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15, March 2019

More countries ground Boeing jets over safety fears after Ethiopian crash ⁰

Russia, Japan, and Tunisia follow a host of countries in either grounding or banning takeoffs, overflights, and landings of Boeing 737 MAX planes following a recent fatal crash.

Russia’s Interfax news agency said on Thursday the country’s aviation authority had grounded the only two such aircraft that it owns among its 96-strong fleet.

An Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX en route from Addis Ababa to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi crashed a few minutes after takeoff on Sunday, killing all the 157 people, mostly foreign nationals, on board.

PressTV-Ethiopia's Boeing 737 jet crashes, killing 157 people

The cause of the crash is still unknown; however, the pilot had reported difficulties and asked to return to the Ethiopian capital before the incident, the airline has said.

Also on Thursday, Japan’s Land and Transport Ministry banned the medium-haul planes from landing in the country.

No Japanese airline company possesses Boeing 737 MAX planes, while All Nippon Airways (ANA) plans to buy 30 units of the aircraft. The ministry, however, has not issued any instruction on the pending purchase, an official told the agency, adding, “Primarily, each private company should make its own decision.”

Tunisia likewise does not fly any of the aircraft, but barred them from using its airspace and airports.

Romania’s Blue Air, meanwhile, said it would take a decision on its order for 12 Boeing 737 MAX 8 jets pending the results of an investigation into the tragedy.

A growing number of countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, India and China, have now grounded or banned Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes inside their airspace.

PressTV-More states, airlines join wave of Boeing suspensions

The recent crash is the second of a Boring 737 plane in five months. In October 2018, a Lion Air jet crashed into the sea off Indonesia’s island of Java, only minutes after taking off from the capital Jakarta. The crash claimed the lives of 189 people.

Source: Presstv

15, March 2019

40 killed in ‘terrorist’ attack on two mosques in New Zealand ⁰

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says 40 people were killed and more than 20 seriously wounded in mass shootings at two mosques in central Christchurch on Friday.

New Zealand has been placed on its highest security threat level, she said, adding four people with extremist views are held in police custody but they had not been on any police watchlists.

One of the suspects is Australian, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said. “I can confirm that the individual who was taken into custody I have been advised is an Australian-born citizen,” he told reporters in Sydney.

Video footage widely circulated on social media, apparently taken by a gunman and posted online live as the attack unfolded, showed him driving to one mosque, entering it and shooting randomly at people inside.

One man who said he was at the Al Noor mosque told media the gunman was white, blond and wearing a helmet and a bulletproof vest. The man burst into the mosque as worshipers were kneeling for prayers.

“He had a big gun … he came and started shooting everyone in the mosque, everywhere,” Ahmad al-Mahmoud told Reuters. He said he and others escaped by breaking through a glass door.

“This is one of New Zealand’s darkest days,” Prime Minister Ardern said.

Police advised people living in the city center to stay indoors. All mosques, schools and council buildings were also placed on lockdown.

The Bangladesh cricket team was also at the mosque attending Friday prayers. The team was slated to play New Zealand in a third cricket test starting on Saturday.

Presstv

15, March 2019

FIFA, Qatar to discuss expanding 2022 World Cup ⁰

FIFA is keen on seeing the World Cup extended from 32 teams to 48 in the next edition.

It’s a feasible change, according to a study conducted by the technical teams of the football governing body.

But there’s a condition. Qatar will have to accept the idea to co-organise the event with at least one of its neighbours.

The number of matches will increase from 64 to 80, which would be intense for a single country to bear.

According to media reports, Oman and Kuwait could be chosen to host some of the games of the expanded tournament.

A FIFA delegation will meet in Miami, United States on Friday with officials from the host country of the 2022 World Cup.

The organizing committee of Qatar declined to comment on the feasibility study. But its spokesman confirmed Qatar’s presence at the Miami meeting.

According to officials, an increase in the number of teams at the next World Cup could generate additional revenues of between 300 and 400 million dollars, including 120 million in television rights.

Reuters

15, March 2019

CPDM Crime Syndicate: Yaounde elects National Assembly speaker ⁰

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, a senior member of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, was re-elected the country’s House Speaker of National Assembly on Thursday.

During an elective plenary sitting of the House in the capital, Yaounde, Djibril was re-elected with 118 votes and there were 20 void votes.

Born in 1940, Djibril has been the president of Cameroon’s National Assembly since 1992, making him the longest serving house speaker of the country since independence in 1960.

Djibril will preside over the parliament until September when fresh parliamentary and municipal elections are expected to hold in Cameroon.

One of his main tasks, during his brief tenure, is to ensure parliament comes up with a blueprint to de-escalate the armed conflict in Southern Cameroons now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia where restoration forces are fighting to create an independent nation.

