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9, May 2019

Ambazonian leader writes to Cameroon Concord News, Says 2 Southern Cameroonians have been killed in New Bell prison ⁰

Hello to all of you in the Cameroon Concord News Group,

Just to express our profound gratitude for all you have done and are still doing for the struggle to save the good people of Ambazionia and restore the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Your contributions in prayers, kind and cash are testimonial to our survivability and that of the struggle.

Be rest assured that we know you are committed. Let nothing distract you. We in detention formed committees for legal, social services, finance, diplomacy, future expectations, detainee code of conduct and health.

We developed a legal concept and principle which our lawyers imbibed for us to defend all Ambazonians. The Committee of Prison and Detention camps including inmate data has completed their job. Using these data, we created legal groups to defend Ambazonians in all tribunals’ and courts.

Stipends are allocated from that money that you and families and friends offer us. We also created a functional trouble bank and have always used from these sources, funds to provide primary health care for detainees and emergency needs.

We have registered delivered diplomatic correspondences to over 15 diplomatic missions and USA has been overwhelmingly impressed and of course some fallout like the UN Rights Chief visit recently.

Fundraising drive to provide food and medication to Ground Zero is on top gear and firing on all cylinders. Two Ambazonians died in New Belll prison and we are still awaiting details as lawyers investigation are on.

Prison guide lines for peaceful stay in prison were conceived and documented. These were circulated to all coordinating teams that man the prisons and channel concerns to us in streamline manner

With these and others dear, we beg you to continue to assist us work for Ambazonia

Sisiku Ayuk Tabe

Interim President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

9, May 2019

Martin Belinga, Biya’s right-hand man dies in Switzerland ⁰

Martin Belinga Eboutou, former director of the civil cabinet at the presidency of the Republic died Wednesday in Geneva, Switzerland after several months of illness.

Born in 1940, Martin Belinga Eboutou was a career diplomat who was always presented by the Cameroonian press as a centerpiece of the Biya crime syndicate.

The ex-powerful director of the civil cabinet at the presidency of the Republic was fired in March 2018 and replaced by Samuel Mvondo Ayolo.

Since then, Belinga Eboutou was never seen in any ruling CPDM official ceremonies. On several occasions, Cameroon Intelligence Report hinted that he was ill and had been evacuated abroad for treatment.

By Rita Akana

8, May 2019

Biya regime says 165 Ambazonian combatants have drop weapons ⁰

Cameroon’s National Committee on Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (NCDDR) said Tuesday that in the past five months 165 fighters in the Far-North region and two English-speaking regions of the country have “voluntarily” laid down their weapons “to embrace normal life”.

“We have 35 of them in Bamenda in the Northwest region, 21 in Buea in the Southwest region, mostly men and a few young women, and we have 109 in Mora in the Far North. The numbers may seem small but I think we are doing a lot because in addition to these numbers, we have hundreds of them who have laid down their arms but have not come to us yet,” Francis Fai Yengo, national coordinator of NCDDR, told reporters after briefing the prime minister and other senior government officials of the new development.

NCDDR will provide professional training and host the ex-combatants in rehabilitation centers across the country, Yengo said.

“We are going gradually but surely. We will demobolize them. They are going to move to the centers when the security situation is better,” he said.

Cameroon is facing serious security challenges in the two Anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest where separatists want to create an independent nation. In the Far North, where terror group Boko Haram is intensifying attacks on civilians and government forces.

NCDDR was created by President Paul Biya last year “to avoid the use of extreme measures” and supervise and manage the disarmament and reintegration of ex-combatants of Boko Haram and armed separatists in the Anglophone regions.

Xinhuanet

8, May 2019

US Military Trains Cameroon Troops on Medical Evacuations ⁰

The U.S. military is training Cameroon’s military on first aid techniques and medical evacuation in order to reduce battlefield deaths. Cameroon estimates that one-fourth of all soldiers killed fighting separatists and Boko Haram terrorists could have been saved with better care.

