Monthly Archives: March 2021

Family wants answers after Cameroonian woman in Quebec posts video begging for help in hospital, dies 2 days later

16, March 2021

Family wants answers after Cameroonian woman in Quebec posts video begging for help in hospital, dies 2 days later 0

The Quebec coroner is investigating the death of Mireille Ndjomouo, who posted a video on social media two days before she died claiming staff at a hospital on Montreal’s South Shore had ignored her allergies.

Ndjomouo, a 44-year-old single mother of three from Cameroon, posted a video to social media last Sunday.

She repeatedly said staff at Charles-Le Moyne Hospital in Longueuil had treated her with penicillin, even though she said they knew that she was allergic.

In the video, Ndjomouo begged anyone watching to help her get transferred to another hospital.

Ndjomouo repeatedly said in the video that she was having trouble breathing, had pain all through her body and that her stomach was swollen.

She also said she was injected with penicillin over the course of three days.

Ndjomouo said the injections stopped when a nurse noticed that her lips were swollen and said the reaction wasn’t normal.

After seeing the video online, members of the Cameroonian community in Montreal went to the hospital with Ndjomouo’s sister and arranged to have her transferred to the Jewish General Hospital. 

Ndjomouo died there on Tuesday. The cause of her death is not yet known.

The regional health authority that oversees the Charles-Le Moyne Hospital, the CISSS de la Montérégie-Centre, told CBC in an email that it can’t comment on the case due to confidentiality, but did say that the quality department is looking into it.

The Jewish General Hospital would not give details about Ndjomouo, citing patient confidentiality.

On Saturday, friends of Mireille Ndjomouo held a demonstration outside the Charles-Le Moyne Hospital, demanding answers about what happened to her. (CBC)

On Saturday, friends and family of Ndjomouo held a demonstration outside of Charles-Le Moyne Hospital, demanding answers.

“She’s gone, but many questions still remain about what happened to her,” said Christine Ndjomouo, Mireille’s sister.

“I keep hearing her voice saying, ‘Come and save me. Come and save me, they’re going to kill me. I’m all puffed up. Get me out of here.’ That’s what I hear every day since it happened,” she said.

Christine said her sister lost faith in the personnel at the hospital and wanted to leave. She said it took five hours of negotiation before the hospital agreed to transfer her sister.

Friends have started an online fundraiser for the family, to help support Ndjomouo’s children and repatriate her body to Cameroon.

Culled from CBC

CPDM Crime Syndicate receives China-donated medical equipment to fight COVID-19

16, March 2021

CPDM Crime Syndicate receives China-donated medical equipment to fight COVID-19 0

The Yaounde Central Hospital, one of the largest designated hospitals for COVID-19 treatment in Cameroon, received a batch of medical equipment donated by China to fight against the novel coronavirus.

The equipment includes ventilators, oxygenerators, electrocardiographs, among others.

“This donation comes at the right time. We are all together in the fight against COVID-19, a difficult fight for the health personnel. (…) We can only thank the Chinese government,” said Hassan Ben Bachir, head of the cooperation division of the Ministry of Public Health, who represented the Cameroonian authority to receive the Chinese donation.

This donation is offered as part of the cooperation mechanism between Chinese and African hospitals, an initiative proposed by China to help Africa in the field of health. A partnership has been forged between the Yaounde Central Hospital and the First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University in China.

“This is the start of a collaboration which will be growing”, said Pierre Joseph Fouda, director of the Yaounde Central Hospital, “it is a great emotion and a feeling of joy to receive this donation.We will use it wisely.”

Source: Xinhuanet

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The tales of agony are heartrending

16, March 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The tales of agony are heartrending 0

Prior to October 2016, not many Southern Cameroonians thought they would ever be internally displaced in a country they felt was theirs nor did they ever think they would become helpless refugees in neighboring Nigeria.

But in October 2016, their lives suddenly changed, unfortunately for the worse. The country’s English-speaking minority had had enough of government instituted marginalization and discrimination, with lawyers and teachers downing their tools and taking to the streets to make their grievances known to a government that had decided to be deaf and blind to the sorry plight of Southern Cameroonians.