Xinhuanet with CCN

15, March 2019

US State Department releases another damning Human Rights Report on Cameroon ⁰

Another damning Human Rights Report on Cameroon by the US State Department. The question remains: after documenting all these abuses, some of which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity, what will the US do?

Excerpts of the 2018 US State Dept. report:
“Government security forces were widely believed to be responsible for disappearances of suspected Anglophone separatists, with reports of bodies dumped far from the site of killings to make identification difficult. According to credible nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the government did not readily account for some of the activists arrested in connection with the Anglophone crisis. Family members and friends of the detainees were frequently unaware of the missing individuals’ location in detention for a month or more.

For example, authorities held incommunicado Ayuk Sisiku Tabe, the “interim president” of the so-called Republic of Ambazonia, along with 46 other Anglophone separatists, from January 29 until late June when they were allowed to meet with their lawyers and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“There were credible reports that members of government forces physically abused and killed prisoners in their custody. In its July report, Human Rights Watch highlighted the case of Samuel Chiabah, popularly known as Sam Soya, whom members of government forces interrogated under harsh conditions and killed, following the killing of two gendarmes by armed separatists at a checkpoint between Bamenda and Belo in the Northwest Region.

A video widely circulated on social media featured Sam Soya sitting on the floor and being questioned about the killings, along with one other suspect. In the video Sam Soya could be heard crying in agony and denying participation in the killings. Photographs were released on social media that showed members of security forces in uniform using a bladed weapon to slice open Sam Soya’s neck and the leg of the other man, both of whom were lying face down on the floor and in handcuffs.

In July human rights lawyer Felix Agbor Nkongho Balla reported an incident in which guards at the Yaounde Kondengui maximum security prison abused 18 Anglophone detainees who had been transferred from the Buea Central Prison and the SED. He indicated that prison guards kept the detainees in tight chains and brutally beat them, repeatedly referring to them as Ambazonians. In solidarity with the victims, other Anglophone detainees staged a violent protest.

The prison registrar allegedly told the inmates that he had received orders from his hierarchy to keep the detainees in chains. In an attempt to resolve the tension, after long hours of negotiations, the prison registrar removed the chains and the situation returned to normal.

14, March 2019

115 killed in Southern Africa floods ⁰

At least 115 people were killed in Mozambique, Malawi and South Africa after heavy rains affected 843,000 people across southeast Africa, officials and the UN said, prompting calls for emergency aid.

At least 66 people have been killed in Mozambique, 45 in Malawi and four in South Africa following torrential rains that have triggered flash floods.

Mozambique cabinet spokeswoman Ana Comoana said the “government has decreed a red alert due to the continuing rains and the approach of the tropical cyclone Idai, expected to reach the country between Thursday to Friday.”

She spoke to reporters late Tuesday after a cabinet meeting in Maputo to discuss the emergency.

The floods in Mozambique, one of Africa’s poorest countries, have already destroyed 5,756 homes, affecting 15,467 households and 141,325 people.

In neighboring Malawi, floods have left over 230,000 people without shelter and affected around 739,000 people, according to the UN.

Malawi’s Meteorological Department has warned of more rains and flooding in the country’s south between Thursday and Sunday.

In Mozambique, 111 people have been injured, 18 hospitals destroyed, 938 classrooms destroyed and 9,763 students affected.

More than 168,000 hectares (415,000 acres) of crops were destroyed, the government spokeswoman added.

Authorities there have ordered the compulsory evacuation of people living in flood-prone areas.

“Sixteen accommodation centers have been opened in the provinces of Zambezia and Tete to accommodate the displaced,” Comoana said.

“The government needs 1.1 billion meticais ($16 million) to assist 80,000 families affected by the rains.”

Mozambique is prone to extreme weather events. Floods in 2000 claimed at least 800 lives while more than 100 were killed in 2015.

“Tropical Cyclone Idai, which formed over the Northern Mozambique Channel on March 9, is expected to make landfall near Beira (eastern Mozambique) on March 14 or 15,” said the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The cyclone was located over the Mozambique Channel on March 12 and is expected to strengthen into intense tropical cyclone status (Category 4 equivalent) again prior to making landfall.”

(Source: AFP)

14, March 2019

Black boxes from Ethiopia Airlines crash arrive in Paris for analysis ⁰

Two black boxes from the Boeing 737 MAX airplane that crashed in Ethiopia arrived on Thursday in Paris for expert analysis, officials said, as regulators around the world awaited word on whether it was safe to resume flying the jets.