Twenty-nine-year-old soldier Poumje Amidou has been getting treatment for fractures since last October at the military hospital in Yaounde.

Amidou said he barely escaped death when separatist fighters attacked his base, leaving one of his colleagues dead and two others wounded.

He said what he remembers is that he bled profusely and had serious wounds on his left leg, stomach and right arm.

Amidou’s life was saved when a Cameroon military helicopter rushed him to the hospital.

But others were not so lucky.

In recent years, about 117 soldiers have died from wounds that would not have been fatal had they received the correct first aid, according to Cameroon’s military.

That’s about one-fourth of all Cameroonian military deaths in the battles against English-speaking separatists and the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram.

Better care for the wounded

U.S. military advisers are working to prevent future deaths by training soldiers to provide better care for the wounded.

Major Mommearts, who did not give his first name, is one of the U.S. trainers.

He said the course on MEDEVAC – medical evacuation – includes evacuating casualties by air, known as CASEVAC.

“We talked about the different levels of CASEVAC, so you have your own legs, you can move the patient yourself, you have different pack bones that they can use. Make sure they are not bleeding while they are being transported.”

In February, the U.S. announced it was cutting some security assistance to Cameroon following allegations that Cameroon’s military was committing human rights violations.

The U.S. says despite the reduction in military aid, relations between the two countries are good.

The director of Cameroon’s military health, Colonel Abeng Mbozoo, said those ties are shown by the U.S. medical training.

He said the training is an indication that military cooperation between the U.S. and Cameroon is excellent. That is the reason the U.S. military has come to train their Cameroonian peers, said, Mbozoo, to save lives and prevent deaths in different battle grounds.

Thirty Cameroonian military staff received the U.S. training this week and will pass on the knowledge to their colleagues.

Source: VOA

8, May 2019

Equatorial Guinea: President Obiang’s brother and ally dies ⁰

A brother of Equatorial Guinea’s long-serving ruler Teodoro Obiang Nguema and the minister in charge of his security has died.

Antonio Nguema died of an unspecified illness at a hospital in South Africa.

He survived numerous cabinet reshuffles as defence minister and, until his death, as minister of presidential security.

In fact, he was among the top brass who helped strengthen his family’s grip on power, crushing two attempts at overthrowing the government.

This kind of loyalty and effectiveness convinced President Teodoro Obiang to elevate the affairs of his personal security to cabinet status.

It is not immediately clear who will replace him, the president will will be looking for an ally who will help keep his government entrenched.

After 40 years in power, he remains the world’s longest-serving non-royal head of state.

Culled from the BBC

8, May 2019

Southern Cameroons Conflict deals Cameroon’s agricultural sector a heavy blow ⁰

Muyenge Trouble, a mainly agrarian village with a once dynamic farming population on the leeward side of Mount Cameroon, is one of the many communities ensnared by the violence that has swept through Cameroon’s English-speaking regions since 2017. Tassa Tassa Paulinus used to live there. But the life of this middle-aged plantain farmer has been turned upside down ever since he was forced to flee his home in November with his five-year-old daughter, trekking through dangerous bush paths to the relative safety of Muyuka, a town over 30 kilometres away.

“I could no longer live in Muyenge as it had become a veritable ‘red zone’. The Amba Boys [armed separatists] of the Ambazonia Defence Forces made life very difficult. They kept demanding money from me,” Tassa explains. The farmer says he could have paid them for ‘protection’ if he had been able to sell his produce. But since the fighting between government forces and militant separatists began, the traders who used to frequent Muyenge Trouble have stayed away; they want to avoid running into lethal clashes and they don’t want to negotiate their way through the checkpoints mounted by rebel fighters in the area.

“At one point in time, I harvested over 400 bunches of plantain from my farm, but no buyers came. They all got rotten. A week later, the Amba Boys came for more money. I had to leave,” says Tassa, who has not seen his wife since she was kidnapped by the Amba Boys last September.

