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8, August 2019

Yaounde: Dion Ngute denounces “debt trap” allegation against Chinese loans ⁰

Cameroonian Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute denounced Wednesday the “debt trap” allegation against Chinese loans by some western media outlets.

“Cameroon is a sovereign country … It is no other person’s business. We do exactly what we have to do to develop our country,” Ngute said while visiting the construction site of a China-funded water plant.

“We are not going to listen to all kinds of snide remarks by people who think they know better. We have a country we have to develop and that is our responsibility. We take it seriously,” he added.

The project, located on the outskirts of Cameroon’s capital Yaounde, was launched in late 2016 and is expected to be completed in late 2019.

Once put into service, the plant, with a capacity of 300,000 cubic meters of water per day, will generate enough clean drinking water from the 600-km-long Sanaga River and meet the demand of 2.5 million people in the capital and others in surrounding areas.

“This is one of the most important projects Cameroon is carrying out right now,” Ngute noted.

“This will significantly reduce, if not stop, the problem of insufficient water in the capital city Yaounde. Our citizens will be able to drink clean water that will be constantly supplied,” said Cameroon’s Minister of Water and Energy Gaston Eloundou Essomba, who accompanied Ngute during the visit.

Source: Xinhuanet

8, August 2019

US president fanning ‘flames of white supremacy’ ⁰

US Democratic presidential front runner Joe Biden says President Donald Trump has “fanned the flames of white supremacy” in the country as Americans are yet recover from two deadly mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.

Speaking at a campaign event in Burlington, Iowa, Wednesday, the former US vice president directly attacked Trump for promoting hate and fear within America in the wake of the two shootings that left more than 30 people dead and many others injured.

“In both clear language and in code, this president has fanned the flames of white supremacy in this nation,” said the 76-year-old 2020 presidential candidate. “His low energy, vacant-eyed mouthing the words written for him condemning white supremacists this week, I don’t believe, fooled anyone at home or abroad.”

President with no ‘moral authority’

Biden further slammed Trump’s double policy in slamming what he refers to as “Islamic terrorism,” yet failing to condemn white supremacy.

“Trump readily, eagerly attacks Islamic terrorism but can barely bring himself to use the words white supremacy,” he said. “Our president has aligned himself with the darkest forces in this nation. It makes winning this battle for the soul of our nation that much tougher, harder.”

Biden made the comments as Trump was visiting Dayton, Ohio, and El Paso, Texas, to meet with police and some of the surviving victims but anti-Trump protesters were also there to shout that he is not welcome.

“Indeed we have a president with a toxic tongue who has publicly and unapologetically embraced the political strategy of hate, racism and division. So it’s up to us as it was in the 20s,” Biden said. “It’s up to us. We’re living through a rare moment in this nation’s history where our president isn’t up to the moment, where our president lacks the moral authority to lead, where our president has more in common with George Wallace than he does with George Washington.”

His comments are probably the harshest so far directed at the US president.

In his visit to El Paso, Trump asserted that he had an “amazing day,” further bragging about witnessing the “love for the office of presidency.”

Source: Presstv

7, August 2019

Why Biya is desperate for school resumption in September ⁰

For about a month now, there has been more than ever before an intense campaign for school resumption in September. The local Ambazonian media have been given millions to join the campaign. CDC workers have been paid a month’s salary out of some one year of arrears owed them to ‘prepare for school resumption’.

Prominent Southern Cameroonians and social groups have also been paid huge amounts of money to plead to parents to send their children to school. Some French Cameroun government ministers who hail from Southern Cameroons like the Kupe Manueguba thug, Elong Paul Che and fraudster, Paul Tasong of Lebialem have also mobilized CPDM elite of their constituencies and accompanied by tight security, braved it to Southern Cameroons to hold meetings with parents.

The principal reason for the frenzied campaign is to prove to the world before the United Nations Security Council meets in September that school resumption is evidence that the situation in Southern Cameroons has ‘normalized’. The Biya Francophone regime is planning to use a successful back to school to oppose any possible United Nations intervention.

Ironically, it is the government itself making it impossible for effective resumption of schools. Several schools in Southern Cameroons have been transformed into French Cameroun military barracks. Many others have been burnt by Francophone Beti-Ewondo army soldiers while most teachers in Ambazonia have vamoosed into safety areas in La Republique du Cameroun.

A visit to the Kumba market by our Cameroon Concord News Group Meme County correspondent last week indicated that parents are not preparing for the traditional “back to school”. Unlike in the past when markets at this time of the year were clustered with school bags, uniforms, books and other didactic materials and parents hustling to buy, there is no such scenario. Kumba market is not an exception as reported by our correspondents across the entire Southern Cameroons.