A spokesman for France’s BEA air accident investigation agency said the flight data and cockpit voice recorders would be handed over to the agency later in the day. Their data are critical to finding out what caused the brand-new aircraft to plunge to the ground shortly after taking off from Addis Ababa on Sunday.

Following the lead of other global aviation regulators unnerved by the second crash involving a 737 MAX in less than five months, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued orders on Wednesday for the planes to be grounded.

Boeing, which maintained that its planes were safe to fly, said in a statement that it supported the FAA move. “Boeing has determined – out of an abundance of caution and in order to reassure the flying public of the aircraft’s safety – to recommend to the FAA the temporary suspension of operations of the entire global fleet of 371 737 MAX aircraft.”

The FAA along with the National Transportation Safety Board, the Ethiopian civil aviation authority, and Boeing, have been investigating the crash at the site, some 60 km (around 40 miles) outside the Ethiopian capital.

On Thursday morning in Addis Ababa, grieving relatives of some of the 157 victims of Sunday’s air disaster boarded buses for a three-hour journey to the crash site.

Others described their visit on Wednesday to the arid farmland where the passenger jet crashed. Relatives of the victims lay flowers during a visit to the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 MAX crash site on March 13, 2019 Tony Karumba, AFP

“We saw where he died and touched the earth,” said Sultan Al-Mutairi, who had come from Riyadh to mourn his brother, Saad, who ran a recruitment agency in Nairobi and perished in the crash.

Experts say it could take weeks or months to identify the victims, as their remains were scattered, charred and in fragments due to the impact of the crash and ensuing fire.

Investigation

Frustration is growing among the families of victims of the crash who are in Addis Ababa. On Thursday morning, some asked Ethiopian Airlines for greater transparency. Both the Ethiopian Airlines crash and a Lion Air crash in Indonesia occurred just minutes after take-off.

Fresh information from the wreckage in Ethiopia and newly refined data about the plane’s flight path indicated some similarities between the two disasters “that warrant further investigation of the possibility of a shared cause,” the FAA said in a statement.

Acting FAA administrator Daniel Elwell said he did not know how long the U.S. grounding of the aircraft would last. A software fix for the 737 MAX that Boeing has been working on since a fatal crash last October in Indonesia will take months to complete, Elwell told reporters on Wednesday.

Deliveries of Boeing’s best-selling 737 MAX jets were effectively frozen, though production continued, after the United States joined a global grounding of the narrow-body model over safety concerns, industry sources said.

All 737 MAX jets have now been grounded, flight tracking website FlightRadar24 said. An Air Canada flight from San Francisco to Halifax was the last to land late on Wednesday.

With the uncertainty hanging over the 737 MAX, a French presidential source said European planemaker Airbus and Ethiopian Airlines are discussing a possible new contract as part of the airline’s fleet overhaul.

The official said President Emmanuel Macron and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had spoken about a possible new contract during Macron’s visit to Addis Ababa earlier this week.

Airlines operating the 737 MAX jets that have been delivered since its 2017 debut said they had cancelled some of their flights and rearranged schedules to use other jets in their fleets.

“Our goal is to operate our schedule with every available aircraft in our fleet to meet our customers’ expectations during the busy spring travel season,” said U.S. carrier Southwest Airlines Co, the world’s biggest operator of the 737 MAX.

(REUTERS)

14, March 2019

Cameroon calls for “good understanding” after EU official decries its “political malaise” ⁰

Cameroon’s Minister of Communication Rene Sadi on Monday called on the European Union to “have a good understanding” of the political and security situation in the country in a bid to make “informed” declarations and decisions.

“The government calls for a good understanding of the situation by all and our cooperation with the European Union (EU), in view of wise and multifaceted support for a return to peace in the interest of Cameroon,” Sadi said in a statement released late Monday.

His reaction came after EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini condemned the “deteriorating” political and security situation in Cameroon. Mogherini said earlier that the imprisonment of the opposition leader and the violence in the two English-speaking regions showed “growing political malaise” in the country.

“These declarations show a bit of interest our European Union partners have in Cameroon which we welcome, nevertheless, they show lack of analysis of the reality and veracity of the facts,” Sadi said, adding that opposition leader Maurice Kamto and his militants of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party were awaiting trial for charges including “insurrection, hostility against the state, rebellion and destruction of public property.”

“Concerning the Northwest and Southwest, the situation in the two regions is under control and the prospects for a return to normal are becoming more favorable every day,” Sadi said. Cameroon is facing growing insecurity in its two anglophone regions of Northwest and Southwest, where separatists want to create a new nation called “Ambazonia.”

Kamto was arrested alongside 117 militants of the CRM party in late January after they organized protests to denounce what they called an “electoral hold-up” and the “useless war in Anglophone regions.”