Away from Muyuka, which is 27 kilometres away from Buea (the capital of the Southwest Region, which, along with the Northwest Region, is where the so-called ‘Anglophone crisis’ is taking place), Martin Ekoke Sona is another farmer who has seen his dreams go up in smoke due to the conflict. The 30-year-old had been planning to set up a large yam plantation. “I had planned to cultivate yam on a large scale. But just before the farmland was due to be cleared, a school in the area was razed to the ground in an arson attack. That forced me to abort the project,” recalls Sona, who lost about half a million CFA francs (US$862) in the process.

At the time, Sona had just completed a six-month intensive entrepreneurship programme sponsored by the African Union’s New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and other partners. He feels frustrated that he hasn’t been able to utilise his new-found skills due to the conflict. “I now do yam seed multiplication, and I can barely produce 300 seeds in six months. If we were in peace time, I could produce 1,000 or more yam seeds over the same period.”

Food crisis on the horizon?

In the Northwest and Southwest Regions, where as much as 70 per cent of the population is involved in agriculture, ordinary people are now facing crop failure, food insecurity and job losses thanks to a conflict that started in October 2016 when English-speaking lawyers began protesting the appointment of French-speaking judges to their courts.

A few other frustrated groups, among them teachers, later joined in peaceful rallies.

Initially, protestors were calling for an end to decades of under-investment and government policies which they felt discriminated against the country’s English-speaking regions. However, the government of President Paul Biya (Cameroon’s ruler since 1982) responded to the protests with force, pushing many moderates to get behind separatists calling for an independent state they want to call ‘Ambazonia’.

To date, over 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to local human rights groups, while the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates that insecurity and violence in these two regions have uprooted 437,000 people from their homes and forced over 32,000 to seek refuge in neighbouring Nigeria. An estimated four million people have been affected by the conflict.

With no peace agreement or inclusive national dialogue in sight, the possibility of the conflict ending soon becomes more elusive with each passing day. The uptick in violence, which started in September 2017, has scared people away from their fields, restricted population movements and limited access to markets, thereby exacerbating the population’s vulnerability to acute food insecurity.

According to United Nations Resident Humanitarian Coordinator for Cameroon, Allegra Baiocchi, hundreds of thousands of people in Cameroon need urgent assistance and protection. “Attacks against civilians have increased and many conflict-affected people are surviving in harsh conditions without humanitarian assistance due to the dramatic underfunding of the response [Humanitarian Response Plan]. Cameroon today can no longer be a forgotten crisis; it needs to be high on our agenda,” Baiocchi said in a press release in January.

The severity and magnitude of the situation is such that the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, estimates that 1.4 million people in Northwest, Southwest and West regions will face stressed (Phase 2) levels of acute food insecurity between March and May this year. In addition, nearly 486,000 people – approximately seven per cent of the three regions’ total population – will face crisis (Phase 3) conditions during the same period. Phase 5, which is catastrophe and/or famine, is the highest level of acute food insecurity.

Professor Ernest L. Molua, a renowned agro-economist and Dean of the Faculty of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine at the University of Buea tells Equal Times that abandoned farmlands, the persistent harassment of those farmers who decide not to flee, abandoned field crops and stolen harvests have all contributed to low production levels and a shortfall in market supply. “This has led to a 4-5 per cent growth in staple food prices.” An average bunch of plantain for example, which previously sold at CFA2,500 (US$4.3) now sells at between CFA3,000 (US$5) and CFA3,500 (US$6).

He continues: “These increasing prices are seen as attractive by traders in the western flank of the Littoral Region who divert supplies away from the food markets in Douala [Cameroon’s economic capital, which is situated in the Littoral Region] to towns deemed safe in the neighbouring Southwest Region.”

“We can no longer sell our cocoa”

In Cameroon, cash crops have felt the brunt of the conflict’s impact on agriculture. The Southwest Region represents 45 per cent of total national cocoa production while the Northwest Region represents 70 per cent of total national arabica coffee production. In both regions, farming and post-harvest operations of these cash crops have been reduced to a bare minimum.