Field reports by our reporters also indicated that both the Southern and Northern Zones of the now Federal Republic of Ambazonia are for the most part controlled by the Ambazonia Self Defense Forces with military jeeps plying occasionally. In the Southern Zone, only Kumba central, Limbe, Mutengene, Tiko and part of Buea are in the control of the French Cameroun government in Yaoundé.

It is because of the insecurity in Buea that the renowned Sasse college on the periphery of the Ambazonia historic headquarters has been moved to Tiko which is relatively save and children there who braved it to school last academic year did so without wearing their uniforms.

In the Northern Zone, the Ambazonia Restoration Forces are in command with the exclusion of Nkambe Central and Bamenda. Educational officials in the territory say over 80 percent of colleges have been closed down and teachers afraid to be kidnapped are nowhere to be found.

Schools that have not been burnt or destroyed are covered in grass one month to resumption and no teachers are there doing the enrolment. The military are still camping in many others. The war is flaring up and who is that parent who will send their kids to learn under such perilous conditions? Cameroon Concord News Group has challenged those doing the campaign for school resumption including Barrister Agbor Balla, Minister Elong Paul and Minister Paul Tasong to set an example by openly enrolling their kids in institutions in Southern Cameroons. No one has done that.

In that light, back to school in Southern Cameroons shall just be another fiasco of the Biya regime, like the botch hosting of the 2019 African Cup of Nations. For effective school resumption in their so-called one and indivisible Cameroon, President Biya who declared the war against his own people should call a ceasefire and convene an inclusive dialogue with all issues on the table as nations; international organizations and people of goodwill have been telling him. Or the UN should send in peace keeping force as it meets in September to prevent the barbaric violations of human rights driving refugees and asylum seekers into neighboring countries including Europe and America.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman/Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

7, August 2019

Twin bombings kill three in Nigeria ⁰

Three civilians have been killed and eight others wounded when two female bombers blew themselves up in a crowd of people in northeastern Nigeria.

The twin bombings took place in the town of Mafa, some 50 kilometers from Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, late Tuesday.

“The female bombers killed three people and wounded eight others,” Bello Danbatta, head of security for the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) in Borno state, told AFP on Wednesday.

Danbatta added that the attackers entered the town among a group of local women who had gone to bring firewood for cooking.

Local district spokesman Adamu Mohammed confirmed the toll, noting that the bombers waited until almost 8:30 pm (1930 GMT) before conducting their attack.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, which bore the hallmarks of the Boko Haram terrorist group.

The group uses female bombers, many of them young women and girls, to attack soft targets such as mosques, markets and bus stations.

Also on Tuesday, militants set fire to 11 houses and stole food in an assault on the village of Kotori, 12 kilometers outside Maiduguri, Danbatta said, noting that no one was hurt in that attack.

Boko Haram and its Daesh-supported ISWAP splinter have intensified attacks on civilian and military targets in recent months, despite the Nigerian government’s insistence that the terrorists have been defeated.

Some observers allege that certain Nigerian officials are profiting from the unrest via corruption and have little interest in ending the bloodshed.

Rights groups have accused some Nigerian security forces of abuses in the fight against Boko Haram, including extra-judicial killings and mass arrests.

Around 27,000 people have been killed in the decade-long Takfiri terrorism which has spilled over into neighboring Chad, Niger and Cameroon and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.

On Monday, three civilians were killed when a gun fight erupted between Nigerian forces and ISWAP fighters who made an incursion into the garrison town of Monguno in Borno state.

Presstv

7, August 2019

Manu Dibango builds musical bridges between Africa and the West ⁰

In a career spanning six decades, Afro-European star saxophonist Manu Dibango has played a fusion of everything from jazz, funk and traditional rhythms from his native Cameroon, creating music that he says “builds bridges”.

The 85-year-old, who was born is Cameroon but moved to France as a teenager, has played with such greats as Herbie Hancock and Fela Kuti, and is credited with inspiring an array of musicians including Michael Jackson.

“We are the builders of bridges between the West and Africa,” he told AFP in an interview at the Jazz in Marciac festival in southern France, where the towering saxophonist with the shaved head and spangly shirts is a regular.

Dibango shot to global prominence in 1972 with the afrobeat hit “Soul Makossa”, a highly catchy track that was spotted by DJs in New York on the B side of a single containing a song for the Cameroonian national football team.

He claims Michael Jackson pilfered a line from that track for his 1983 hit “Wanna Be Startin’ Something” on the Thriller album, but settled the matter out of court.

The king of Afro-jazz bears no grudge against the king of pop, whom he credits with giving the track a second life and making it into a standard that has since been reprised by other stars, including Rihanna and, more recently, Beyonce.

Producing a follow-up to such a hit would have daunted a lesser musician, but Dibango proved himself the master of reinvention and musical fusion.

