A mammoth crowd of Southern Cameroonians converging in the UK have blocked all entrances leading to La Republique du Cameroon’s embassy in London. No car can pass through that road as angry protesters are staging a sit in strike. A serious traffic jam is slowly developing. Residents of the area say that if the protests continue for two more hours, almost a quarter of London will experience a lock down for most of the day.

The entrance into the embassy building has been barricaded by the British Police while the flag of La Republique could still be spotted flying. Some protesters hinted that as the crowd gathers and the day gets older, they will jump the barricade and bring down the doors, get in, remove and burn the flag of La Republique.

It is important to note that the UK remains a very import player in the struggle for the restoration of independence because the Brits failed to complete the independence process as was obliged by the Trusteeship Council of the UN in flagrant violation of international law.

Culled from AKOSON

Hundreds of people from the Akwaya County have staged a demonstration in support of an independent state of Southern Cameroons. Some closed to 900 men and women from Tinta, Big Nyang, Abonadou took to the streets in Akwaya town on Saturday, expressing support for the interim leader of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council and the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

The Akawayas waved the Southern Cameroons flag and clamored for the release of Lord Justice Ayah Paul Abine. A representative of the Southern Cameroons Governing Council, who was present at the march, said the event was in solidarity with all prominent Manyu citizens arrested ever since the beginning of the Southern Cameroons revolution including Dr. Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba.

Our chief political correspondent in the Mamfe County observed that there were plenty of reasons behind the Akwaya rally. “The first is that the people of Southern Cameroons are demanding their own sovereignty. Others are saying they just want to create a fairer society. But a majority says that Ambazonia needs its sovereignty.”

Despite fierce opposition by the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government, more than 80 percent of Southern Cameroonians have backed independence for Ambazonia, according to officials of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium.

Yaoundé is fiercely opposed to any independence bid by Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun political elites are hoping that the Southern Cameroons revolution would fail due to division among the 4.5 million residents of the territory.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Mpke Tambe in Akawaya

A celebrated Indian nun who rescues Cameroonian women from slavery in the Middle East has called for greater support for victims to help them recover from the horrors of being drugged, raped and abused. Sister Vanaja Jasphine says she has identified more than 200 women who have been trafficked from the central African nation and enslaved in the Middle East in recent years.

The 39-year-old nun last year helped to bring home 14 trafficking victims, whom she refers to as Cameroon’s “children”. A rising number of African women are heading to the Middle East for domestic work, driven abroad by the lack of jobs at home, rights activists say. Yet many have their passports confiscated and end up trapped in modern-day slavery.

“One woman was thrown from the balcony of a two-storey building by her employer after she accidentally burnt her boss’s shirt whilst ironing,” Jasphine said of a victim in Kuwait. Others are drugged and turned into sex slaves – being raped multiple times a day and even forced to have sex with animals.

“They come home with a lot of trauma,” Jasphine, coordinator of the Justice and Peace Commission of Kumbo, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a seminary in the capital Yaounde. “Sometimes, a (woman forced to be a) sex worker can be exploited 15 times a day – physically, mentally, she’s drained … she’s gone,” added the nun, who moved to northwest Cameroon almost a decade ago to work with the country’s poorest.

“In the end, she doesn’t have anything. She comes back in the same dress she left in.” Jasphine was hailed in June as one of eight global heroes in the fight against trafficking at the launch of the United States’ annual Trafficking in Persons (TIP) report, which grades countries on their efforts to stamp out modern-day slavery. But Jasphine has no time for celebrations. She is too busy seeking funding, counselling and support for victims left traumatised by their ordeal abroad.

Jasphine says she identifies trafficking victims by working with activists, community leaders and civil society groups. To raise awareness about their plight, she has helped organise demonstrations, where women have marched with placards reading: ‘Bring back our suffering daughters’. “We got a lot of support from the people,” said Jasphine.

“It touches every heart because they (the people) feel: ‘It’s my own child who is affected, who is exploited’.” She has also lobbied government officials, all the way to the country’s prime minister, to do more to help the women.
Cameroon has made strides towards meeting the U.S. minimum standards to end trafficking, having provided services to some victims and sent a delegation to the Middle East to discuss Cameroonian workers’ rights, the 2017 TIP report said.

Yet the state has not funded repatriation for slavery victims stranded in the Middle East, and continues to rely on civil society groups to bring trafficking cases to its attention and provide most services for victims, the report said.

The government has tried to crack down on Cameroonians travelling to the Middle East, but traffickers have changed tactics, and are instead flying women via Nigeria, Jasphine said. She said the government must now do more to help those coming home.

Although her organisation and other groups try to help victims get back on their feet, take them to hospital and provide counselling, it is simply not enough, the nun warned. “It is very disheartening,” Jasphine said, showing a series of distressed text messages from one of the women she helped to rescue from Kuwait, who is now struggling financially.
“Much more needs to be done.”

Culled from Thomson Reuters Foundation

Amadou Vamoulke, the former general manager of the Cameroon Radio and Television (CRTV), has been questioned at the Special Criminal Court in a new case just three days after the start of his trial in the Gervais Mendo Ze affair. The so-called new case relates to his management of the Cameroon radio and television (CRTV).

Cameroon Concord News sources revealed that this new file which could open comes after an audit report commissioned by Charles Ndongo the current general manager of CRTV on the management of his predecessor. For more than four hours on the 3rd of August, Amadou Vamoulke was interrogated at the Special Criminal Court.

Amadou Vamoulke who is incarcerated in the Kondengui Central prison in Yaoundé, was called to explain the purchase without tender the rights of re transmissions of certain major football competitions. Charles Ndongo alleges that Vamoulke violated the procurement procedure in connection with the purchase of these rights.

We understand the prosecutors at the Special Criminal Court and French Cameroun financial crime experts did not find any evidence against Amadou Vamoulke in the audiovisual (TV tax) scandal estimated at 3.9 billion FCFA. For instance, Amadou Vamoulke could not have been able to falsify an account operated by the treasury department in Yaoundé.

Alice Nkom one of the lawyers of the former GM of CRTV was quoted as saying that “Amadou Vamoulke is a victim of political and judicial fury. In the first case the judges were put under pressure to charge a citizen who did not steal anything. The Special Criminal Court hired experts who in their reports proved that the former General Manager of CRTV did not commit any crime, but in spite of these conclusions from the experts, our client is still in jail.”

By Rita Akana
Cameroon Concord News