Source: Xinhuanet

14, March 2019

Cameroon continues it’s troubling descent ⁰

Despite somewhat slipping from global headlines in recent weeks, Cameroon has nonetheless maintained its death spiral. The root cause of the crisis can be unequivocally placed at the doorstep of the Presidency, or the Geneva Intercontinental Hotel, where President Paul Biya spends much of his time. As we have previously written on this site, President Biya is Africa’s oldest head of state, having been in power since 1982, and recently secured a seventh term in office despite credible allegations of vote rigging, electoral fraud, targeted threats of violence against opponents, and an ongoing, bloody uprising in the country’s Anglophone regions.

Biya’s main challenger in the October 2018 election, Maurice Kamto, has been subsequently charged by a military court with rebellion, insurrection and “hostility to the homeland,” after his political party staged peaceful protests in several of Cameroon’s major cities. To be sure, Kamto’s ordeal is only the latest example in a long succession of targeted harassment, intimidation and persecution of the country’s dissidents and opposition political figures. Akere Muna, for instance — another 2018 presidential challenger who ultimately joined Kamto’s coalition — has been repeatedly targeted by local authorities, as has Kah Walla, a former presidential candidate, leading women’s rights activist, and president of the Cameroon People’s Party.

Next week, as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy visits Cameroon, Maurice Kamto and countless other political prisoners will likely remain behind bars and the country’s activist community still living in fear. Importantly, however, political leaders in the U.S. have begun to speak up, while certain sectors of the U.S. government have also taken actions to hold Cameroonian leaders accountable, or at least put the government on notice that human rights violations will not be allowed to continue without consequence.

Last month, for example, U.S. officials committed to “terminate” over $17 million in security assistance to the Biya regime, as well as the withdrawal of an offer for Cameroon to be a candidate for the State Partnership Program, which links 81 nations around the world with the U.S. armed forces “in a mutually beneficial relationship.” This move, indeed, was long overdue given the ongoing, absolutely horrific abuses being perpetrated in the country — most notably in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions, which has resulted in tens of thousands of refugees and, according to recent public opinion polling, a dramatic decline in citizens’ faith in their leaders and state institutions.

U.S. Congressional leaders are also speaking out, including Representative Eliot Engel, the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, who this week wrote a letter of concern focused specifically on Cameroon to Secretary Nagy, in light of his upcoming trip. This is no small feat. In the letter, Congressman Engel requested that Secretary Nagy — who has previously served in Cameroon — to “raise the fact that the Government of Cameroon has clearly violated the rights of Mr. Kamto and other political prisoners to assemble freely and express and disseminate their opinions, which are encapsulated in the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights (ACHPR), which Cameroon ratified three decades ago.”

Certainly, the issue at hand is not about “western moralizing” or “American finger wagging” as it is often perceived or otherwise presented by Cameroon state media (and other repressive governments on the African continent). These rightful voices of concern are simply pointing out the fact that leaders in Cameroon, among others, often fail to live up to the language enshrined in their own constitutions, conventions, norms and regional standards. The ACHPR, for example, and the African Charter on Democracy, Governance and Elections exist for a reason. And they should be duly respected.

Instead of engaging in a comprehensive, much-needed dialogue with the political opposition, civil society, and Cameroon’s beleaguered business community, which is also suffering as a result of the crackdown, President Biya and the ruling cabal have doubled down, contracting highly paid lobbyists in Washington to whitewash their crimes while engaging in a scorched earth policy back home. Increased repression, and the climate of fear that is purposefully cultivated as a result, may keep President Biya and his enablers in power for the time being. The only viable path, however, towards achieving progress, development and ultimate peace will surely have to be based on respecting democratic principles and meeting the so far unmet aspirations of its people who are yearning for a better life — many of whom continue to quite literally put their lives on the line to secure a better, more prosperous country for future generations.

APO Group

14, March 2019

Top US diplomat suggests taking Biya regime to global forum ⁰

The top United States diplomat to Africa says perhaps it’s time to take the deadly separatist crisis in Cameroon to an “international forum.”

An exasperated Tibor Nagy told reporters on Tuesday that “my heart breaks for Cameroon … I just don’t understand why this crisis goes on and on and on.”

Some half a million people have been displaced as Cameroon’s government battles an Anglophone separatist movement in the largely French-speaking country. Weary residents in the middle have pleaded for peace.

Nagy, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, called for “open, unlimited national dialogue.”

Cameroon’s government in a strongly worded statement last week criticized Nagy’s earlier comments on the Anglophone crisis, accusing him of misunderstanding the situation and interfering in the West African country’s internal affairs.

Associated Press