Monthly Archives: September 2020

3, September 2020

US: President Trump tells supporters to try to vote twice ⁰

US President Donald Trump on Thursday renewed his call for supporters to try to vote twice on November 3, a potentially illegal act that he claimed is the only way to be sure that a ballot is counted.

Trump said Americans should first try to vote by mail, if that option is offered in their state, then also go to the polling station on election day to check that their ballot has been counted — and, if not, vote again.

“YOU ARE NOW ASSURED THAT YOUR PRECIOUS VOTE HAS BEEN COUNTED,” he said in a Twitter thread.

Intentionally voting twice is illegal.

Facebook and Twitter, which are under growing pressure not to allow misinformation ahead of the election, put warning labels on the president’s posts about the matter.

“We placed a public interest notice on two Tweets in this thread for violating our Civic Integrity Policy, specifically for encouraging people to potentially vote twice,” Twitter said.

However, White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany said Trump had been taken out of context and just wanted voters to verify that their first vote had been registered.

He “does not condone unlawful voting,” she said.

Whatever Trump meant, the tweets were his latest assault on the credibility of mail-in voting, which is being rapidly expanded across the country in response to fears of Covid-19 contagion in crowded polling stations.

Despite Trump’s relentless challenges, the mail-in practice is already widespread and largely trouble-free in the United States.

He himself uses the absentee mail-in option to vote in Florida while living in the White House.

While Trump says that increased mail-in voting will allow mass ballot tampering and rigging of the result, elections experts say there is no evidence of significant danger.

However, polls show Democrats are far more likely than Republicans to vote by mail, leading Trump’s opponents to fear that he is trying to suppress Biden’s vote — or set the stage for disputing the results.

– Election day worries –

Trump first aired the idea of casting a precautionary second vote on Wednesday during a trip to North Carolina.

“If you get the unsolicited ballots, send it in, and then go — make sure it counted. And if it doesn’t tabulate, you vote,” he said. “So, send it in early, and then go and vote.”

The recommendation prompted the election board in the state, which Democrat Joe Biden hopes to snatch from Trump, to issue a statement pointing out: “It is illegal to vote twice in an election.”

“Soliciting someone to do so also is a violation of North Carolina law,” the board’s director, Karen Brinson Bell, added.

Polls currently show Biden on course to defeat Trump.

But experts warn that the country faces a confusing and potentially tense aftermath of the voting on November 3, due to the unusual circumstances.

Given the larger than ordinary number of mailed-in ballots, few expect there will be a clear-cut result that evening, with mailed ballots possibly taking days if not weeks to finish counting.

Under one scenario, Trump could be shown to have won on the basis of ballots cast during the day, but mail-in ballots, once counted days later, would then put Biden over the top.

Trump has repeatedly refused to declare he will accept the results of the election.

Source: AFP

3, September 2020

French Cameroun Military Intervention in Southern Cameroons: Some Economic Consequences ⁰

Yaounde says the economies of its troubled English-speaking western regions are collapsing as a result of the country’s four-year separatist conflict.  Officials say the ongoing fighting has made tax revenues in the English-speaking Northwest region drop from $800,000 annually to just $1,000 last year. The lack of government funds has had devastating effects on the region. 

Fotso Dominique, the most senior government economic official in the English-speaking Northwest region, says separatist fighters have succeeded in chasing customs and tax officials from almost all crossing points along the border with Nigeria.

Speaking on Cameroon state television, Dominique said there has been a 90% drop in imports of building materials, drugs, vehicles, electronics and basic commodities from Nigeria. This, he says, while civilians have been deprived of basic supplies and state coffers left with huge shortfalls.

“Before 2016, the customs duty collection was more than 200 million Francs [$ 363,000] in Donga Mantung and about 150 million [$ 273,000] from Menchum Division giving us a total of about 305 million [$552,000] per annum. As we talk, Donga Mantung last year collected less than 500,000 [$ 900] and nothing was collected from the Menchum area,” he said.

Cameroon’s government this month reported that the country’s second largest employer — the Cameroon Development Corporation — had abandoned most of its banana, palm oil, and rubber plantations. It owes as much as a year’s worth of backpay to 6,000 of its 22,000 workers.

The Palm Oil Company PAMOL and other agro industrial companies say they are now heavily in debt.