“In the morning I tell myself, ‘Look, I’m still alive. What can I be doing?’. My problem is: ‘What’s my agenda’ and not ‘Ah, yesterday was great’,” the performer said.

Despite having lived longer in Europe than in Africa Dibango refuses to be put in a box and warns against doing the same with music.

“I’m just a guy who is a musician and not a European nor an African musician,” he says, warning against a “blinkered” approach to music whereby “if you’re an African musician you play the djembe, balafon or kora and if you play the sax, oops, it’s more black American and you’re no longer really African for some people”.

It’s worse again for players of the piano and guitar, instruments also seen by some as “un-African”, even though, Dibango says, “there are pianos in every hotel in Africa and in every orchestra there are guitars!”

“These are fantasies that people project onto you. And maybe part of our life is to chase them away,” he said.

But it’s “very hard, even for me”, he admitted.

– Living life in stereo –

Born in Douala in what was then the French-administered part of Cameroon, Dibango was influenced by a wide variety of genres from a young age. His uncle played the harmonium and his mother ran a choir.

“I have the harmony of Bach and Handel in my ear, with Cameroonian lyrics,” he said, adding with his trademark optimism: “It’s a gift to be able to have at least two possibilities. In life I prefer to be stereo than mono”.

At the age of 15 his parents sent him to study in France but he soon got turned onto jazz and soul and began playing the saxophone and keyboards in clubs.

The musician takes his success with a pinch of salt.

“You have to treat failure and success alike. You always have to stay afloat.”

He still gets excited about new musical collaborations, like for instance playing with a philharmonic orchestra this summer.

“It’s another form of dialogue. The language is not the same when you are 70 (musicians). The result and the goosebumps you get are on another level. It’s as if you’re travelling in first class,” he enthused.

Source: AFP

7, August 2019

Day 8 Of Hunger Strike: Vice President Yerima Says Its Freedom Now Or Resistance Forever ⁰

Fellow Ambazonians,

I come to you with revolutionary greetings from your President, Sisiku AyukTabe and his team in the Principal Prison in Kondengui, Yaounde. Today marks the eighth day of their hunger strike.

Yesterday, Tuesday the 6th of August 2019, lawyers of the Interim Government reported to the President and his team that they had seen Comrades Macho Bibixy, Penn Terence, Tsi Conrad, Ngalim Felix, Babila Vena and other frontline leaders that have been unaccounted for since the peaceful prison demonstration on the 22nd of July 2019, asking for better living conditions or unconditional release.

We can confirm that they have now been returned to the central prison in Kondengui,Yaoundé. They have been abused in the most horrifying way known to man. They have all received multiple stitches from alarming cruelties. They have broken bones and multiple bruises. Some of them have lost some teeth. They have all suffered severe weight loss. But we thank God that they are all alive.

The attention has now been moved to Buea where progress has been slow. Our team of six lawyers have informed us that during the peaceful prison protests of 23rd July 2019 where political detainees were demanding for an improvement in their living conditions and unconditional release, the doors of the prison where opened by the authorities for the military to enter and kill comprehensively. Upon entering the prison, they shot at prisoners indiscriminately killing four and wounding over seventy-five. Of the four killed one corpse was carried and deposited at the Regional Hospital, Buea and the other three were carried away to an unknown destination. Nobody knows where they were deposited.

Five of the wounded were taken to the Regional Hospital where they are in critical conditions whilst the others are being managed within the prison medical wing. The French Cameroun authorities aren’t allowing our lawyers’ access to any of the political detainees. Our lawyers have confirmed that sixty political detainees were moved into an unventilated water torture chamber in the aftermath of the demonstrations. They were there until the 5th of August 2019. From the prison, our lawyers went to the Regional Hospital, Buea where they weren’t allowed to see the five political prisoners admitted there after their ordeal. During a short trip to the military court, they succeeded to discuss with some of the detainees who corroborated all the facts they have gathered.

Today, they will be informing the Prison authorities and the Minister of Justice of their intent to see the political detainees and the whereabouts of the three massacred comrades.

In all this sad public tragedy, the cruelty of the French Cameroun authorities is being laid bare for the world to see. For engaging in peaceful protests about their living conditions, our comrades have sustained life-threatening injuries, endured Nazi-style torture and lost their lives. The fact that the Cameroon authorities have considerable disregard for our lives strengthens our case for freedom and independence. Southern Cameroonians, rich or poor, educated or untrained should be under no illusions as to the enormity of the state-sponsored cruelty we face. The barbarisms ditched upon our comrades are not isolated incidents. They are well planned, rehearsed and authorized from the highest tier of Cameroun power.

