do all what it can to make sure that there is a safe ground for all political events, make sure that they provide the necessary security for these upcoming elections.”

Separatists have been fighting since 2017 to detach English-speaking Northwest and Southwest Cameroon from the rest of the country and its French-speaking majority.

Cameroon’s government declared the regions were peaceful enough to hold the elections; but, last week, nearly 40 people running for council seats were abducted in the Northwest town of Jakiri.

Another three were kidnapped in the Northwest town of Bamenda for being in possession of voter cards.

Prince Ngwese Ekosso, chairman of the opposition United Socialist Democratic Party, says conditions are not peaceful enough to hold the ballot.

“There is need for the resolution of the conflict before we can be able to venture into elections in Cameroon,” he said. “The country is going through one of the worst crises and the separatists have made their point the tension is going to continue.”

Cameroon's minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji, speaks in Garoua Boulai, Cameroon, Oct. 23, 2019. (Moki Edwin Kindzeka/VOA)
FILE – Cameroon’s minister of territorial administration, Paul Atanga Nji

Paul Atanga Nji, Cameroon’s minister of territorial administration, says the government is making efforts to free the hostages — and maintains the elections must take place as planned.

“In the Northwest and Southwest, the head of state [President Paul Biya] has given firm instructions to the minister of territorial administration, to the minister in charge of defense, that we have to do everything that it takes for this elections to hold properly. It is just but normal that we will uplift the security network in those two regions before, during and after the process,” he said.

The abductions come at a time when Cameroon’s parliament is meeting to debate the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered as a solution to the separatist crisis.

Some lawmakers say only the creation of federal states, one in the English-speaking regions and the other in the French-speaking areas, can stop the separatist war that has killed more than 3,000 people.

The separatists have rejected the proposed special status, saying they want nothing but an independent state.

Source: VOA

Boxing: Joshua offers to be Fury’s sparring partner if it helps him beat Wilder

17, December 2019

Boxing: Joshua offers to be Fury’s sparring partner if it helps him beat Wilder 0

Anthony Joshua has offered to be Tyson Fury’s sparring partner if it helps his fellow British fighter beat WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder.

Joshua has been left frustrated in his attempts to lure America’s Wilder into the ring as he bids to unify the division following his victory over Andy Ruiz Jr last weekend.

The 30-year-old, who regained the WBA, IBF and WBO belts, feels he has a better chance of landing a blockbuster unification showdown with Fury than with Wilder.

Fury faces a re-match with the American on February 22, having drawn their first encounter, and Joshua told Sky Sports News: “I think honestly he might beat Wilder next time.

“I think Fury would fight me quicker than Wilder would, so, if that’s the case, I want him to win. Imagine that fight on British soil.

“If Tyson needs me, I’ll go out and spar with him to get him ready for Wilder.”

Joshua remains desperate for a showdown with Wilder that would see both men attempt to become the first undisputed heavyweight champion since Lennox Lewis.

“It still puzzles me as to why it’s so difficult to pin this man down,” Joshua said. “This is the man I need to pin down to get the last ring and conquer this division.”

“You’ve got the two lords of the rings here,” he added. “The last one to unify, undisputed, the division. I’ve got four (including the IBO belt), he’s got one. I just need one more.”

Bulgarian Kubrat Pulev is the IBF’s next mandatory challenger for Joshua, while the WBO has ordered the Londoner to fight Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk.

And speaking about a potential third meeting with Ruiz Jr, the Mexican-American who stunned the boxing world by beating Joshua in June, the British boxer said: “One trillion per cent.

“I always said I’d fight him in Tijuana, with his uncle as referee. Me and Andy will soon see each other in the ring again.”

Source: AFP

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