The Yaoundé government has never been reputed for dialoguing and it views dialogue as a sign of weakness and it was in no mood in 2016 to change its old bad ways.

This is a government that has a huge tool box but in that massive box, there is only one old rusty tool – violence – which has not been effective in recent times.

Times have changed but the mindset of those ruling the country seems to be frozen in time. Of course, if you have a hammer, everything you see will surely be misconstrued as a nail that needs to be hit hard and that was where the government made its mistake that has triggered a bloody insurgency that has caught the attention of the international community, with many Western governments calling out on the corrupt Yaoundé government.

The government’s reaction to the demands of the country’s English-speaking minority has created a pretty mess that has left thousands of Southern Cameroonians both at home and out of the country in a really unfortunate situation.

While those who are internally displaced are living rough in towns and cities in East Cameroon, those who skipped the border into Nigeria to escape the government’s Kafkaesque brutality are gradually losing hope and many are calling on kind-hearted individuals to stretch their hand of charity to them.

Among those who escaped to Nigeria are desperate women whose children are not having access to Nigeria’s educational system.

Though education at the primary school level is free, there is no guarantee that children from poor backgrounds can have the education they need to cut out a place for themselves under the sun.

If many Nigerian children cannot access education due to poverty, how will refugee children whose parents escaped their native Southern Cameroons, living everything behind, have access to such education?

Education is simply not the availability of brick and mortar. Buildings alone will never guarantee a child unfettered access to quality education. Food, transportation and books will surely guarantee a child a bright future, especially in an environment wherein the government makes the education of everybody living within that geopolitical entity a huge and significant necessity.

But this is not the case of Southern Cameroonian children who are seeking refuge in neighboring Nigeria. The schools are there but Southern Cameroonian children are unfortunately at home because their parents cannot afford textbooks and other school materials that they need to be effective in school.

At the secondary school level, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) subsidies are helping, but they do not go far enough. They do not cover many needs expressed by these refugee children and this is really retarding their progress. Their main concern is only to acquire education that will make them useful citizens of the world but education does not seem to be within their reach.

 But the agony is more painful when you consider that there are young graduates among the refugees who are unfortunately and unhappily watching unemployment robbing them of their happiness and youthfulness.

In search of a reliable anchor, they have been bouncing in and out of the settlements where they have been caged in Nigeria in search of hope and happiness.

They are without jobs and it is almost impossible for them to learn a trade. A hungry man is an angry man and these young men bear their anger on their faces. They are frustrated and disappointed by leaders who have placed their ego above their citizens’ interest.

Their country of origin – Cameroon – has rejected them and despite calls by the international community for the Yaoundé government to embrace dialogue and negotiations which will enable refugees to return to their homeland, the Biya government insists that only violence can bring this conflict to an end.

These young men are caught between a rock and a hard place. Their country does not think of their future and their host country clearly lacks the means and resources that can enable them to change their ugly and unfortunate fate.

Many of them want to further their education, but they lack the resources that can make their dreams come true.

This unfortunate situation has been compounded by the lack of scholarships and good Samaritans who can help them go back to school are few and far between.

 To many of these desperate young men, their future is bleak and this uncertainty might push many into crime or push them over the border to Cameroon where their last option will be to bear arms in order to eke out a living.

 While Nigeria and the international community are doing their best, the Yaoundé government must step in to help these youths who may become a millstone around everybody’s neck if they are not made to see hope in the future and the beauty in life.

By Ngalle Lyonga in Nigeria reporting for the Cameroon Concord News Group

Vatican’s Doctrinal Office: Catholic Church Cannot Give Blessings to Same-Sex Unions

15, March 2021

Vatican’s Doctrinal Office: Catholic Church Cannot Give Blessings to Same-Sex Unions 0

The Vatican’s doctrinal office on Monday clarified that the Catholic Church does not have the power to give liturgical blessings of homosexual unions.

Answering the question “does the Church have the power to give the blessing to unions of persons of the same sex?,” the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded, “negative.”

In an accompanying note, the doctrine office explained that blessings are sacramentals, and “consequently, in order to conform with the nature of sacramentals, when a blessing is invoked on particular human relationships, in addition to the right intention of those who participate, it is necessary that what is blessed be objectively and positively ordered to receive and express grace, according to the designs of God inscribed in creation, and fully revealed by Christ the Lord.”