Our President and his team have made it clear to the world that the hunger strike will only be called off after the lawyers’ confirmation of seeing all our political detainees or knowing the whereabouts of the massacred. This position hasn’t changed despite their frail bodies. Their bodies are frail but their minds and determination remain resilient. We must take inspiration from them. Our resolve and determination should not falter despite the turbulent times. The pressure on the French Cameroun authorities has paid some dividends but we must keep it up.

We must continue to make the case that this ill-fated fifty-eight years political experience can’t endure. It’s freedom now or resistance forever.

Thank You

Dabney Yerima, Vice President

Issued 7th of August 2019

7, August 2019

Britain on course for no-deal Brexit under Johnson ⁰

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this week taken Britain one step closer to a no-deal Brexit, following Brexit negotiator David Frost’s meeting with EU officials and their reaction to the newly-appointed Brexit negotiator.

While the bloc is still hopeful of securing a deal, their reaction to Downing Street suggests that they now seriously acknowledge the very real possibility that Johnson will indeed dig his heels in and stick to his guns regarding a no-deal Brexit, whatever the economic cost.

If the UK does go through with a no-deal Brexit, it’s likely to impact the most vulnerable in society. Most of the political class, including Nicola Sturgeon leader of the Scottish National Party, have also warned against a no-deal Brexit.

While it’s impossible to know whether Johnson is bluffing or if the writing really is on the wall regarding a no-deal Brexit, the impact has already and will continue to be felt.

Johnson and his team remain ideologically committed to a no-deal Brexit whatever the cost, despite the evidence that doing so would severely damage the UK’s economy.

Source: Presstv

7, August 2019

Ambazonia: Much of French Cameroun army crimes unreported, rape complaints ignored by Biya regime ⁰

More than half the crimes committed by Cameroon government army soldiers in Southern Cameroons deliberately go unreported, and the Francophone administrative officers in Ambazonia towns and villages including the main cities of Limbe, Bamenda and Kumba have blatantly refused to document hundreds of complaints of rape and sexual harassment.

A sea of Roman Catholic clergies in both the Northern and Southern Zones of Ambazonia have all opined that rapes carried out by Francophone soldiers was the second most common crime ever since the ailing French Cameroun dictator declared war on the people of Southern Cameroons, but most Cameroon government officials have turned a blind eye.

Human rights groups operating in Southern Cameroons have also revealed that it has been extremely difficult for Southern Cameroonians to report crimes committed by the Cameroon government military due to stonewalls erected by Francophone dominated administrative officers.

It is almost impossible to know the true extent of how much crime against the Southern Cameroons civilian population is not reported due to French Cameroun government refusal to register the complaints. However, the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé is always quick to draw the attention of the international community to retaliatory measures carried out on Francophone troops by Ambazonia Self Defense Forces.

Journalists covering the war in Southern Cameroons have jointly and severally pointed to a significant proportion of unaddressed and unresolved crimes mostly committed by French Cameroun servicemen. The Communications Secretary for the Ambazonia Interim Government, Milton Taka recently observed that the crimes against Southern Cameroonians is indeed signaling worrying levels of insecurity among the Ambazonia public, particularly women and children.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

7, August 2019

India: Veteran politician Sushma Swaraj passes away ⁰

Veteran Indian politician Sushma Swaraj, who most recently served as minister of external affairs, passed away on Tuesday, following a cardiac arrest.

Swaraj, 67, a senior leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), had opted out of contesting elections earlier this year citing health reasons.

“A glorious chapter in Indian politics comes to an end,” tweeted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “India grieves the demise of a remarkable leader who devoted her life to public service and bettering lives of the poor.”

A former Supreme Court lawyer, Swaraj was the senior most woman in Modi’s cabinet in his first term, which ended in May.

Swaraj was an active social media user, who often responded on Twitter and intervened to help people seeking assistance.

She was also known as a fiery politician and nationalist.

In 2017, she threatened to rescind the visas of all foreign executives of Amazon.com, if the e-commerce giant did not immediately take down doormats resembling the Indian flag from its Canadian portal.

President Ram Nath Kovind said India had “lost a much loved leader who epitomized dignity, courage & integrity in public life.” The opposition Congress party said it was “saddened.”

(Source: Reuters)

7, August 2019

First African-American winner of Nobel Prize for Literature dies ⁰

Author Toni Morrison, who won Nobel and Pulitzer prizes for books documenting the African-American experience, has died at age 88.

Paul Bogaards, a spokesman for the publishing company Alfred A. Knopf, announced the death but did not provide an immediate cause.

Morrison’s novels included “The Bluest Eye,” “Beloved,” and its sequel, “Jazz.” She was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1993, becoming the first African-American to attain the feat.

Novelist Toni Morrison smiles with U.S. President Barack Obama as he prepares to award her a 2012 Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony in the East Room of the White House in Washington, May 29, 2012.