Monthly Archives: September 2020

6, September 2020

Tennis: Williams rallies to move into last 16 of US Open ⁰

Serena Williams overcame an early scare to defeat fellow American Sloane Stephens and move into the last 16 of the US Open on Saturday.

Williams, the third seed, lost the first set convincingly before rallying to dominate the next two, triumphing 2-6, 6-2, 6-2 inside a near empty Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“It was intense, I have to say. We always have some really incredible matches and it brings out the best of my fitness when I play Sloane,” said Williams.

Stephens, the 26th seed and 2017 US Open champion dumped Williams out of the 2013 Australian Open during her sensational run to the semi-finals as a 19-year-old.

And after dropping the opening set, Williams feared that she was about to fall victim to a major upset again.

“In that first set I don’t think she made any errors, honestly. She was just playing so clean and I just said, ‘I don’t want to lose in straight sets.’

“Next thing I know, I won the second set and I was like, ‘Okay, great,'” Williams added.

The 38-year-old, gunning for a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam singles title, will play Greece’s 15th seed Maria Sakkari for a place in the quarter-finals.

Sakkari stunned Williams in three sets at the Western & Southern Open, a US Open tuneup, in New York last week.

With spectators barred from this year’s Flushing Meadows event due to the coronavirus pandemic, several top players took advantage of suites they have been assigned to watch two of their rivals in action.

Sofia Kenin and Naomi Osaka — the second and fourth seeds respectively — took in the three-setter, as did fifth seed in the men’s draw, German Alexander Zverev, who could be seen munching on sushi.

The opportunity to watch some tennis is a rare perk this Grand Slam for competitors who would normally be swamped by fans if they appeared in the stands.

“Usually it’s impossible to watch a match in a kind of peace,” explained Williams. So it’s cool us players can watch each other. It’s interesting, I like it.”

Also among the few onlookers was Williams’ three-year-old daughter who was filmed clapping approvingly at one point.

“I hope she say her mama fighting,” said Williams, before adding, “I don’t think she was paying attention. She may have been playing with some princesses upstairs.”

It has been more than three years since Williams won her 23rd Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open — when she was already pregnant with Olympia.

Williams has come close since, reaching four major finals only to come away empty handed.

Source: AFP

5, September 2020

Two French soldiers killed in Mali ⁰

Two French soldiers were killed on Saturday in a military operation in Mali’s northeastern Kidal region, the Élysée Palace announced.

The two soldiers died after their armoured vehicle hit an improvised explosive device on September 5. A third soldier was wounded in the explosion.

French President Emmanuel Macron expresses his “deep respect” for the soldiers’ “sacrifice” and sends his “sincere condolences to their families and loved ones”, the presidential office said.

France started its military operations in the country in 2013, after Mali asked it to help regain territory seized by Islamist extremists who had hijacked a Touareg rebellion in the country’s northern desert regions the previous year.

The French military succeeded in this initial task – but the jihadist insurgency has since spread throughout Mali and across the border to Niger and Burkina Faso.

Earlier on Saturday, Mali’s military junta began talks with opposition groups on Saturday on its promise to hand power back to civilians, after mounting pressure from neighbouring countries since the coup in August.

The West African country has long been plagued by instability, a simmering jihadist revolt, ethnic violence and endemic corruption, prompting a clique of rebel soldiers to detain president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita last month.

In its statement announcing the death of the two French soldiers, the president’s office reiterated France’s calls for a swift transition of power to civilian rule in Mali.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

5, September 2020

French Cameroun: Of Biya the holidaymaker and Swiss repatriation ⁰

The French Cameroun dictator who was given marching orders to leave Swiss territory in June 2019 after a massive protest by French Camerounians at the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva has ever since been shuttling between Yaoundé and his native Mvomeka’a for the past 14 months.

To be sure, it is exactly 14 months since the French Cameroun chief executive left Europe and has never again embarked on his so-called “short private stay”.

On June 23, 2019, Paul Biya and his wife, Chantal Biya after spending nine months in the nation’s capital reportedly left the country to rest at the luxurious Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, Switzerland. But on July 5, only ten days later, the National Chairman of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate and Mrs. Chantal Biya were forced to return to Yaoundé.