“Therefore, only those realities which are in themselves ordered to serve those ends are congruent with the essence of the blessing imparted by the Church,” the CDF said.

“For this reason, it is not licit to impart a blessing on relationships, or partnerships, even stable, that involve sexual activity outside of marriage (i.e., outside the indissoluble union of a man and a woman open in itself to the transmission of life), as is the case of the unions between persons of the same sex.”

The ruling and note were approved for publication by Pope Francis and signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.

The CDF’s note did not state the origin of the dubium submitted to the doctrinal office, but noted that “in some ecclesial contexts, plans and proposals for blessings of unions of persons of the same sex are being advanced.”

In recent years, German bishops in particular have been increasingly outspoken in demanding “discussions about an opening” towards acceptance of practiced homosexuality and the blessing of homosexual unions in the Church.

Following consultations in Berlin in late 2019, the chairman of the marriage and family commission of the German bishops’ conference declared that the German bishops agreed that homosexuality was a “normal form” of human sexual identity.

The topic also plays a central role in one of four forums that constitute the controversial “Synodal Process” underway in Germany.

The CDF explained in 2003 that “the Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”

German bishops who have publicly voiced support for the blessing of same-sex unions in the Catholic Church include Cardinal Reinhard Marx of Munich and Freising, Bishop Georg Bätzing of Limburg, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, and Bishop Heinrich Timmerervers of Dresden-Meißen.

Bishop Bätzing, the president of the German bishops’ conference, in December 2020 called for changes to the section on homosexuality in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Expressing openness to blessings of homosexual unions, he said, “we need solutions for this.”

On Feb. 23, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz defended his support for a book of blessings and rites for homosexual unions. The book followed a May 2020 publication from Austria about how same-sex couples might receive a formal, liturgical blessing. Kohlgraf suggested that Catholics with homosexual inclinations cannot all be expected to live chastely.

The call for liturgical blessings of same-sex unions is part of a wider push by some German bishops to change the Church’s teaching on a number of issues, including on the sacraments of priestly ordination and marriage.

CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German partner agency, reported that Bishop Bätzing has suggested that the Vatican Synod of Bishops on synodality, scheduled for October 2022, could help implement German “Synodal Way” resolutions not only in Germany, but throughout the Catholic Church.

Source: National Catholic Register

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe calls for withdrawal of La Republique troops, Atanga Nji Boys from Ambazonia

15, March 2021

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe calls for withdrawal of La Republique troops, Atanga Nji Boys from Ambazonia 0

The leader of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe called on Thursday for the withdrawal of all Cameroon government army soldiers and French Cameroun armed militias known as Atanga Nji Boys from Southern Cameroons territory without further delay in an interview with the pan African French language news magazine Jeune Afrique.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe also welcomed US Congress new unified efforts, which is set to lead the Biya French Cameroun regime after four years of conflict to the negotiating table.

“The people of the Southern Cameroons, (also known as Ambazonia) are a peace-loving people. They want peace at all cost. Remember, that in 1958 Southern Cameroons had a democratic election and a peaceful transfer of power during their period of self-rule under British trusteeship. The people still have and cherish these values.  However, there can be no peace without justice. If Mr Biya claims he does not know whom to talk to, then why were we abducted from Nigeria in January 2018?”  President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe said.

“With regards to La Republique du Cameroun government’s claim that we have been totally defeated, this is not the first time we are hearing that from them. They should match their words with reality. Remember their denial of Ngarbuh Massacre and many others. The war has been raging unabated for 4 years now. Under his instructions and watch Mr Biya’s forces have embarked on committing genocide in the Southern Cameroons/ Ambazonia. The world silently watches as this goes on, in complete disregard of the R2P commitment and the Never Again Promise after the 1993/94 Genocide in Rwanda. We are bothered if the war continues for a long time because of the lives of our people killed every day by Cameroun military forces, but until Mr Biya and his colonial forces leave our territory, for us, it is “TOTAL INDEPENDENCE OR RESISTANCE FOREVER” President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe furthered.