Microfinance institutions that power the economies of Cameroon’s English-speaking regions say they are unable to recover $50 million in loans.

Merchants have either escaped to safer areas in the French-speaking regions or can not repay loans because their businesses are closed due to the fighting.

The separatists have said on social media that their intention is to ruin Cameroon government state coffers. Fighters say they want to make the English-speaking regions ungovernable until they obtain their independence. 

Residents and businesspeople say anyone who disobeys the fighters’ calls for a lockdown or is seen paying taxes is subject to retribution.

Businessman Protus Awnaga says he almost lost his life for disobeying instructions from fighters not to go on a business trip on the week a lockdown was imposed.

“That is the most awful moment I have ever had in my life. Face to face with gunmen like this. And they ordered us out of the car. We saw our things being burnt, but we were even thankful to God because they should have burnt us with the car. It is terrible. It is deplorable,” he said.

Economist Tasoh Gerald says the consequences of the crisis weighs on the government but it is civilians who are caught in the fighting who suffer most. They include people whose businesses were either torched by separatists for disobeying their instructions to not pay taxes or those whose property was burnt by the military, which accused them of supporting the fighters.

“It has discouraged investments in this region. A fall in investments implies a rise in unemployment and a general fall in the standards of living. Also, most of the councils in these regions find it difficult to settle their debts and pay their workers,” he said. “Another consequence is the near collapse of the tourism sector. Most of the recreational areas and tourist sites are abandoned. Most of those in the working age group have migrated to other regions leaving behind the old and the young in the villages. This high migration implies less farm labor and consequently a fall in agricultural productivity in these regions.” 

The suffering has not deterred neither the government nor the fighters. Both have maintained their positions for the past four years. The separatists are asking for the creation of a breakaway English-speaking state while the government maintains that Cameroon cannot be divided.

The United Nations says the conflict has killed more than three thousand people and displaced more than 500,000. Fifty thousand others are asylum seekers in neighboring Nigeria.

Source: VOA 

3, September 2020

7 Killed in Suicide Bomb Attack in French Cameroun ⁰

At least seven people were killed and 14 others wounded in suicide bomb attack in a village hosting internally displaced people in Cameroon’s Far North region, the second of such attack in a month, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

The attack on Tuesday took place in Goldavi, close to the border with Nigeria, where some 18,000 people fleeing the violent insurgency, had sought refuge.

“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 UN agency said the 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.

A spokesman for Cameroon’s government was not immediately available to comment.

Suspected militants from Islamist group Boko Haram killed at least 18 people and wounded seven early last month in a grenade attack on a camp for displaced people in northern Cameroon.

The UNHCR said that an estimated 7,000 Cameroonian villagers near the 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,” it said, adding that the decade-long Boko Haram insurgency has killed over 30,000 in the Lake Chad Basin, and forced over three million to flee their homes.

Source: Reuters

3, September 2020

US prepares for pre-election Covid-19 vaccine rollout ⁰

The US has urged states to get ready for a potential Covid-19 vaccine rollout two days before the presidential election, it emerged Wednesday, as France prepared to present a mammoth spending plan for its virus-hit economy.

Across the world, governments are hoping to announce a vaccine as soon as possible to reopen economies shuttered to contain an illness that has killed more than 850,000 people and infected over 25 million.

In a widely circulated letter, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention asked states to sweep away red tape that could prevent a network of vaccine distribution centers being “fully operational by Nov. 1, 2020.”

That is two days before voters head to the polls in an election clouded by the virus and the economic crisis it provoked, sparking concerns President Donald Trump’s administration is rushing to have a vaccine before November 3.

“The normal time required to obtain… permits presents a significant barrier to the success of this urgent public health program,” CDC head Robert Redfield told states in the August 27 letter.

“CDC urgently requests your assistance in expediting applications for these distribution facilities.”

Priority will be given to essential workers, national security officials, seniors and members of vulnerable racial and ethnic groups, according to The New York Times.

Three Western drug makers are progressing with their Phase 3 clinical trials, involving tens of thousands of participants.

AstraZeneca is partnering with Oxford University in England while Moderna is collaborating with the US National Institutes of Health. Pfizer and BioNTech are partnering on the third candidate.