French Cameroonian activists in the diaspora, grouped under the Anti-Sardinard Brigade (BAS), disrupted the presidential couple’s stay in Geneva with several demonstrations, including the most important on 29th June that witnessed attacks on Paul Biya’s close guards with a spilled over effect on a Swiss journalist who accused the Biya guards of having molested him. The guards were convicted and expelled from Swiss territory. Since then, Mr. Biya has not been on holiday on European soil.

He however, made two trips in France on the invitation of President Emmanuel Macron. The first was in Lyon in October 2019 for the 6th Replenishment Conference of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the second was to attend the Paris Peace Summit in November.

Paul Biya now spends most of his time between the Etoudi Palace in Yaoundé and Mvomeka’a, his home village in the South of the country. This is a surprising attitude for a President who has always been presented as a “holidaymaker”.

A report by Organize Crime and Corruption Reporting (OCCRP), as part of the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, indicated in 2018 that the Cameroonian President, in 35 years of reign, had spent the equivalent of 90 billion CFA francs for “short private stays” outside Cameroon, mainly in Geneva.

The same survey indicated that the Cameroonian treasury was releasing, on a daily basis for the same reasons, about CFAF 20 million only in hotel expenses of the Head of State and his delegation, excluding meals and other extras.

By Besong Esther Agbor in Halmstad

5, September 2020

Yaounde: Ex-Defense Minister on trial in complex money laundering network to cover the trail of millions of euros in bribes ⁰

After 18 months of investigation, the former French Cameroun Minister of Defense is now ready to face the long arm of the law. Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o, detained for 18 months at the Yaounde-Kondengui Central Prison, will now appear before a grand jury at the Special Criminal Court.

According to French Cameroun intelligence files, Mr. Mebe Ngo’o is accused of embezzlement of public funds estimated at 20 billion CFA francs that he maliciously pilfered through over-invoicing and fictitious public contracts.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands the ex French Cameroun Defense boss is also at the centre of another financial crime estimated at 300 million Euros or 196 billion CFA francs intended for a Polytechnological project with the Peoples Republic of China in the context of the purchase of military equipment for the French Cameroun army. And to top it all off, the native of Sangmelima is also accused of money laundering estimated at 20 billion CFA francs.

Placed in detention in Kondengui prison since March 2019, the former French Cameroun Minister of Defence (2009-2015) continues to claim his innocence and that of his wife and his three co-defendants Mbangue Maxime Leopold, Mboutou Elle Ghislain Victor and Menye Victor Emmanuel.

Reported by Besong Esther Agbor in Halmstad with files from Rita Akana in Yaounde

5, September 2020

Tennis: Serena headlines day six at the US Open ⁰

Serena Williams takes on 2017 US Open winner Sloane Stephens for a place in the last 16 at Flushing Meadows on Saturday.

The third-round match is the drawcard event on day six at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in New York.

Stephens dumped Williams out of the 2013 Australian Open during her sensational run to the semi-finals as a 19-year-old.

“She’s a great competitor,” Williams said of her fellow American, who is seeded 26th.

“It’s an incredibly interesting match, because she’s actually a US Open champion. She’s a great player. You can’t win a Grand Slam and not be really, really, really, really, really good.”

Williams, the tournament’s third seed, is seeking a 24th singles Grand Slam title that would equal Margaret Court’s record.

It has been more than three years since Williams won her 23rd Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open — when she was already pregnant with daughter Olympia.

The 38-year-old has come close since, reaching four major finals only to come away empty handed.

A tournament victory next week would also see her break away from Chris Evert, on six titles, as the most decorated US Open champion of the women’s game in the modern era.

In the men’s draw Saturday, second seed Dominic Thiem takes on 2014 US Open champion Marin Cilic for a place in the last 16.

And third seed Daniil Medvedev appears against American wildcard J.J. Wolf in a last-32 match.