Che Divine, a cocoa farmer in the Mbonge area, west of Cameroon, tells Equal Times the production process has become more difficult since fighting began. “We are compelled to pay CFA30,000 (US$52) to the Amba Boys during each harvest. And the harvest has been poor because we don’t treat the cocoa trees well due to the lack of chemicals.”

Esapa Patrick Enyong, president of the Southwest Farmers’ Cooperative Union, which unites over 10 cooperatives, confirms that the agricultural sector has taken a turn for the worse: “Things are very slow at the moment because of the crisis. We are making huge losses as we can no longer sell our cocoa directly at the port in Douala.”

The situation is so bad that during the 2017/18 cocoa season, the Southwest Region lost its first place as the country’s biggest cocoa producer to the Centre Region, passing from 45.45 per cent of the national production to 32 per cent, causing a production deficit of 43,000 tons.

The Cameroon Employers’ Union, GICAM, reports that in 2018 the country lost CFA56 billion (US$96 million), 20 per cent in relative terms, in cocoa and coffee export revenues due to the crisis. Some 210,000 cocoa farmers in the Southwest Region alone were affected, causing farmers to lose as much as CFA35 billion (US$60 million) in income.

Another major hurdle to cocoa production has been the transportation of cocoa beans from production basins to the port city of Douala for export. Armed separatists have sabotaged various road networks and have even hijacked and burnt truckloads of cocoa from licensed buying agents (who they consider to be in cahoots with the government). The country’s National Cocoa and Coffee Board registered a stockpile of 7,212 tons of cocoa in the 2016/17 cocoa season, a figure that increased to 27,159 tons in 2017/18.

Cameroon Development Corporation

But if there is one entity that has been dealt the biggest blow by the conflict, it is the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), an agro-industrial parastatal group that grows, processes and markets tropical export crops such rubber, banana and palm oil. It is the second highest employer after the government civil service, with a workforce of over 22,000 employees.

Armed separatists have ground processing mills to a halt. Warehouses have been set ablaze and labourers have been chased out of plantations, some have even had their fingers butchered.

Of CDC’s 29 production sites across the country, 12 have been shut down, 10 are partially functioning while only seven are fully operational. The company’s precarious financial situation has caused job loss for 6,124 employees, while 5,805 more jobs could be lost as the conflict persists, representing 70 per cent of CDC’s workforce.

Franklin Ngoni Njie, the general manager of CDC, says CFA 29.6 billion (US$51 million) is needed to get the company back on its feet, “but insecurity remains a huge hindrance to the accomplishment of this goal.” He fears the CDC may collapse without an urgent intervention.

This is the fate that has befallen previously notable companies such as the parapublic agro-industrial company Pamol Plantations. Many small to medium-scale farmers in the affected regions have also been badly hit. Mkong Cynthia Jeh, a graduate teaching assistant of agricultural economics and agribusiness at the University of Buea says the current state of affairs has also had a huge, negative impact on foreign exchange. “The cash crops can no longer be produced and exported as before the crisis. It will require huge amounts of money to get back to normal when the fighting stops.”

Culled from Equal Times

8, May 2019

Southern Cameroons Leadership Palaver: Sako has no chance of hanging on ⁰

While the situation in the exiled Southern Cameroons Interim Government remains confused, events on Ground Zero, the US and Europe demonstrate once again that the likeliest resolution to Ambazonia’s seemingly endless USA political crisis lies in the hands of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces.

The Sako Ikome failed dictatorship and the President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s decision dissolving the controversial Interim Government’s cabinet has been locked in a tense stand-off ever since a financial scandal rocked the Interim Government in the USA.

The Restoration Council dodgy effort to bring the crisis to an end has failed. Consequently, Chairman Kometa has erased himself from the annals of Southern Cameroons history. The Sako-Chris Anu’s power-play to bully President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe out of leadership appeared to run out of steam weeks ago. More nuanced efforts involving the renowned Prof Carlson Anyangwe and Seseskou Christmas Ebini have so far produced little of substance. Even Dr Fontem Neba has also declined to mediate, citing Sako Ikome’s bad faith.

