Zhang Ming, Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs has held very intensive and productive talks with the Cameroonian dictator, President Biya. Both men met at the Unity Palace on Wednesday the 28th of June 2017.

After the meeting with the Head of State, Vice Foreign Minister Zhang Ming said he was delighted with the friendly and excellent cooperation ties that exist between Cameroon and China. Thus, his two-day visit is another step aimed at solidifying these ties, especially in the economic sector.

President Paul BIYA’s next visit to China was also highlighted during the discussions. The 84 year old Cameroonian leader received an invitation from his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping on the 11th of January 2017. The Chinese official was accompanied by the Chinese Ambassador to Cameroon, Wei Wenshua.

Source: PRC

Some members of the US Congress have written a strongly worded letter to the US States Department demanding a probe into the Anglophone crisis which they say is deteriorating at catastrophic rapidity in Cameroon, reports Cameroon Info.Net.

The letter signed by Congress men in Maryland Anthony G. Brown and Jarsie Raskin to the US Secretary of State, Rex W. Tillerson indicates that since late 2016 the Cameroon government has been persecuting Anglophones who form a minority of the population with about 100 arrests. In the opening statements, they called on the US State Department to take appropriate actions to solve the issue.

It partially reads, “As you know unrest has increased in Cameroon since late 2016, when thousands of members of the country’s Anglophones community began demonstrating in opposition to policy changes that have further marginalized the community.” They insisted on a prompt action saying that they are worried with the over 13,000 Marylanders born in Cameroon.

Source: Cameroon Info.Net

Permit me to add a few critical comments on the opinion of my friend Tikum Mbah Azonga. I regret the paucity of critical thought in his commentary on this matter. First he seems to have borrowed his title that suggests a North West/South West divide from contemporary political discourse. As the title suggests, his opinion cannot be construed as academic or intellectual. The premise on which Tikum has premised his opinion falls within the the ideological construct of the wider politics of ethnicity that the offspring of Louis Aujoulat have successfully relied on to emasculate, control and eternalise power in the French vassal state of La Republique du Cameroun. In his analysis therefore, Tikum Mbah Azonga conflates the migration patterns that brought persons from the hinterlands of the Southern Cameroons to the coastal areas. This cannot be characterized as a South West/North West problem because the migration trend did not see the people from the grasslands move to Mamfe area, the Bangwa and Mundani areas, the Kumba, Bakossi and obviously Ndian areas as such.

These people indeed joined the migration towards the coastal areas of Victoria and Kumba. Pointing to this and inciting all Southern Westerners to construe this as an entirely South West problem is an unacceptable misjudgment. The migration towards these areas were not always voluntary from inception. History has it that the Germans forcefully drafted people from the hinterlands to work in the plantations in the coastal areas. Hundreds of Bangwa youths were taken to the plantations by Gustav Conrad and never returned leading to the Bangwa /German war in which the Germans committed a genocide against the Bangwa people and looted prized statures and artifacts among them the Bangwa Queen and the Bangwa King on display in a Museum in Paris presently and estimated to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. It is unfortunate that the desperate and indiscriminate celebration of the politics of ethnicity has led to the looting and torching of the property of the same Bangwa people in Kombone, Marumba and some locations in Meme led then by a former anti- settler/anti-Bangwa former Government Delegate of the then Kumba Urban Council.

I personally intervened through a law suit to force the individual to compensate Bangwa people whose property and cars he destroyed in Kumba. Thanks to the late Barrister A. T Enaw, he accepted responsibility and paid for the damage he caused to these people for being Bangwa and settling in Kumba. The farmers in Marumba, Kombone and other locations were never compensated. The land holding of the migrant population pursuant to the Land and Native Rights Ordinance that was applicable in the Southern Cameroons, granted them land on term leases, usufructory land rights and other patterns of land holdings which left title and ownership of the lands to the natives. Till date the land holding ” two parties” farming system practiced in some rural farming communities is inspired by the Land and Native Rights Ordinance. The people lived peacefully in the communities into which they migrated and settled without any tensions or problems until La Republique abolished the Land and Native Rights Ordinance and replaced with the Cameroon Land Ordinance. Over night the natives learned that their native lands had become ” national lands” and that occupiers could hence apply to the land consultative boards presided over by mainly Francophone District Officers for land certificates. This was and has been the source of conflict targeting not just migrants from other parts of the Southern Cameroons but all migrant communities.

