2, December 2018
Ambazonia: Do UK business links really ‘open channels to raise human rights concerns’? 0
Liam Fox, the trade secretary, boasts that a British company, New Age, has signed a £1.5 billion deal for Cameroon’s natural gas?
Conservative Peer Baroness Goldie, responding for the UK government in a recent debate on the deteriorating situation in that country, told the House of Lords, “We do not see that there has to be a choice between securing growth and investment for the UK, and raising human rights…by having a strong relationship with Cameroon we are able to have open discussions on a range of admittedly difficult issues, including human rights.”
Yet, despite that “strong relationship” and “discussions,” President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, refuses to meet any representatives of Cameroon’s marginalised English-speaking minority. Human rights groups say Biya responded to 2016’s peaceful protests with disproportionate violence, prompting a militant and violent Anglophone reaction, and pushing the country further into conflict.
Disregarding a wealth of evidence from Amnesty, Human Rights Watch, and Crisis Group, Goldie insists Cameroon’s violence had “complex causes, and as with many conflicts, it is not always easy to establish what is happening on the ground.”
Cameroon Concord News calls on Interpol, The Serious Crimes Unit of the British Police, The FBI, The Criminal Investigations Department of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and all Police and Intelligence Agencies worldwide to urgently step in and investigate the oil and gas contract between New Age Global Energy Company and French Cameroun that was signed recently in Britain. There are many reasons for an urgent criminal investigation of this international crime masked as a business contract.
The contract is a front for money laundering conceived for criminal purposes. The oil and gas fields which are subject of the contract are in the territory of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia over which a war and genocide declared by Paul Biya the head of the crime syndicate in French Cameroun are ongoing. The contract is directly linked to the subject of this in who the perpetration of international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes by one of the contracting parties, French Cameroun is ongoing. These crimes have led to a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable proportions. The contract will directly contribute to the war efforts of French Cameroun in which international crimes are being perpetrated by French Cameroun. Control over the mineral resources of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is among the reasons for the declaration of war by French Cameroun against Ambazonia. This contract therefore will substantially contribute to the crimes and the humanitarian calamity.
The contract is a front for the laundering of money and resources for criminal purposes. These criminal purposes include the bankrolling of the elections of Paul Biya and members of his criminal gang in power. These elections have all elements of fraud and criminality.
The contract is illegal, null and void in every respect. This will be the first contract where French Cameroun will be signing with a company which has no incorporation within the territory in which the oil and gas fields are located. Pursuant to the foreign imposed laws of the colonial annexationist criminal government of French Cameroun in the territory of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, the foreign firm needed to comply with several OHADA treaty requirements. It has neither complied with Southern Cameroons laws nor that of the occupier.
The choice of a British firm in a French occupied economic annexed territory is intended to buy through this corrupt slave economic deal, the continuing support of Britain of the colonial occupation and criminal war and genocide. The fact that the Secretary-General in the Presidency of French Cameroun’s crime syndicate went to England to sign the contract far away from the battlefields of Ambazonia where the intended loot is located, and far away from its own centre of French Cameroun’s criminal operations, Yaoundé, evinces an intention to shield the fine elements of criminality contained in the criminal deal from the scrutiny of the Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia victims. French Cameroun has a record of signing bilateral agreements in Yaoundé and at the official locations of its partners. This criminal contract is not a bilateral agreement but a business contract.
Cameroun Concord News is not aware of any time in recent memory when French Cameroun dispatched a Secretary-General in its Presidency to move to the head quarter of a foreign firm to sign a contract of this nature or any at all. The signatory on behalf of French Cameroun is neither its Prime Minister, Minister in Charge of Mineral Resources, Investments, or its plenipotentiary in Britain. The Secretary-General in the Crime Syndicate of French Cameroun is a gate-keeper of corrupt deals; proceeds of national and international criminality and the vampire Paul Biya’s executioner of record. The poster boys of criminality such as Paul Atanga Nji, George Tabetando, Laurent Esso, Fame Ndongo, Okalia Bilai, Lele L’Afrique, Joseph Beti Assomo, Louis Paul Motaze, General Elokobi Daniel Njock, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and all CPDM apologists and conspirators are supervised by him on behalf of the crime master Paul Biya.
This contract is in a class of its own considering French Cameroun’s rather unorthodox approach to it. French Cameroun is a well-known haven for criminal deals, corruption and international criminality. The colonization and criminal vandalization of the Southern Cameroons by French Cameroun acting as a proxy for France for the past fifty-seven years is a result of a criminal slave deal between France and Great Britain on the watch of the United Nations. That slave deal encouraged the impunity with which French Cameroun entered criminal contractual deals to loot, vandalize and pillage the resources of the Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia. This contract follows this criminal pattern with the aggravating factor being that its immediate effect will be the funding of a war in which international crimes shocking the conscience of humanity are being committed.
