A huge fire at a Liberian Koranic school killed at least 26 pupils and two teachers on Wednesday when flames engulfed their dormitory, in one of the worst disasters of its kind for the West African nation.

The boys were sleeping at the school when the overnight fire began, said police spokesman Moses Carter, adding that an electrical fault could have caused the blaze.

President George Weah visited the site in Paynesville, on the outskirts of the capital, Monrovia, and said the cause was still unknown.

“We are here to encourage parents of the victims to have strength, because it is painful to lose your kids in this manner,” Weah told reporters at the scene.

The president’s office said 26 pupils between the ages of 10 and 20 died along with two teachers. The police spokesman said 27 students had been killed.

On Wednesday evening, the president of neighboring Guinea, Alpha Conde, said several of his country’s nationals died in the blaze.

In a statement, he expressed “great emotion” over the deaths and gave his “deepest condolences to the Liberian people and the Guinean community in Liberia,” adding that he was following the investigation closely.

“We extend our sympathy to the bereaved families. We don’t know the cause of the fire yet, but we will encourage our investigators to find how it happened,” he added.

Rescuers in white masks and surgical gloves carried the children’s bodies in bags from the burnt-out building as crowds of people and relatives pressed together outside.

“Our team is investigating the cause of the fire,” the police spokesman said. “It may be electrical,” he added, while refusing to rule out the possibility that the fire was a criminal act.

The children were asleep

“I was sleeping when I heard noise outside. My wife opened the back door and we saw smoke coming from the front. We came out and saw fire at the back,” said local resident Zazay Ballah, who said they had helped in the rescue efforts.

“We went for water, trying to put it out… When the fire fighters came, the fire was already going down.”

The victims were buried swiftly in a collective ceremony, in the Muslim tradition.

In an earlier tweet, Weah offered condolences to the families of those affected.

“My prayers go out to the families of the children that died last night in Paynesville City as a result of a deadly fire that engulfed their school building,” he wrote.

“This is a tough time for the families of the victims and all of Liberia.”

The Liberian authorities are all too familiar with deadly fires, often caused by malfunctioning generators, though “not on this scale,” the presidential spokesman said.

The majority of Liberians are Christian but there is a sizeable minority of Muslims among the 4.5-million population.

Liberia is one of the least developed nations in the world, and its recent history has been blighted by civil wars and the deadly Ebola virus.

(Source: AFP)

It’s back to school day in Cameroon’s economic capital Douala and 19-year-old Pricilla Ngum Che is getting ready to go to class — for the first time in two years.

Pricilla lives in this small windowless room, that she shares with her two younger siblings.

She and her siblings live by themselves and are supported by their parents who sends them money to tend to their other needs.

With only their clothe on their backs, Pricilla and her brothers fled their home town of Kumba, the second largest English speaking city in Cameroon, were separatist have been fighting to establish a breakaway state.

Cameroon has been gripped by violence since November 2016, when government forces crushed a movement of Anglophone teachers and lawyers protesting against their perceived marginalization by the country’s French-speaking majority.

The protests morphed into an insurgency of separatists seeking independence for the Anglophone southwest and northwest regions, which were controlled by Britain during colonialism.

The deteriorating security has led to the closure of hundreds of schools and left thousands of children like Pricilla without no access to education, leading many families to move to French speaking towns so that their children could go to school.

“I decided to come here to come and complete my education. Because schools there are not functioning that way. So, I decided to come here to complete my secondary education, yeah, which is going to help me and my family,” Pricilla said.

Pricilla attends a private English college 20 minutes away form her home, which also has other displaced children who fled because of the crisis.

School administrator Ali Ousmalia says the influx of displaced children presents many challenges for the school authorities, and that the number of children coming from troubled Anglophone region has more than tripled this school year.

“The population that we are having that is really disturbing us now as I may say, It is all these our brothers and sisters from the north west (anglophones). Disturbing us in how? They are disturbing us that they come they don’t have documents to prove they were in school, they come they don’t have their birth certificate, they don’t have their report cards, so it is really heavy on us. Some are even coming… as you can see if you move in to classes now… we are forced to take them in class without uniforms, without any information like that just to make sure we educate Cameroonians,” he added.

Political blogger Tah Javis Mai has had a devastating impact on the education system in Cameroon’s anglophone region and its children.