For some unexplained reasons, persons including my good friend Tikum Mbah Azonga writing on this matter failed to mention that the proconsuls have benefited and are benefiting so much in the exercise of this power of so-called national land ownership to sell off or allocate prized land in the Southern Cameroons to citizens of La Republique. The land ordinance is one piece of colonial annexation laws by which our land has been sold or appropriated by the occupier. On this basis, the occupier has sold off ancestral lands of whole communities in Ndian, Manyu, Kupe Manegumba with the complicity of some local elites and Chiefs to a nebulous mafia palm plantation cooperation. The power elite that has been supporting the conflict against Southern Cameroonians went silent, and when they spoke, they supported it the land grab over the overwhelming opposition of their own people. Pamol would have been taken over by the French using one Christian Mure as a front but for the very courageous opposition led by Hon Ogork Ntui and a courageous Justice Paul Ayah then President of the High Court of Ndian. Lately a very courageous Police Superintendent Helen Esoka raised and alarm about criminal land deals in Fako Division in which colonial administrators illegally appropriated land and sold some to their kith and kin in La Republique depriving the Fako people of their ancestral lands and this ongoing thievery does not inspire any one writing on this subject. I gave an interview in the Post Newspaper last year in which I predicted that land administration and land grab in the Southern Cameroons was a time bomb waiting to explode. It is on the minds of the people in ignoring the so-called North West/ South West conflict brought to the fore every time the victims of colonial rule commence revolutionary action to free themselves from colonial rule.

When Helen Esoka denounced the land mafia in Fako at the risk of her life and job, we did not react. We allowed her suffer the result of her patriotic effrontery against a ruthless regime. But then one of the reasons why the citizenry of the Southern Cameroons have risen and taken their destiny into their hands arises from the rape of our economy, illegal land grab, indignities committed on our women and girls, the rape of our girls in the University of Buea which shocked and continues to shock our collective consciences, the state of collective imprisonment, cultural genocide and the suffocating corruption that has left otherwise competent people like Dr Tikum Mbah Azonga struggling to just be given the opportunity on the merit to serve their own people and community. The Southern Cameroons revolution will succeed and serve our people if we critically identify the problems we have faced under colonial rule and cultural genocide and collectively join our people to combat them. Our people at the grassroots are not in this revolution to celebrate slogans and misplaced epistles of distraction. They care about land ownership.

Simply put, who owns their ancestral land, and where can they get a redress to protect their ancestral land owning rights? La Republique’s corrupt administrators or their Chiefs and customary courts as ordained by the Land and Native Rights Ordinance? Who controls their local councils? Who controls the administration of their schools, colleges and universities? Who decides how and where they travel to within their territory? Which courts resolves their disputes? Who governs them? Who makes a day to day decision about their lives, who selects their leaders for them? Who governs them? How do they vote and when? We must therefore correctly identify, analyse and seek solutions to these revolution sustaining problems instead of pandering to the policies and agenda of our adversary. In a revolution, you either join the revolutionary train or left behind. Those who previously thought they can control the thought process of the citizenry in the Southern Cameroons should by now see how irrelevant they are.