– ‘Dangerous’ –

Under normal procedures, test administrators must wait — probably for months — to verify that vaccine candidates work and are safe.

The US Food and Drug Administration however has raised the possibility that a vaccine might be given emergency authorization before the end of trials.

The FDA has faced mounting criticism from the medical community that it is bowing to political pressure from Trump, who is behind Democratic challenger Joe Biden in the polls and has said one might be ready before the election.

“This means mass vaccination nationwide could start in 59 days. FIFTY-NINE DAYS. Is any #COVID19 #vaccine likely to have completed Phase 3 safety and efficacy clinical trials, and gone through full scientific and @US_FDA review in 59 days?” award-winning epidemiology writer Laurie Garrett asked on Twitter.

“To my knowledge, none of the US #COVID19 #vaccines have finished even enrolling test subjects for Phase 3 trials. Rushing this to completion within 59 days is DANGEROUS.”

FDA chief Stephen Hahn, however, has denied he is acting under pressure from Trump, arguing that any vaccine approval would be a “science, medicine, data decision.”

The US has registered more than six million Covid-19 cases — almost a quarter of the global total — and 185,000 deaths.

Shutdowns have taken a toll on livelihoods across the globe as business revenues plunge and millions are forced out of work.

In Europe, where GDP plunged 12.1 percent in the three months to June, fears are growing of more lockdowns and disruption this autumn and winter as the virus resurges.

The French economy has been pushed into its worst downward spiral since 1945, with GDP down 13.8 percent in the second quarter, after a drop of more than five percent in the first.

– Venice festival tribute –

Paris, hoping to ward off the threat of mass layoffs, has earmarked 100 billion euros ($120 billion) to counter the devastating impact of the coronavirus.

Some critics say the money may come too late to save many companies, while others say high hopes for President Emmanuel Macron’s green revolution in the French economy are likely to be dashed.

Economists have welcomed the departure from the kind of austerity measures seen after the 2008 crisis which were “a huge error,” said Philippe Martin, who heads up the CAE think tank, which advises the government.

Unlike the post-2008 crisis response, much of the new plan targets the supply and investment side of the economy, namely businesses.

The measures over the next two years include 10 billion euros’ worth of corporate tax cuts.

Youth employment is also a major target of the spending, with 6.5 billion euros aimed at encouraging hiring for millions of new entrants on a depressed job market.

In Australia, the government announced a record contraction of seven percent despite authorities providing billions of dollars in support to struggling firms.

New Delhi reported that growth suffered a historic 23.9 percent decline in the second quarter, while Brazil’s economy contracted by a record 9.7 percent.

And to add insult to injury for the sports-mad South American nation, football icon Neymar was one of three Paris Saint-Germain stars to have contracted the coronavirus, a well-placed source told AFP.

“Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol,” PSG said in a statement.

When contacted by AFP, the club declined to confirm the identity of the players in question.

The virus failed to put the brakes on the Venice film festival in Italy, which opened Wednesday with a tribute to those who lost their lives from coronavirus.

The festival, rolling out on the glitzy beachfront Lido through September 12, is the first major international festival to take place since Covid-19 shuttered theaters, halted production and drove millions of moviegoers around the world to their television sets.

Source: AFP

3, September 2020

French Cameroun’s continued crimes, the only thing in the Yaoundé Special Status for Ambazonians ⁰

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government has once again censured La Republique du Cameroun’s Grand National Dialogue that is yet to grant the so-called Special Status to the people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, stating that the only thing that was achieved in the Yaoundé talks was the acceptance of the Biya French Cameroun’s regime continued acts of aggression against Southern Cameroonians.

In a statement on Wednesday, Vice President Dabney Yerima observed that the recent French Cameroun military atrocities in Bamenda demonstrated the only thing that was reached in Yaoundé by the Dion Ngute and Peter Mafany Musonge gangs.

Yerima also referred to the killings in Muyuka and Mautu where French Cameroun forces brutally murdered an elderly Southern Cameroonian woman and a young man who operated a small business in Mautu village.

After the Grand National Dialogue that held in Yaoundé, the French Cameroun leader and his ruling CPDM elites announced a Special Status for the people of Southern Cameroons in an attempt to normalize the crisis situation in British Southern Cameroons which sparked protests and condemnations from the Ambazonia Interim Government including its leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe.