“We have about 20 percent of effective resumption for North and South West regions. We have 600.000 kids out of school. We have 4000 schools down, either burned down or not open at all. Now we are talking about a school resumption especially where I come from, an area where we use to have 5000 students per school in GBHS Muea is shutdown. Looking at the other surrounding schools but come now to look at the effects. It’s going to create an increase in hate crime because we have kids who have not been able to school 3 years going to 4 years now all of them are in the bushes. Now their mentality now is different. They now see things differently,” he said.

For Pricilla, readjusting to school in a new town has not been easy, especially after missing out on two years of school, away from family and friends.

“I face a lot of challenges inn school in the fact that, my teachers back in south west, where stopped. So, I have come here so they are not in the same page with us, yeah. So, I face lots of challenges for that and it’s very difficult for me to pick up here. And then secondly, I face challenges in school… I don’t have friends. Am just there bored, alone, I don’t have anyone to talk to. Yes, so am very-very lonely in school,” she added.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya announced in a rare public address last Tuesday the organization of a national dialogue to solve a separatist crisis in the country’s English-speaking regions.

Biya said the talks, led by the prime minister and starting from the end of September, would bring together a wide range of people to seek ways to end violence that has plagued the region in recent months.

In June, NGO Human Rights Watch said the prospects for talks between the government and separatist leaders were very thin.

Reuters

The world’s best teacher, who hails Kenya, Peter Tabichi, is set to address the 74th United Nations General Assembly, which brings together world leaders from the organisation’s 193 members.

Tabichi, who won the 2019 Global Teacher Prize in March this year, is a member of the St Franciscan Friars, a religious order founded by St Francis of Assisi in the 13th century.

Meeting Trump

On Tuesday, the White House press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, shared a picture on Twitter showing that Tabichi, had met with US president, Donald Trump.

Stephanie Grisham✔@PressSec

This morning, President @realDonaldTrump met with Peter Tabichi, the recipient of the 2019 Global Teacher Prize! Peter is a science teacher who gives away 80% of his monthly income to help the poor in his home country of Kenya.

‘‘Peter, you inspire us all! Thank you for your commitment to your students,’‘ Stephanie tweeted.

Tabichi, who won the $1m best teacher prize, teaches science at Keriko Mixed Day Secondary School at Pwani village in Njoro, Nakuru County.

Addressing the UN General Assembly

Brother Tabichi is set to recite the popular St Francis prayer before the start of the general assembly, according to Brother Tony Donald from Ireland.

“This is a big honour for St Franciscan brothers. It shows that the UN recognises our order as it plays a key role in the development of humanity,” he said.

Tabichi will also share his inspirational story with delegates at the assembly.

The Prayer of St. Francis

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy
O divine master grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it’s in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen

About the United Nations General Assembly

Every year in September, all 193 members of the United Nations meet at the General Assembly at the organisation’s headquarters in New York.

The General Assembly is one of the six main organs of the UN, where several international issues covered by the Charter of the United Nations, such as development, peace and security, international law are discussed.

This year’s assembly which starts on September 17, has climate change, universal health coverage and the politics of sustainable development, on the agenda.

There will also be meetings on financing for development, elimination of nuclear weapons and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Ghana will occupy the first seat in the Hall for this year’s session, including in the main committees, followed by all the other countries, in English alphabetical order.

Source: Africa News

As early as 6:30 am on the day of school reopening, 10-year-old Cameroonian girl Kelsy Shinyuy was already on her way to meet her new teachers and classmates.

“I am very happy because I have not been to school for long. Very happy,” she said.

Shinyuy had to stay at home since 2017 due to a persistent crisis in the Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions of Northwest and Southwest, where separatists have been clashing with government forces in a bid to secede from the French-majority Cameroon and create an independent nation they call “Ambazonia”.

In late August this year, Shinyuy and her family left their home in Kumbo in the Northwest to take refuge in Foumban, chief-town of Noun division in the Francophone part of Cameroon, about 100 km away from Kumbo. She was finally able to restart school at Saint Joseph Bilingual School of Foumban.

Her mother Lidwina Limunyuy was very excited that she managed to resend her child back to school, although for lack of money, the other two younger brothers of Shinyuy have to keep staying at home.

“We went through hardship. In fact we are lucky to be alive,” Limunyuy said.

A UNICEF report released in August estimates that insecurity spreading across Cameroon’s Anglophone regions has left more than 4,400 schools forcibly closed, affecting more than 600,000 children. According to the government, many of these schools were found being used as bases of the armed separatists.

According to UN estimations in July, the conflicts have resulted in about 530,000 internally displaced persons (IDP). Among them, many are children and teenagers struggling to resume schooling with very limited ressources.