Not even our Chiefs, the power elite, armies of oppression, corruption and mystical conjuring with halt the revolutionary train. It has taken off for good. Even in La Republique du Cameroun the people have learnt about the limit of brutish power. They are carefully studying the Southern Cameroons revolution and very soon, their adored and celebrated dictatorship will collapse on its own weight. In this situation therefore we should learn that there is always a sense of urgency and immediacy in the spirit and language of every revolution. No one should attempt to change the subject because prior to engaging the revolution, the people considered all the events that have occurred and are occurring in their lives. The subject my friend Tikum Mbah Azonga has chosen to introduce in to the discourse at this point in time is critically not on the peoples’ agenda. Atanga Nji and Mafany Musonge attempted to place it on the agenda and failed woefully

By Chief Charles A. Taku

The Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara legal battle is still alive and active before the Supreme Court of Cameroon. The former secretary-general at the presidency of the republic filed appeals against two of his three convictions for embezzlement of public funds.

The famous “Albatros” case has not yet been scheduled. However, the “Cameroon Airlines” case was the subject of a hearing on June 13th, 2017.

In their pleadings, the defendants’ lawyers requested the annulment of the sentence imposed by the Special Criminal Court in 2013, based on eight grounds … which the Court’s rapporteur immediately moved for a rejection. However, the prosecution ruled in favor of a cessation.

In its decision on the 27th of June, the Court could confirm the sentence (twenty years’ imprisonment), reduce it, or aggravate it. Whatever the verdict, the former Biya acolyte, Jean Atangana Mebara will always face two other convictions, of twenty-five and fifteen years’ imprisonment, in two parts of the “Albatros” case. He has been held in the central prison in Yaoundé since 6 August 2008.

By Sonne Peter
Cameroon Concord News

8 people were killed on Wednesday afternoon in a suicide bomber attack in Kolofata, Mayo-Sava Division in the Far-North region. Eyewitnesses said that the eight people included six civilians and the two suicide bombers. 4 people were seriously injured.

Cameroon Concord News gathered that shortly after 17:30, local time, two young teenagers foiled the surveillance of the members of the vigilance committee, infiltrated Kolofata and found themselves in the vicinity of the residence of Amadou Ali, the Deputy Prime Minister in charge of relations with the Assemblies.

One of the two suicide bombers staged the attack killing 6 people including his companion. The wounded were rushed to a hospital in Mora, the chief city in the Mayo-Sava Division where they are currently receiving treatment.

The locality of Kolofata, bordering Nigeria, is among Cameroonian settlements which have been under constant Boko Haram incursions. The Nigerian Islamic sect reportedly paid allegiance to the Organization of the Islamic State and is now called, Province of the Islamic State in West Africa.

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News

Hon. Joseph Wirba, the SDF MP reportedly missing for over five months has appeared unexpectedly at the National Assembly today Wednesday the 21st of June 2017. He once again marked his presence among other MPs against all odds. Wirba had been on the run since his historic speech last year during the third and last parliamentary session of the year 2016.

On the rostrum of the National Assembly, in a long speech of about thirty minutes, he denounced the government of the 84 year old dictator, Paul Biya. Joseph Wirba told the world that the Biya Francophone regime was marginalizing Southern Cameroonians and after his speech, the MP declared his unflinching support for secession. He was received as a hero in his native Jakiri constituency but later on disappeared from circulation. Southern Cameroon sources hinted that he had escaped to the US.

The opposition MP reappeared and made another long speech attacking the Speaker of the National Assembly, Cavaye Djibril accusing him of doing nothing to ensure his safety. Joseph Wirba told local media houses in Yaounde that he was still not out of danger. The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium has so far not reacted to the second coming of Wirba.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Chairperson of Elections Cameroon (ELECAM), former governor Enow Abrams Egbe has met with a delegation from the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth team headed by the Director of the Rule of Law, Katalaini Sapoulu was at the ELECAM office in Yaoundé on the 20th of June 2017.

State radio and television reported that during the audience, Enow Abrams Egbe expressed gratitude to the Commonwealth for its constant support to ELECAM. Katalaini Sapoulu reportedly told pressmen that their visit is in line with the Commonwealth’s partnership deal to strengthen Cameroon’s electoral procedures.

The present visit comes shortly after one from a delegation from La Francophonie that declared similar objectives.