The level of barbarism being perpetuated by the Cameroon government military and the Francophone dominated government militias as Yaoundé pursue its genocidal war and scorch earth policy to completely annihilate the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) is alarming. As a result of the on-going genocide in the Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia), an estimated 20,000 people have been killed, over 500 towns and villages have been burnt down, over 120,000 people are seeking refuge in Nigeria and further afield, over 1million people are internally displaced or living in bushes and over 3,000 persons incarcerated in prisons and detention facilities.

While not exonerating Ambazonian self-defense forces, the international community is also aware that the Biya Francophone regime is doing everything through its private militia (popularly known as Atanga Nji Boys) to commit atrocities and link them to Ambazonia self-defense forces, so as to evoke international sympathy.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government have previously denounced the presence in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia of Cameroon government troops and armed groups made up of unemployed Southern Cameroons youth.

By Asu Vera Eyere

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Interim Government says Biya driving on wrong side of Amba road

15, March 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: Interim Government says Biya driving on wrong side of Amba road 0

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government has touched on a lame and ridiculous statement made by the French Cameroun regime in Yaoundé saying that Ambazonia Restoration Forces have been totally defeated.

The Southern Cameroons Secretary of State for Communications and Information Technology, Hon. Milton Taka said President Paul Biya of La Republique du Cameroun and his army soldiers have been driving on the wrong side of Southern Cameroons motorway and therefore they need to make a U-turn to the negotiating table for the two Cameroons to have a peaceful co-existence.

In a telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord London Bureau Chief, the Southern Cameroons Secretary of State for Communications and Information Technology Milton Taka stated that “The Biya French Cameroun administration in Yaoundé and military officials have been driving on the wrong side of the Ambazonian highway for four years now, while thinking that the Ambazonian people and their Interim Government coming from the opposite direction are moving in the wrong way.”

Comrade Milton Taka pointed out that the sooner Biya and his gang of French Cameroun political elites realizes the right direction of the Amba highway, the better it will be for the future generation of French and British Southern Cameroonians.

Secretary Milton Taka noted that “The path that Biya of French Cameroun must take is completely clear as indicated by His Excellency President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. Biya must withdraw all Francophone forces from Southern Cameroons streets, free all Southern Cameroons Prisoners of Conscience, grant general amnesty to all Ambazonians in the Diaspora and commit to an international mediated negotiation in a neutral venue and the Southern Cameroons Interim Government will be there.”

Hon. Milton Taka then pointed to educational issues created by the four-year-old conflict. “On educational matters, primary education is free in public primary schools in Nigeria. But many of our refugee children are at home because their parents cannot afford for text books and other school materials. Even at the Secondary School level, subsidies by UNHCR partners do not cover other areas of need. There are young graduates on and out of the settlements who are idle without any form of substantial empowerment. Even those who wish to further their studies seldom get hold of scholarship opportunities. Such are the voices and experiences of some Cameroonian refugees in Nigeria hoping to one day return home” Milton added.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The clowning continues (Video)

15, March 2021

Southern Cameroons Crisis: The clowning continues (Video) 0

As the crisis in Southern Cameroons gets into a critical phase, so too has the Yaoundé crime syndicate decided to step up its clowning efforts.

While the government seeks to give the impression that things are returning to normal in the two English-speaking regions of the country, the reality on the ground points to a more dangerous situation, with fierce separatist forces bringing down some careless army soldiers who seem to believe the lies their government is spreading.

Last week, the minister of special duties at the presidency, Mengot Victor Arrey Nkongho, and the Senator from Manyu Division, George Tabetando, stole themselves into Mamfe where they were received by very few soldiers in order not to attract Amba fighters who have put a price on the heads of those two officials considered by Southern Cameroonians as traitors.

Though suffering from multiple illnesses, especially a bad leg, George Tabetando had to endure the 10-hour trip to Mamfe just to demonstrate that things are returning to normal.

But the CPDM crime syndicate is not deceiving anybody. Many soldiers are being brought down by separatist bullets and this is demoralizing many soldiers who get deployed in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon.

The situation on the ground is disturbing and not many people serving under the Yaoundé government are happy to serve in Southern Cameroons.

Even Tabetando and Mengot are not happy going to Mamfe in an armored car. They know a simple error on their part could be a death sentence that can never be commuted.