The United Nations now estimates that a quarter of Southern Cameroon’s population is in need of humanitarian assistance, with almost half a million suffering from undernourishment in the forest. It also calculates another 50,000 have already fled to Nigeria in desperation. But the continuing support of ill informed Ambazonians in the USA has so far given Sako Ikome the feeling that he has survived the fallout from his leadership failure.

In part Sako has retained Chris Anu’s support thanks to differences between Chris Anu and Tabenyang Brado. But largely Chris Anu’s support to the disgraced Acting President has been bought by a promise of turning over huge swathes of Southern Cameroons financial donations to ABC TV. Chris Anu thinks this will make him fabulously wealthy through control over Southern Cameroons propaganda activities.

This is not to say that all members of the dissolved Southern Cameroons Interim Government in the USA are Sako’s true believers. Given the ruin into which Sako Ikome has led the Southern Cameroons revolution many are thought to be ready to abandon him but have lacked the necessary incentives to do so.

The decision by Chairman Kometa indicates that Southern Cameroonians in Europe and the Republic of South Africa are right to form their own bloc under the direct supervision of the leader, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. But despite Chris Anu’s claim that Sako still has the support of Ambazonians in the Diaspora he is yet to demonstrate that Sako is backed by any more than just a few corrupt and poor religious elements in the US. Rather than rally behind the international face of the Ambazonia revolution, Kometa’s decision instead looked like another ill advised attempt by far way Ambazonians to waste the lives of Southern Cameroonians on Ground Zero.

It is far from clear if Kometa latest effort would be more successful than Sako’s previous one in Berlin, which all ended in failure. The old cabinet as decreed by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is fully back in action and donations are pouring in!! Ground Zero commanders have also refused to come over to Sako en masse! Consequently Sako has no chance of hanging on.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

7, May 2019

US: Trump pardons convicted ex-soldier who killed Iraqi prisoner ⁰

United States President Donald Trump has granted full pardon to a former soldier who was convicted of killing an Iraqi prisoner.

Michael Behenna, who was sentenced to 15 years for the killing of Iraqi prisoner Ali Mansur Mohamed, was pardoned on Monday, according to a White House statement.

“Mr. Behenna’s case has attracted broad support from the military, Oklahoma elected officials, and the public,” read the statement.

The White House said that more than two-dozen generals and admirals, along with numerous Oklahoma officials, had expressed support for Behenna, an Oklahoma native.

The statement said that Behenna had been “a model prisoner.”

The move came specifically after Oklahoma Attorney General Mike Hunter petitioned the Trump administration to pardon the convicted soldier.

Behenna deployed to Iraq as an army ranger of the 101st Airborne Division at the height of the US troop surge in the country. He led an infantry platoon of 18 men.

Following a deadly roadside bomb on a three-truck convoy, which Behenna was accompanying, north of Baghdad, Mansur was apprehended as a suspected al-Qaeda militant who may have helped carry out the attack.

Mansur was interrogated by the military but ultimately freed due to lacking evidence proving he had any role in the attack.

Behenna was ordered to transport Mansur back to his village to set him free.

The US soldier, however, decided to further “interrogate” Mansur. Behenna ultimately stripped the prisoner naked, interrogated him without authorization and killed him by shooting him twice.

“I stripped him naked to intimidate him,” Behenna later said about the ordeal during his trial.

“I told him I wanted more intelligence on local leaders of al-Qaeda, and that I wanted him to tell me about his stops in Saudi Arabia and Syria, and the [roadside] bomb explosion. But he kept saying, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ ”

Behenna killed Mansur by shooting him in the chest and head.

During court-martial, Behenna claimed that he had been protecting himself after the prisoner tried to grab his gun while being interrogated.

The Army, however, believed that the argument couldn’t be valid because Behenna had already been pointing his weapon at the prisoner before Mansur could’ve reached for his gun.