Vice President Dabney Yerima vehemently condemned the actions of the French Cameroun army in Bamenda and said that Southern Cameroons groups should unite and strengthen the resistance front.

By Chi Prudence Asong

3, September 2020

All Southern Cameroons Groups must act against French Cameroun occupation ⁰

A leading Southern Cameroons elite in the Federal Republic of Germany has urged all Ambazonian groups all over the world to do all in their power to resist the French Cameroun’s shameful occupation of Southern Cameroons homeland saying all groups must join forces with Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Interim Government to foil a systematic political assassination of the people of Ambazonia.

In a telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord News on Wednesday, Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said the actions of some Ambazonian figures is undermining efforts being made by Vice President Dabney Yerima and the Ambazonia Interim Government towards upholding the inalienable rights of the oppressed people of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa said those wasting time in the politics of the struggle are instead encouraging the Biya French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé to carry out more atrocious activities and denying the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia their rights, and destabilizing peace and security in the Ambazonia homeland.

Dr Ngassa also praised the fighters in Ground Zero for sticking to the British Southern Cameroons resistance culture and history, making sacrifices for the Ambazonian cause, and rejecting any compromise with French Cameroun surrogates such as Ministers Paul Atanga Nji, Paul Tasong, Paul Elung and Dion Ngute over the past four years of the French Cameroun imposed war.

The creation of many splinter groups, Dr Ngassa added, is a costly mistake on the part of some Southern Cameroonians as well as a divisive move that encourages the continuation of the crimes committed by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime.

Dr Emmanuel Ngassa noted that every Southern Cameroons group is expected to employ all its resources financial and human to put an end to this shameful treatment of the people of Southern Cameroons by the French Cameroun political system and its political elites.

By Isong Asu

3, September 2020

US slaps sanctions on ICC prosecutor Bensouda over Afghanistan war probe ⁰

The United States on Wednesday imposed sanctions on International Criminal Court prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, over her investigation into whether American forces committed war crimes in Afghanistan. The Hague-based tribunal reacted denouncing an “unprecedented” attack against “the rule of law”.

“The International Criminal Court condemns the economic sanctions imposed by the US earlier today on the court’s prosecutor and a member of her office,” an ICC statement said. “These coercive acts, directed at an international judicial institution and its civil servants, are unprecedented and constitute serious attacks against the court, the Rome Statute system of international criminal justice, and the rule of law more generally.”

The war crimes court said it “continues to stand firmly by its personnel and its mission of fighting impunity for the world’s most serious crimes.”

Pompeo also said that Phakiso Mochochoko, the head of the ICC’s Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Cooperation Division, had been blacklisted under sanctions authorised by President Donald Trump in June that allow for asset freezes and travel bans.

“Today we take the next step, because the ICC continues to target Americans, sadly,” Pompeo told reporters.

In addition, Pompeo said that individuals and entities that continue to materially support Bensouda and Mochochoko would risk exposure to sanctions as well.

The US State Department also restricted the issuance of visas for individuals Pompeo said were involved in the court’s efforts to investigate US personnel. He did not name those affected, though.

‘Kangoroo court’ investigating war crimes in Afghanistan

The US move came after President Donald Trump authorised sanctions on the ICC on June 11 for probing and prosecuting US troops.

Pompeo at the time referred to the ICC as a “kangaroo court” and warned that if US soldiers are investigated by it, those of US allies in Afghanistan risk the same threat. US Attorney General Bill Barr said in June that the ICC has become “little more than a political tool employed by unaccountable international elites”.

Bensouda was given the go-ahead by the court in March to investigate whether war crimes were committed in Afghanistan by the Taliban, Afghan military and US forces.

The sanctions were announced just two months before US elections, in which Trump is running in part on his record of standing up to international institutions that don’t bow to US demands.

But Washington’s move also added to the broader pressure on the ICC to shore up its legitimacy, 18 years after it was founded to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

The ICC was founded by the Rome Statute, which entered into force in 2002, and has since been signed by 123 countries. The United States – like Russia, China, Israel, Syria and a number of other countries – is not a member of the ICC, and its opposition to the court is longstanding.