In the Amba court system, death sentences don’t get commuted. Once a person is declared guilty, theirs is the kingdom of death.

For Mengot and Tabetando, their trip to Mamfe was basically for the optics. They did not achieve anything and nothing will change just because they have visited the region.

If anything was achieved, it was just the huge amounts of food and drinks that the two CPDM enablers downed while hiding in their military protected zone as seen in the video attached to this story.

There is already a hike in food prices in Mamfe because of Mengot and Tabetando. The Yaoundé government has been looking for a way to hem in the Manyu population. It has now found a new and innovative way – sending Victor Mengot and Chief Tabetando to eat themselves into obesity and diabetes.

They had a treat from the military that they won’t be forgetting anytime soon. The sumptuous meal of puff puff and beans cooked by the military did only put them to sleep; it also triggered a diarrheal crisis during their return trip to Kumba. Luckily the bushes were happy to serve them and Amba boys were not close by. The story would have been different today.

According to a source close to the military, the arrival of Tabetando and Mengot in Mamfe is bad news to the local population that is really struggling to meet its food needs.

If this ugly situation is to be addressed then the farmers of the region will have to get to work to increase food production.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Mautu Massacre: Rights group says Cameroon army killed 8 civilians

14, March 2021

Mautu Massacre: Rights group says Cameroon army killed 8 civilians 0

The Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) accused the Cameroon army on Monday of killing at least eight civilians in one of the country’s conflict-hit English-speaking regions, according to a statement.

CHRDA said it received reports Sunday about the killing of at least eight civilians in Maotu village in the country’s South West region. The victims killed included women and children, “who are classified under the group of vulnerable persons.”

The rights group said it “received and analyzed some videos and images from the scene, which all depict that the victims were shot dead. Sources revealed that there was a military invasion in the village that kept everyone running for safety.”

“So many people were killed, including a grandmother and her grandchild. We do not know what that old woman and the innocent child did to deserve death,” CHRDA quoted an eyewitness as saying.

“CHRDA calls on the state authorities to investigate this heinous act and let justice be served for the victims. We also call on all combatants to fully respect International Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law,” it said.

The Cameroon military did not immediately respond to CHRDA’s statement.

The attack brings back to the minds of Cameroonians the Ngarbuh incident which occurred in 2020.

Last year, Cameroon acknowledged the army’s role in the killings of civilians — including children and women — in the country’s North West Region.

The incident occurred in February in Ngarbuh village, where the military was accused of killing civilians and burning homes. The government had earlier denied responsibility for the killings.

The Central African country has been marred by protests and violence since 2016, with residents in English-speaking regions contending they have been marginalized for decades by the central government and the French-speaking majority.

They are calling for independence or a return to a federal state.

Violence in the Anglophone regions in the last three years has claimed an estimated 3,000 lives and caused the displacement of more than 730,000 civilians, according to Human Rights Watch.

In June 2020, the Norwegian Refugee Council declared the conflict in Cameroon as the most neglected crisis on the planet for a second year running.

Culled Anadolu Agency for Cameroon Concord News by Alain Tabot-Tanyi

Cameroon’s crime syndicate kills one of its own slowly

13, March 2021

Cameroon’s crime syndicate kills one of its own slowly 0

Another senior member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate is about to leave the stage in pain and frustration.

Prof Mendo Ze is slowly but surely joining the list of prominent Biya acolytes who passed away in the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaoundé.

Mendo Ze will definitely also become the second Beti Ewondo baron after the late Ambassador Mendouga to die after being humiliated by a regime they gave their all to keep it in power.

Others such as Mouchipou Saidou came from other tribal extractions, but felt they were major shareholders in a crime syndicate that conducts itself as a crocodile that happily consumes its own eggs.

After Mendouga’s demise, there was a fierce tussle within the ruling CPDM over the legacy of those in Kondengui and Prof. Mendo Ze became the next on the list.

The Biya regime is now seeing the death of most renowned members while in power. The crime syndicate does not spare anybody. It is like a juggernaut that crushes anything in its path.

Greed has held CPDM militants together for decades and it is greed that is killing them one after the other.