Behenna was consequently found guilty of unpremeditated murder in a combat zone and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2009. The US Army Clemency and Parole Board reduced the sentence to 15 years a year later.

Five years ago, Behenna was given parole and started working in a ranch.

The US invasion of Iraq was carried out in 2003 under the pretext that the regime of Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). No such weapons, however, were ever found in Iraq.

PressTV-US has spent $6 trillion on wars since 9/11: Study

More than one million Iraqis were killed as a result of the occupation and the subsequent occupation of the country, according to the California-based investigative organization Project Censored.

The deteriorating security situation caused by the US occupation also lead to a surge of terrorism-related violence in the country, ultimately giving way to the formation of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group.

Source: Presstv

7, May 2019

“All Sri Lanka bombing attackers killed or arrested” ⁰

Sri Lanka’s police have announced that all the assailants involved in the deadly bomb attacks in the country last month have either been killed or arrested.

At least 257 people were killed and hundreds of others wounded as a series of bomb attacks hit churches and luxury hotels in Sri Lanka on April 21.

Police chief Chandana Wickramaratne said in an audio statement that the dead militants included “two bomb experts.”

“We have seized the explosives they had stored for future attacks,” he added.

Wickramaratne — who was appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena as acting police chief last week after his predecessor was suspended over his failure to act on warnings about the attacks — said public life was slowly returning to normal with the lifting of curfews imposed after the bombings.

Public schools were reopened on Monday, but attendance fell to below 10 percent in many places amid fears of further attacks.

“We have strengthened security for all schools,” Wickramaratne stressed, adding, “We are also conducting a program to create awareness about safety and security in all schools.”

Wickramaratne did not specify the number of those detained over the attacks, but police spokesman Ruwan Gunasekera said on Monday that 73 people, including nine women, were being held.

The local group National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) has been blamed for the Easter Sunday attacks, but the Daesh terrorist group has also claimed the bombings.

Meanwhile, police said religious tensions have eased at the town of Negombo, north of Colombo, which suffered the highest death toll in the April 21 attacks.

Vandalized shops are seen after clashes between Christian and Muslim communities in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on May 6, 2019. (Photo by AFP)

The Roman Catholic Church appealed for calm after Christians attacked dozens of Muslim-owned businesses, homes, and vehicles in the town on Sunday night. Two people were reportedly arrested.

Source: Presstv

7, May 2019

UN Rights Chief Says Yaounde has brief window to try to halt violence ⁰

Cameroon needs a rapid and deep-rooted effort to tackle a crisis of violence that has erupted in several areas of the country, U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said on Monday at the end of a visit to the West African country.

Violence has spilled over Cameroon’s borders from Nigeria, Chad and Central African Republic, while crackdowns on separatists in the southwest and Islamists in the northeast have caused long-running tensions to flare up, the U.N. has said.

Bachelet said the situation could spiral out of control and the challenges are immense, with ten or more separatist movements.

“I believe there is a clear – if possibly short – window of opportunity to arrest the crises that have led to hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people, as well as the killings and brutal human rights violations and abuses that have affected the northern and western areas of the country,” she said in a statement. “It will take significant actions on the part of the government, and substantial and sustained support from the international community – including us in the U.N.”

Cameroon was among the most settled countries in the region until a few years ago, but now villages have been burnt, civilians killed and mutilated, with children abducted and forced to join armed groups or used as unwitting suicide bombers.

Bachelet took part in three days of talks in Yaounde, including an in-depth discussion with President Paul Biya, and offered to help ensure that military operations respect human rights, which the statement said would help to win popular trust.

“If they fail to do that, they will not defeat an enemy that thrives on civilian mistrust of the authorities,” Bachelet said. “In the meantime, the civilians trapped between these two powerful, if asymmetric, opposing forces are increasingly vulnerable to lethal abuses and violations by both sides.”

She said the government had told her about steps to ensure that crimes committed by the armed forces are punished.

“This particular issue is damaging Cameroon’s international standing and undermining international support for efforts to combat the armed groups operating on its territory,” she said.

Source: Reuters