Source: AFP

5, September 2020

Niger soldiers executed dozens of civilians, probe says ⁰

Soldiers in Niger executed dozens of civilians during the counterinsurgency campaign against jihadists in the country’s troubled Tillaberi region earlier this year, a probe into the deaths reported.

The West African nation has suffered years of conflict with Islamic militants operating in the vast and inhospitable Sahel desert, with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed to date.

The national armies of Niger and its neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso have been accused of war crimes in their response operations, including forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

Niger’s National Commission on Human Rights was investigating reports by Amnesty International and other rights groups that 102 civilians had gone missing in the western province between March 27 and April 2 after an army operation.

“There have indeed been executions of unarmed civilians and the mission discovered at least 71 bodies in six mass graves,” said Abdoulaye Seydou, the president of the Pan-African Network for Peace, Democracy and Development, which participated in the probe, on Friday.

“It is elements of the Defence and Security Forces (FDS) which are responsible for these summary and extrajudicial executions,” he added, saying those killed were attacked with bladed weapons and small arms.

But he said the investigation was unable to establish whether senior levels of the military hierarchy were responsible for the deaths.

Jihadist violence resulted in 4,000 deaths in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso last year, the United Nations has said.

The UN has condemned what it said was a spike in criminal acts by national armies in the Sahel at the beginning of this year, including more than 100 extrajudicial executions by the Malian army between January and March.

Amnesty International reported in June that the armies of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso had been responsible for nearly 200 disappearances in the space of a few months.

Source: AFP

5, September 2020

US: Charges dropped against black man tried six times for one crime ⁰

US prosecutors dropped charges Friday against a black man who was tried six times and spent more than 20 years in prison for the same murders.

Curtis Flowers served 23 years for a quadruple murder committed in Mississippi in 1996. He has always maintained his innocence.

The prosecutor in all six trials was ultimately accused last year by the US Supreme Court of trying hard to keep black people off the jury and eventually resigned from the case.

Flowers — who has been sentenced to death four times in the case — was released on bail in December, although another trial was still possible. But on Friday Mississippi’s attorney general dismissed the charges against him.

“I am finally free from the injustice that left me locked in a box for 23 years,” Flowers said in a statement.

“The day I’ve prayed for is here at last.”

Under US law, a suspect acquitted of a crime cannot be tried again. Still, Flowers was tried six times.

His case became well known in a podcast called “In the Dark.”

Each of the convictions and death sentences in the first three trials was overturned by the Mississippi Supreme Court for prosecutorial misconduct. The next two ended in hung juries.

In 2010 Flowers was convicted a final time and sentenced to death.

But this decision was overturned in 2019 by the US Supreme Court because of what it called a prosecutor’s “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of black individuals.”

That prosecutor, Doug Evans, had been on the case from the outset.

In January he agreed to step down from the case and the state attorney general Lynn Fitch started the proceedings from scratch.

She asked that the case be thrown out, and a judge agreed.

Source: AFP

4, September 2020

Southern Cameroons civilians accuse Cameroon government military of brutality ⁰

Cameroon’s military has detained hundreds of people in the country’s troubled northwest as they search for separatists following the killing of a police officer this week. Locals accuse the military of carrying out revenge attacks, including looting and burning shops, in the English-speaking region — a charge the military denies.

Thirty-four-year old fish seller Ernestine Sahmo says she has decided to temporarily leave the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda due to what she says is military brutality.

Sahmo says she was forced out of her shop by armed soldiers who detained 80 other women at a police station for three days.

“The military entered the whole market and was removing everybody,” she said. “They will break into your store and then start brutalizing you, asking you to go out. They succeeded to remove everybody from the food market to the mobile police station. We were being asked to sit on the ground. Some women were collapsing. The way they terrorized us, we never knew we would come back alive.”

Sahmo says store owners’ goods were either looted or torched by the military.

Last Monday, the government said separatist fighters in Bamenda killed a policeman in active service. The military was then deployed to hunt for the killers.

Residents said troops started arresting people indiscriminately, forcing some either to undress or to sit on the floor for several hours.

Scared civilians escaped to neighboring villages and French-speaking towns including Mbouda and Bafoussam. The government said at least two civilians were killed but did not say if separatists or troops were responsible.