The CPDM is like a cult or a drug. If you join it, then you are hooked for life. If you seek to sober up, then you will end up like Prof. Mendo Ze who has been obliged to rejuvenate.

His children will surely learn the hard lessons of greed that has reduced their father to a bag of bones.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The United Kingdom and Cameroon Trade Deal: what about human rights?

13, March 2021

The United Kingdom and Cameroon Trade Deal: what about human rights? 0

America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests – was a phrase coined by former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. This adage, controversial as it may sound, is consistent with the foreign policies of most nations.

On 9 March 2021, the UK government announced a trade deal with Cameroon. The statement on the UK government website reads: “The trade deal, which will support jobs and build future prosperity, was signed by International Trade Minister, Ranil Jayawardena, and Cameroon’s High Commissioner to the UK, H.E. Albert Fotabong Njoteh in London. The deal provides certainty for British and Cameroonian businesses, ensuring they can continue to trade as freely as they do now without any additional barriers or tariffs.”

Cameroon is a country of 25 million people and has been ruled with an iron-fist by 88-year-old strongman, Paul Biya, since 1982. From 1919 to 1961, Britain ruled part of Cameroon known as British Southern Cameroons, first as a League of Nations mandate and later as a United Nations (UN) Trusts Territory. The country is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and about 8 million of its citizens identify English as their first international language due to the country’s colonial past.

Since 2016, the country has been mired in a fierce civil war between the regime in Yaoundé and pro-independence groups from the two English-speaking regions of the country.

 Last year, the Norwegian Refugee Council, which follows the crisis closely, termed the war the most neglected displacement crisis on the planet. With more than half a million people internally displaced, 740,000 children have been out of school for the last four years, over 120,000 refugees in Nigeria, the end of the conflict is not near.

The conflict has claimed over 4,000 lives but there is a deafening silence about the crisis in the arena of international politics.

Reports of human rights abuses have been well documented. According to Rights Africa, in 2019 the overall tally of human rights violations was 1,380 up from 1,134 the previous year.

Last year, Amnesty International published a report with graphic images of systematic abuses by Cameroon’s army titled Cameroon’s secret torture chambers.

Last week, a Human Rights Watch report said “An attack by Cameroonian soldiers on March 1, 2020, has come to light in which soldiers raped at least 20 women, including four with disabilities, arrested 35 men, and killed one man. The attack on the village of Ebam in the South-West region was one of the worst by Cameroon’s army in recent years.”

In 2019, the Trump administration cut millions of dollars in security and military aid to Cameroon following concerns over the regime’s human rights record.

On 1 January 2021, the US Senate passed a resolution that condemned the abuses committed by state security forces and armed groups in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon.

Human Rights groups and the United Nations have proof of villages being burned down, women and children executed, and war crimes committed by the army but the UK government has not issued a single statement condemning these appalling actions.

 How can the United Kingdom be indifferent to these human rights abuses and state-sponsored killings?

With its exit from the EU, there has been much talk of Global Britain. Is Global Britain designed to be blind to such flagrant violations of human rights?

For the people in the territory of the former British Southern Cameroons, this announcement must be a huge disappointment and a clear message that this former colonial master values £200 million worth of annual business than thousands of lives.

In September 2013, the UK became the first country to set out guidance to companies on integrating human rights into their operations.

The then Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said “doing business with respect for human rights matters. It is good for people, for prosperity, and for the UK. We believe firmly that the promotion of business and respect for human rights should go hand in hand.”

Yesterday’s announcement has taken the UK backward from that noble commitment.

Global Britain must take the lead in condemning human rights abuses around the world not shrinking away from it or be indifferent to it.

The statement from the UK government claimed the trade deal secured opportunities for both British and Cameroonian businesses.  The poor and abused people in Southern Cameroons and the families of the people executed by Mr.Biya’s regime will disagree.

They will see this as the government of Cameroon given a carte-blanche by the UK to commit more and more atrocities. The politics of Africa is that of leaders who heap misery upon their people with very little economic progress and no intention of relinquishing power.

The rich continent of Africa is a playground for regimes that have no respect for international norms or the human rights of their citizens.  The UK must take the lead in demanding change in these nations as a pre-requisite for access to the lucrative UK market.

By Isong Asu, London bureau chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

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