US Sanctions ‘only serve to weaken the fight’ against ‘mass atrocities’

The head of the ICC’s Assembly of States Parties, which groups the court’s member countries, said separately that it would meet to discuss how to support the tribunal in the face of the US measures. “I strongly reject such unprecedented and unacceptable measures against a treaty-based international organisation,” said assembly president O-Gon Kwon. “They only serve to weaken our common endeavour to fight impunity for mass atrocities.”

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was concerned by Pompeo’s announcement, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters. He said that “we trust that any restriction taken against individuals will be implemented consistently” with a decades-old US deal with the UN to host the world body’s headquarters in New York.

The United States revoked Bensouda’s entry visa in 2019 over the possible Afghanistan inquiry. But under an agreement between the UN and Washington, she was still able to regularly travel to New York to brief the UN Security Council on cases it had referred to the court in The Hague.

Rights groups immediately condemned the US designations.

Richard Dicker, Human Rights Watch international justice director, said it was a “stunning perversion of US sanctions”. “The Trump administration has twisted these sanctions to obstruct justice, not only for certain war crimes victims, but for atrocity victims anywhere looking to the International Criminal Court for justice,” he said.

(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS & AFP)

2, September 2020

Rwanda genocide convict dies in Senegalese prison ⁰

The former deputy chairman of Rwanda’s ruling party during the 1994 genocide has died in a Senegalese prison, where he was serving a life sentence for his role in the slaughter.

Edouard Karemera, the deputy of Rwanda’s then-ruling National Revolutionary Movement for Development, was jailed by a UN-backed special tribunal in 2011 for genocide and crimes against humanity.

“I confirm the death of Edouard Karemera in Senegal. The cause is as yet unknown,” said Ousman Njikam, spokesman for the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT), which took over from the special tribunal when it formally closed in 2015.

A former Rwandan minister who was acquitted by the international tribunal told AFP that Karemera had been “sick for several days” and died on Tuesday morning aged 69.

He was transferred from Arusha, Tanzania, where the court was based, to Senegal in 2017, where he was held in the Sebikotane prison outside Dakar.

Karemera was also Rwanda’s interior minister in 1994.

He was convicted alongside former ruling party chief Matthieu Ngirumpatse.

After decades of tensions between Rwanda’s Hutu ethnic majority and the minority Tutsi, a killing spree erupted in April 1994 after a plane carrying Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana was shot down.

Over the next 100 days, some 800,000 people — mainly Tutsis but also moderate Hutus — were killed.

The international tribunal was set up to try those who bore the greatest responsibility, while thousands of others were judged by Rwandan courts and grassroots tribunals known as “gacaca” that were set up to deal with the sheer number of cases.

After one of the key remaining fugitives, alleged genocide financier Felicien Kabuga, was caught in France in May, only six key suspects remain on the run.

A top French appeals court said on Wednesday that it would rule on September 30 whether Kabuga, who is 84 according to officials, will stand trial in France or before the UN tribunal in Tanzania.

(Source: Agencies)

2, September 2020

Football: Neymar and two other PSG footballers test positive for Covid-19 ⁰

Three Paris Saint-Germain players have tested positive for coronavirus, the French club announced on Wednesday, in a setback to their preparations for the scheduled start of their Ligue 1 campaign next week. According to multiple AFP sources and French daily l’Équipe, football star Neymar is among them.

French sports daily L’Équipe reported the players in question were Neymar, Angel Di Maria and Leandro Paredes, but PSG did not reveal any names.

“Three Paris Saint-Germain players have confirmed positive Sars CoV2 tests and are subject to the appropriate health protocol,” PSG said in a statement. “All of the players and coaching staff will continue to undergo tests in the coming days.”

The French champions, who last month lost the Champions League final to Bayern Munich, had already said on Monday that two unnamed players had reported back with coronavirus symptoms following a holiday.

L’Équipe reported the players in question were Argentinian duo Di Maria and Paredes. Now it claims Neymar is the other squad member to test positive.

The three were among several PSG stars who travelled to the Spanish Mediterranean island of Ibiza last week for a holiday in the aftermath of their Champions League campaign, mixing with friends and family after spending the previous weeks isolated in a secure bubble with teammates in Portugal.