“The situation is sad and touching…We have asked all the school authorities to admit all the internally displaced children. We are very focused to make sure they go to school hitch-free,” said Amidou Mbouombouo, divisional delegate of the secondary education ministry in Noun.

Magdaline Abongmbuh, a teacher at Government Bilingual High School of Foumban, said 33 IDP students registered in her class.

“Some of the students came to school without uniforms and books and school fees. When I asked them to go home and dress properly before coming to school, they burst into tears and insisted that they are ready to study in any condition,” said Abongmbuh. “They cried, Madam, we have suffered a lot and we want to go to school.”

Humanitarian agencies like the Red Cross are also taking actions.

Last academic year, the Red Cross helped about 7,000 displaced children register in primary and secondary schools in Noun, where there are currently 38,940 IDPs, according to Ibrahim Pouamoun, divisional secretary of the Red Cross in Noun.

Local elites make their contribution too. Members of Bamoun Kingdom, a major chiefdom in Noun, visited displaced families before school resumption to donate learning equipments.

To provide IDPs with sustainable sources of income, the sultan king Ibrahim Mbombo Njoya has made available 600 hectares of farm land, according to Inoussa Ngoupayou, first deputy to the sultan king.

On this first day of school, Shinyuy was already making new friends. All children have been instructed to be kind to their mates coming from crisis-hit regions, school headmistress Caroline Yaah told Xinhua.

“I will study hard to become a doctor,” Shinyuy said.

Culled from Xinhuanet

Hundreds of thousands of children in Cameroon’s English language-speaking region are staying out of school this week, after separatists called for a boycott and threatened attacks on those who attend.

Insurgents have been fighting the West African country’s francophone government in a bid to carve out an independent state they hope will be named Ambazonia.

Though Cameroon’s school year officially began on Monday, Unicef says that 80 per cent of schools have been shut down in the anglophone region, in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest, many for the past three years. About 600,000 children have been affected, and at least 74 schools destroyed, the agency said.

This is “putting the future of an entire generation of children at risk, children who with the right support and opportunities can build a more stable and prosperous future”, said Unicef spokesman Toby Fricker.

Schools were originally closed in 2016, after anglophone teachers and lawyers began to protest an enforced increase in how much French had to be used in courts and schoolrooms. In the fighting that has escalated since, more than half a million people have been displaced and thousands killed.

Embedded

“Schools have been at the heart of the conflict since it began,” Emmanuel Freudenthal, one of the only journalists who has been embedded with Cameroon’s separatist forces, told The Irish Times.

“For both the state of Cameroon and separatists, the schools have become a symbol to demonstrate their control over the two anglophone regions.

“Nevertheless, the separatists are divided on this question, some arguing that schools should be allowed to function, while others say that the education offered is of low quality and that the yet non-existent country of Ambazonia will offer a schooling, which has not materialised.”

Parents who can afford to have sent their children abroad, Mr Freudenthal said.

On August 20th, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, one of the leaders of the separatist movement, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Cameroon, along with nine others.

This process has been plagued by pre-trial abuses and serious allegations of fair-trial breaches

On Monday, New York-headquartered Human Rights Watch announced that the 10 imprisoned men had lodged an appeal against the convictions.

“It appears that the military court handed down a hasty verdict and sentence without giving the accused any meaningful opportunity to defend themselves,” said Lewis Mudge, Human Rights Watch’s central Africa director. “This process has been plagued by pre-trial abuses and serious allegations of fair-trial breaches that warrant independent and impartial judicial review, which we hope will happen under appeal.”

Torture

The men were arrested in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, in January 2018. According to Human Rights Watch, they were then held without contact for six months, in a Cameroonian detention facility where torture and abuse is believed to be rampant.

The human rights organisation said the evidence used against the men was only shown to them during a 17-hour overnight hearing, which began on August 19th. Defence lawyers said they were not able to challenge it, or even discuss what was presented with their clients, and eventually withdrew from proceedings in protest.

The trial was also carried out in French, according to the organisation, and there was no proper translation for the defendants.

Source: Irish Times

Exorcists advised a Nashville school priest to ban the Harry Potter books, over fears the popular children’s novels could be used to summon spirits.

Reverend Dan Reehil contacted exorcists in Rome and the US, who recommended removing the fantasy novels from St. Edward Catholic School’s library in Tennessee.

Launched in 1997, the series of books spins an epic tale of good and evil focused on the adventures of the eponymous bespectacled young wizard as he struggles against the dark wizard Lord Voldemort.

“The curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text,” the reverend said in an email obtained by local media.