Source: CRTV

The Attorney General at the Special Criminal Court in Yaoundé has signed an order preventing Jean Louis Beh Mengue, former general manager of the Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (ART) who was sacked from his position on the 8th of June from traveling out of the country.

Cameroon Concord News understands Jean Louis Beh Mengue is under a major judicial investigation. The former head of the telecommunication regulatory agency in Cameroon has been accused by the State Supreme Audit, the body responsible for the control, verification and audit of public finances of embezzlement and misappropriation during his time at the head of the company which he led since its creation in 1999.

By Rita Akana

Camcordnews

Three persons including the CPDM Section President for Meme 1 have died and a dozen injured following a ghastly motor accident which occurred along the Buea-Ekona highway. John Kingue Lysingue, a chartered member of the ruling CPDM party who moonlighted as Section President and Councilor for the Kumba 1 Council perished en route to Buea on Wednesday June 14, 2017.

Cameroon Info.Net reported that a bike rider whose bike went into flames after the incident died on the spot alongside a passenger he was transporting. The accident happened when a 14 seater bus had a head-on-collision with a red colored Carina E belonging to the CPDM Section president of Meme 1, John Kingue.

John Kingue died from the wounds he sustained. The injured victims were rushed to the Buea regional hospital while the deceased were taken to the mortuary. The accident came just 12 days after 5 other persons were killed on the same highway.

By Eyong Johnson

Cameroon Concord News

Cameroon’s episcopal conference calls for full investigation and for justice to prevail after a series of homicides against the country’s clergy and religious which they attribute to “obscure diabolical forces.”

Bishop Jean Marie Benoît Balla of Bafia, was “brutally murdered,” the country’s bishops have confirmed, making him the latest in a number of Cameroonian bishops, clergy and consecrated persons to have been killed over the past 30 years.

In a June 13 statement issued by Cameroon’s episcopal conference and published by the missionary news agency Fides, the bishops called for justice to be done in the face of what they called “obscure diabolical forces.”

They said they were “convinced” that Bishop Balla did not commit suicide as had been initially thought, but that “he was brutally murdered.” Bishop Balla was just 58 years-old and would have celebrated 30 years as a priest next year.

Fisherman discovered the prelate’s body in the River Sanaga, June 2, a few miles away from where his abandoned car was found on a bridge on May 31. Inside the vehicle was a “strange message” together with some personal belongings.

“The body is now at the disposal of the authorities investigating the case to discover the causes and the perpetrators of this hateful, unacceptable crime,” the bishops stated, adding that his tragic death “shocked and upset the People of God, all Cameroonians and international opinion.”

“This is one more murder, and one too many,” the bishops added.  They pointed out “the sad list of bishops, members of the clergy and consecrated persons assassinated in circumstances still not clear today.” In particular, they remembered “Mons. Yves Plumey, archbishop emeritus of Garoua (assassinated in Ngaoundéré – 1991), Fr Joseph Mbassi (Yaoundé – 1988), Fr. Antony Fontegh (Kumbo-1990), Sisters in Djoum (1992), Fr. Engelbert Mveng (Yaoundé – 1995), to mention only a few”.

“We have the impression that the clergy of Cameroon in particular is pursued by obscure diabolical forces,” the Cameroonian bishops declared. They called in their statement for “complete light to be shed on the circumstances and the motivation of the murder of Bishop Balla,” and demanded that “those responsible be identified and handed over to justice to be judged by the law of the land.”

They also urged the government “to assume the noble task of protecting human life,” and asked the media and all who use social media “to renounce defamation, lies, and calumny and to respect the dignity of human persons.”

The bishops appealed to Bishop Balla’s assailants “to strive for urgent and radical conversion,” and encouraged the faithful to “stay courageous” as “Christ has conquered the world.” “Your pastors carry with you the pain of this sad disappearance. Let not your faith fail. Draw the necessary strength from celebration of the Eucharist,” they said, and reminded them that the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Patroness of Cameroon, “accompanies us in this hard trial.”

Source: National Catholic Register