General Valere Nka, the commander of government troops fighting the separatists in the English-speaking northwest regions, says the military has not committed any atrocities. He says his troops have remained professional.

He says his troops fully obey instructions given by the military hierarchy for civilians to be protected and their human rights respected. Nka says he expects civilians who have been assured of total protection by the military to denounce all suspected separatist fighters in their localities.

Mka pledged to kill all fighters who do not drop their weapons and seek forgiveness.

Rights groups and opposition political parties have condemned the military for what they say are excesses and torture of civilians in handling the crisis.

Prince Ekosso, president of the opposition United Socialist Party, says civilians are scared of the military. He says some of the abuses inflicted by troops on civilians are unbearable.

“These are the things that we have decried for too long,” he said. “The people of the northwest and the southwest region cannot continue to suffer like this. You don’t go and punish innocent people for the crimes of another person. The military continues to terrorize the people.”

Last week, a Cameroonian rights group, the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, released what it said is a list of atrocities committed in the English-speaking regions between May and August.

The group accused the military of atrocities including extra-judicial executions, arbitrary arrests, unlawful detention, looting and extortion, poor prison conditions, and inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.

The human rights body called for an investigation to be carried out and those found guilty to be punished.

Unrest broke out in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions in 2016, when teachers and lawyers protested the dominance of the French language and French-speaking officials.

Rebels took up arms a year later, demanding a separate English-speaking state they call the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Source: VOA

4, September 2020

UN condemns deadly attack on internally displaced people in French Cameroun ⁰

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, strongly condemns an attack which killed seven people and wounded 14 others at Koyapé, a village hosting internally displaced people in Cameroon’s Far North Region on 1 September.

The suicide bomb attack took place near Kolofata, close to the border with Nigeria, where some 18,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) have sought safety over the past seven years. It comes just a month after 18 people died and 15 were injured in an attack by an armed group attack against the Nguétchéwé IDP site on the second of August.

“We are horrified by these senseless attacks on people who have been torn from their villages, fleeing violence perpetrated by armed gangs which rage in the region, only to be stripped of safety again after they just found refuge elsewhere,” said Olivier Guillaume Beer, UNHCR Representative in Cameroon.

“The killing of innocent civilians has to stop. This is contrary to international humanitarian law and human rights law. We call on armed groups to respect the rights and lives of civilians populations.”

An estimated 7,000 Cameroonians from Kordo and Guérédou villages near the country’s border with Nigeria have fled their homes since 11 August, seeking safety in neighbouring areas.

The displaced population has been targeted in relentless attacks, forcing them to flee.

Recent attacks follow a significant rise in violent incidents in Cameroon’s Far North Region, including looting and kidnapping by Boko Haram and other armed groups active in the region. Brutal violence has plagued the Lake Chad Basin, killing more than 30,000 people and forcing over three million to flee. Some 2.7 million people are now displaced internally in Northeast Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad and Niger. Another 300,000 Nigerian refugees have fled into neighbouring countries.

Culled from UNHCR

4, September 2020

October 1: Vice President Yerima urges Ambazonian unity against French Cameroun military ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has strongly urged all Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Ground 1 and in Ground Zero including their leadership in the West to sew up their differences and prepare to confront the French Cameroun occupational army on October 1.

Dabney Yerima made the comments on Thursday in Holland, after he reportedly had a joined plenary meeting of his fellow Southern Cameroons leaders.

“As we prepare to celebrate our national day this coming October, all Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups must come together to tell the world that the Federal Republic of Ambazonia will forever remain united against French Cameroun colonialism” he said.

Vice President Yerima noted that the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and its people are going through an unprecedented and dangerous stage of their struggle with French Cameroun political elites attempting to distract Southern Cameroonians with their so-called regional elections.

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader pointed out that 35, 000 Southern Cameroonians were not killed for the purpose of staging a French Cameroun teleguided regional election in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima again condemned the fledgling trend of détente between some Southern Cameroons traditional rulers and Minister Paul Atanga Nji and his occupying French Cameroun regime.

By Isong Asu in London