Rebecca Hammel, the superintendent of schools for the Catholic Diocese of Nashville, told the newspaper The Tennessean that Reehil had “canonical authority to make such decisions.”

Although the school used to stock the books, it will not offer them to pupils in its newly opened library, Hammel said.

A global success, the Potter series by British author J.K. Rowling has been repeatedly banned from schools in the US and Britain, mostly for allegedly promoting satanic values or black magic.

(Source: AFP)

Empty schools in the English speaking region of Cameroon marked the opening of the academic year due to tensions in the region.

Residents have either fled or are hiding in their homes as the Anglophone separatists battle with government forces.

The rattle of gunshots in the north and southwest regions meant that whiles students in other parts of the country went to school, the situation was different in parts of the two regions.

The state-owned CRTV on the first day of reopening (September 2) admitted that classes had began in areas of the northwest but amid tight security. Separatists had warned they will disrupt any attempts to reopen schools.

As at today (September 3), CRTV reported that reopening of schools in the northwest had been timid but encouraging. Local newspapers are reporting a mixed reopening day.

Whiles one led with “Top départ” referring to the reopening day boom, another led with “Black to school” instead of “Back to school.”

Gustav Okuyu, resident of Bamenda told reporters why his kids had not gone to school: “My children have not gone to school, because… Look, one: my house has been burnt. Some of them are in the bush. Where will I take the other ones?

“I don’t even have money to send them to school. That’s why my children have not gone to school… I don’t even have a house and the others have run. I am an IDP (internally displaced person).”

After two years of conflict, a solution to the war between those calling for independence of the region and the government seem far from being found.

“The government has to bring eveybody to the table, so that everything can be OK. Many people have said it, France has said it, America has said it: to the dialogue table. What is the problem with dialogue? Everybody wants dialogue, who doesn’t want peace in his house?” Gustav quizzed.

Tensions have risen following the sentencing of the separatist leader Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and others to life in prison by a military court sitting in Yaounde.

Naseri Paul Bea, a governor of the central region in an interview with CRTV said schools in his region were a little overwhelmed especially because of IDP students.

He added that upgrades on facilities and other plans by government will help ease the burden. He also said his outfit were yet to ascertain exactly how many IDPs had enrolled.

Source: Africa News

Some bishops in Cameroon have urged Anglophone separatists to allow schools to reopen, after militants abducted a bishop and two priests for condemning the school shutdown campaign.

“All children deserve the right to education and a good future wherever they decide to spend their lives,” said members of the Bamenda provincial bishops’ conference.

“Many parents have been consistently deceived about their children’s education, while arguments about a lack of security are used to frighten and prevent them sending [children] to school.”

The three-page open letter was published on August 24 after independence fighters in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions called for a new school shutdown.

The bishops said separatists had burned schools and killed teachers who had defied past boycott demands and should now “approach the issue of schools with reason more than emotion.”

However, the letter also called on the government to “exercise more vigilance” over military units and ensure they remained “as far from schools as possible.”

“Schools are not barracks, and [soldiers] should not enter them unless invited by competent authorities,” the bishops said.

“Every state has a right to employ its military to protect citizens and defend its territorial integrity. However, it is also known that some military have used exaggerated force against innocent civilians and sometimes committed horrendous crimes against children,” they said.

The letter was published as Bishop George Nkuo of Kumbo was freed by abductors on August 24, five days after two of his priests were released by separatists.

Journal du Cameroun said all three had been detained in apparent retaliation for an August 15 homily by Bishop Nkuo, who condemned the school closures as a “crime against humanity and a great exploitation.” He called on Catholics to resist “the evil dragon of violence, torture and kidnappings.”

Separatist leader Mark Bareta denied the bishop had been kidnapped and told the same newspaper Aug. 26 his fighters were “civilians and Christians,” and had sought “a conversation with their bishop.”

At least 2,000 people have been killed and 400,000 displaced during three years of army deployment in the Anglophone regions, where separatists declared an independent state, Ambazonia, in October 2017 after protesting the encroachment of French-language controls.

Church leaders and human rights groups have condemned atrocities by both sides in the territories.

Other senior Catholic clergy have also been abducted, including Archbishop Cornelius Esua of Bamenda, who was detained briefly in June after attempting to pass a separatist roadblock.

In an Aug. 27 statement, Unicef estimated 4,400 schools had been closed and 74 burned, leaving more than 600,000 children without education in northwest and southwest Cameroon. Journal du Cameroun said a “mass exodus” was now underway to avoid the separatist shutdown.

Source: Catholic Herald