Postponed match

That trip was after the controversial decision was taken to postpone a league game away at Lens, initially scheduled for last Saturday, in order to give the PSG squad a break after their Champions League ‘Final Eight’ exertions.

The match at Lens has been rescheduled for next Thursday, September 10, with PSG due to entertain Marseille three days later.

Strict French league rules stipulate that collective team training sessions must be cancelled if a club has at least four positive tests over an eight-day period, with match postponements possible.

The cases raise questions about why the French league decided to postpone PSG’s match in Lens, only for so many of their players to travel abroad on holiday during a pandemic.

The postponement was granted in order to give PSG players a rest after their European run, despite France’s richest club having only played five competitive games in six months.

The last French season was ended early, with 10 rounds of matches unplayed, because of the health crisis, and the start of the new French season has already been impacted.

In recent weeks, several Ligue 1 clubs have reported positive tests, including Strasbourg, Lyon, Marseille, Rennes, Nantes and Montpellier.

Marseille’s game against Saint-Etienne on August 21, which was set to be the season opener, was postponed.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

2, September 2020

Cameroon government’s deliberate attacks on civilians in Bamenda: Shameful, disgusting and disgraceful ⁰

Four years of unceasing conflict have overwhelmed any attempts to separate civilians from Ambazonia Restoration Forces and made the concept of a normal, quiet life a seemingly unachievable goal in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia.

While the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, the French Cameroun military, weapons and goals of both President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and President Paul Biya have shifted shape and character, the average Southern Cameroonian has borne the brunt of a conflict that is hard to fathom but too easy to feel.

Yesterday’s attack on civilians in Bamenda by soldiers loyal to the regime in Yaoundé despite calls for a ceasefire by the UN Security Council is a willful act from a determined French Cameroun political structure backed by French President Emmanuel Macron that does not care about international laws but it is only interested to win at any cost.

Evidently speaking, the attacks on civilians in Bamenda have finally revealed how French Camerounians hate the people of Southern Cameroons. Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered from a well placed source that the soldiers were under the influence of alcohol and drugs provided by the administrative hierarchy headed by Governor Lele Afrique.

The chaotic nature of the Southern Cameroons crisis and the immaturity and ignorance of many in the Cameroon government and military is helping to ensure that attacks on Southern Cameroons civilians are constant and unrestrained.

Why Cameroon government army soldiers attack civilians

The four years of the Southern Cameroons crisis can best be defined as a “war against Southern Cameroons civilians”. The success of the Biya led-war can be measured only in the sea of dead bodies and thousands of broken families in both the North West and the South West constituencies of Southern Cameroons. To be accurate, the idea of civilians coming under attack and being subjected to torture and other vicious forms of treatment once reserved for captured Ambazonian fighters is now a legal part of the Cameroon government army.

The international community is being fed stories of crimes committed by Ambazonia fighters with the support of Barrister Agbor-Balla the founder of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, an organization that is claiming to be documenting human rights violations in the ongoing crisis and representing victims of the violence.

However, what the human rights lawyer did not mention in his recent report is that despite the Covid-19 pandemic, Cameroon government troops have not halt their attacks on Southern Cameroons towns and villages because they are having trouble deciding who is an Amba fighter and who is a town or village resident but have simply replaced the United Nations policy of treating civilians well with a scorched earth approach where Francophone army soldiers are being ordered to burn the people’s property.

When I met Barrister Agbor Balla some months ago in the city of Essen in Germany, he pointed out that “Burning 1 or 2 villages may be a mistake but burning 300 is definitely a government policy.” Of course destroying all, burning into ash is the objective of fighting the Southern Cameroons enemy.

Cameroon government soldiers are destroying the Southern Cameroons economy! To be sure, the Biya regime in Yaoundé backed by the French is destroying everything Southern Cameroonian. Soldiers are burning houses, warehouses, cutting off roads; electricity and water supply in order that Southern Cameroonians lack supplies to even combat the Covid-19 so that the population would compromise.

The Bamenda attacks witnessed civilians running in front of bullets. It was indeed the Francophone soldiers’ intention to shoot them as their bullets have no eyes. The Bamenda attack was shameful, disgusting and disgraceful. It may as well be a birthday gift from the Biya regime to Barrister Agbor Balla who celebrated his 50^th recently.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Group Chairman/Editor-In-Chief