This contract if not investigated and halted, will stain the conscience of the civilized world; Great Britain in particular, with more blood of innocent Ambazonians. Cameroon Concord News strongly calls for an urgent investigation of this criminal deal to avert the escalation of the genocide and international criminality going on in the Gulf of Guinea and its contagious territories.
Written by Open democracy UK and Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
4, December 2018
Cameroonians die three times over: They die of poverty, die of illness and die of war 0
La Republique du Cameroun until the recent secession of its Anglophone part was CEMAC region’s biggest country. It is mostly known and in particular portrayed as such in the world media, for its peace, football and ethnic, religious and tribal tolerance. But the Southern Cameroons revolution has made all of the positives a thing of the past fostered by a sitting ruthless dictator, old colonialist power and new imperialist forces. This is exactly what is happening today in La Republique du Cameroun since the beginning of the Ambazonia uprising.
From its very inception, Anglophone lawyers and teachers rose up en masse and challenged the Francophone dominated regime in Yaoundé over what they described as endemic marginalization and economic discrimination. The revolt was directed against the heinous Francophone dictatorship of President Paul Biya and the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement party that has held power since November 6th 1982. This is the first revolt of this magnitude against a French surrogate regime.
Ghost town operations of a scale not witnessed for decades has continued for two years now in all major Southern Cameroons cities, towns and villages. Anti-government protests, initially led by students from the University of Buea and Bamenda, have inspired similar demonstrations among traders union, okada riders and transporters. In French Cameroun, years of subjugation at the hands of the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement (CPDM) has yielded both political apathy and a weak opposition.
The killing of several hundred of Southern Cameroonians and sweeping arrests on the part of the French Cameroun State Security and Intelligence Services reportedly pushed the protests to expand to include all the people of the former British Southern Cameroons. The regime started to take it very seriously following the escalation of repression and this also is an indication of the loss of social control by President Biya. Buea, Bamenda and all the major cities in Southern Cameroons are now besieged by the Francophone police and the French Cameroun army. Bullets and teargas were the first reaction, and then the Biya regime started to crackdown massively on Ambazonians, arresting more than 1000 activists. 4000 Southern Cameroonians have so far been killed. Hundreds have been carried to “phantom houses” or undisclosed locations, where they are tortured and the women and young girls raped by members of the infamous French Cameroun secret service. Approximately 50,000 have fled the onslaught into neighbouring Nigeria and thousands are living in the bushes. The UN says some 461,000 Southern Cameroonians have been internally displaced.
On October 7, the president-dictator, Paul Biya rigged the presidential election in French Cameroun and got a seventh term and is now imposing a new round of even more draconian measures against the people of Southern Cameroons which have subsequently created a club of military billionaires as 85% of the government’s budget is swallowed by military expenses. Meanwhile the ongoing wars in the Far North region against Boko Haram and in the East with rebels from the Central African Republic cost the French Cameroun government millions a day!
Things are beginning to fall apart as Cameroon was recently stripped of the right to stage the 2019 African Nations Cup finals. CAF confirmed the unanimous decision after a meeting of its executive committee in Accra. Cameroon’s ability to host the finals was first questioned when CAF announced in July last year that the tournament would have eight additional teams and only countries capable of putting on world-class tournament, with complete facilities and extensive infrastructure would be allowed to stage the event. CAF sent several inspection teams to Cameroon to check on the progress of the construction of five stadiums proposed for the tournament.
When CAF president Ahmad went to Cameroon in October he told the country’s President Paul Biya in front of assembled reporters: “CAF has no Plan B, nor have we ever considered taking the Nations Cup away from Cameroon.” But last week he criticised Cameroon’s inability to regularise the affairs of its football federation, which has been under the control of a normalisation committee for more than a year while it struggles to adopt a new constitution and elect a new executive.
On 30 November 2018, President Paul Biya signed a decree creating the “National Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Committee (NDDRC) for organizing, supervising and managing the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-fighters of Boko Haram and armed groups in Southern Cameroons willing to respond favourably to the Head of State’s peace appeal by laying down their arms.” In response, Ambazonia Self-Defence and Restoration Forces Council (ASC/RF), the command and control system prosecuting the war against French Cameroun rejected the so-called Biya presidential decree. The situation in both Cameroons is growing from bad to worse and even Francophone Cameroonians are fed up. The President-dictator lives in a five star Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva and his regime is slowly but surely taking the last kicks of a dying horse. To be accurate Cameroonians die three times over: they die of poverty, die of illness and die of war.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai