Fourteen people were killed in a plane crash in the Colombian plains province of Meta on Saturday, the country’s civil aviation agency said.

The Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics said there were no survivors of the crash, which occurred after the DC-3 aircraft made a distress call at 10:40 a.m. local time (1540 GMT).

The plane, which is owned by Laser Aereo airlines, was en route from the southern city of San Jose del Guaviare to central Villavicencio, the agency said.

It crashed about midway through its flight, in San Carlos de Guaroa municipality.

The airline said it had no immediate comment.

In a later statement posted on Twitter, the agency named those who had died, including the mayor of a small town in the jungle province of Vaupes.

The aircraft’s navigability permissions were up-to-date, as were the medical certifications of its crew, the agency added.

(Source: Reuters)

Cameroon government forces have killed 208 Southern Cameroonians in the Northern and Southern Zones of West Cameroon in the first week of February 2019, according to a Cameroon Intelligence Report and Cameroon Concord News monitoring group.

Four Cameroon government army soldiers were killed by Ambazonia Restoration Forces during the same period in the Mezam County in the Northern Zone.  More than 875 Southern Cameroonians have been injured during 2019 clashes – the highest number of injuries in a single year ever since President Biya declared war against Anglophone Cameroonians.

Nearly 109 of those Southern Cameroonians killed and 600 of those injured were young university graduates and teenagers. Thirteen members of the Ambazonia Self Defense Council armed group were among the fatalities.

Approximately 90 percent of the fatalities and nearly 65 percent of the injuries took place after Defense Minister, Joseph Beti Assomo secretly ordered Francophone Beti-Ewondo soldiers to carry out an extermination campaign in Southern Cameroons.

According to eyewitness report, several hospitals were attacked by troops loyal to the regime in Yaounde as government soldiers searched for injured Southern Cameroonians. Hundreds of Southern Cameroonians have been injured by live ammunition with the crisis showing no signs of ending.

The Francophone dominated government has used deadly force against unarmed Southern Cameroons civilians, provoking serious condemnation from several human rights groups and an unprecedented action from the current US administration.

But in the absence of meaningful diplomacy, and with the blessing of the French government headed by Emmanuel Macron, Francophone soldiers continue to kill hundreds of Southern Cameroons citizens. Cameroon government soldier’s shocking use of force against English speaking Southern Cameroonians has resulted in the deaths of scores of innocent civilians.

Hundreds of Southern Cameroonians have sustained gunshot injuries, mainly to the limbs, and an estimated 569 people have devastating, disabling wounds that need specialist limb reconstruction treatment and long-term rehabilitation. That number continues to rise every day. 39 people have been paralyzed due to spinal cord injuries, and 77 people have permanent vision loss in both the Northern and Southern Zones in Southern Cameroons.

Four clergies including an American missionary were killed by Cameroon government forces and dozens of Roman Catholic seminarians injured.  A senior political observer noted that:

“If someone had told me in 1982 that Biya could be this wicked, I would not have believed it. Why is he sending soldiers to burn down people’s houses in villages that do not even know anything about the rebellion that is taking place in the country? Has he got children? Does he know about the law of karma? There is no way that he and his collaborators will avoid the long hand of karma. They will live long to bury their children for their evil. The following will cry for years before dying.

1. Paul Biya
2. Joseph Beti Assomou
3. Rene Sadi
4. Fame Ndongo
5. Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh
6. Atanga Nji
7. Issa Tchiroma
8. Joseph Owona
9. Tabetando
10. Marcel Niat Njifenji
11. Cayaye Yegue Djibril
12. Achidi Achu
13. Nalova Lyonga
14. Peter Mafany Musonge
15. Laurent Esso

All CPDM parliamentarians in the Northwest and Southwest regions.

All Northwest and Southwest senators. Their silence in the face of this genocide is clearly an approval of it.

All army generals who are ordering these massacres.

The SDOs and DOs in the two English-speaking regions of the country

The foot soldiers who are blindly implementing the orders to kill innocent people. May they suffer from the worst form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

The governors of the SW and NW regions.

I wish all of these people a long life for them to go through the most violent health disorders. Cameroon belongs to them. I hope they will never leave it behind them. I will want to see them buried with Cameroon.”

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The US Department of State announced on Thursday that the Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, Tibor Nagy, was due to visit four African countries this month.

The diplomat will be in Central, East and southern Africa, the press statement noted. Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC; Uganda and Rwanda will be his destinations.

“He will promote stronger business ties between the United States and Africa, engage Africa’s vibrant youth, strengthen partnerships that aim for greater peace and security, and reinforce the United States’ commitment to the people and nations of Africa,” the statement noted.

On March 17–18, Assistant Secretary Nagy will visit a U.S.-owned firm in Cameroon, discuss Cameroon’s role as a regional partner with government officials, and meet civil society.

But before arriving in Africa, he will be in Belgium and France where he is expected to discuss the U.S. shared objectives for Africa’s security, prosperity, and self-reliance with key partners and media in Europe.

Africa News

An investigation led by Emmanuel Freudenthal (MPhil in Development Studies, 2007) and colleagues into mobile phone footage of the brutal killings of two women and their children in Cameroon has won the 2019 Royal Television Society’s (RTS) News Technology award.

The footage, which went viral in July 2018, showed a group of soldiers leading away the women and children, who they accused of being part of Boko Haram, before blindfolding them and shooting them dead.

The footage appeared to have been filmed in northern Cameroon, but the country’s government dismissed the video as fake news and denied that the soldiers taking part were Cameroonian.

However the team, working as part of the BBC’s Africa Eye and with a group of amateur investigators on Twitter, used clues from the footage together with open source data and software to determine where and when the killings took place as well as the identity of the killers.

The team used satellite imagery and tip-offs to help pinpoint the location, clues such as the angle of the soldiers’ shadows and the presence of seasonal paths to determine the time of year, and details of weaponry and army uniforms to confirm that the killers were indeed Cameroonian soldiers. They also used Facebook profiles along with nicknames heard in the video and information from a military source to identify the soldiers involved.

The investigation itself, named Anatomy of a Killing, went viral on Twitter and was picked up by multiple news outlets. While the investigation was taking place, the Cameroonian government announced that seven soldiers had been arrested, of whom three appear to be those identified by the team.

According to RTS, the judges described the report as ‘a superb piece of public interest journalism which held power to account and had a huge impact in social media’. The awards were announced on 27 February.

Emmanuel Freudenthal is a freelance investigative journalist based in Nairobi. He completed the MPhil in Development Studies at ODID between 2007 and 2009.

Source: Oxford Department of International Development

President Donald Trump’s longtime fixer Michael Cohen has spoken for the last time before heading to prison for a series of tax and campaign finance charges.

Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee Wednesday was one of the most high-profile hearings during Trump’s tenure so far.

At the beginning of the hearing, Cohen was reminded by House Oversight and Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings that “the days of…protecting the president at all costs are over.”

“I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a conman. He is a cheat,” Cohen said in his opening statement.

He also revealed “a copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account — after he became president — to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign.”

Dated August 1, 2017, the check was signed by President Trump for $35,000, indicating that the president was aware of the hush money Cohen was paying for him.

Cohen made payments during the 2016 campaign to two women – adult film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal – to silence them from speaking publicly about affairs they had with Trump.

The former lawyer further expressed concerns about “presidential threats” against his family over the revelations as he was preparing to go to jail in May.

The former lawyer also accused Trump of having lied about his business dealings in Russia.

“Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.”

During the 2016 presidential campaign Trump asserted on several occasions that, “I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.”

Last year, Cohen was sentenced to three years behind bars and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine.

Cohen’s testimony distracted media attention from Vietnam, where the president is holding his second summit with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un.

Presstv

US President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen will tell Congress that Trump has committed crimes while in office, reports show.

Cohen will make such a disclosure in a public testimony to the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, according to former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, who quoted Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, as saying.

Cohen will say that Trump asked him several times about a massive skyscraper project in Moscow long after he had secured the Republican presidential nomination, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

If the assertion that the president was indeed inquiring about the project as late as June 2016 is true, it would be symptomatic of his continued personal engagement in the venture well into his candidacy.

This comes as Special Counsel Robert Mueller appears to be nearing the end of his investigation into whether the Trump election campaignin 2016 colluded with Russia to damage his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and whether Trump has sought to illegally obstruct the investigation.

Cohen’s revelation on Wednesday comes as part of three consecutive days of in-depth discussion with congressional committees that started on Tuesday with a closed hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The session, which lasted for almost 9 hours, mainly focused on what Cohen knows about Trump’s dealings with Russia, as well as about Cohen’s previous lies, according to two congressional sources.

Following the session, he told the media, “I’m going to let the American people decide exactly who is telling the truth.”

Over the course of the hearings, NBC News said Cohen will “provide evidence of alleged criminal conduct by Trump since he became president,” while the New York Times reported that Cohen “will use documents and his personal experiences to support his statements.”

Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders issued a statement, saying Cohen was “going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statements.”

It was “laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies,” Sanders added.

Trump has previously dismissed news of Cohen’s testimony in Congress as unimportant, claiming he had no worries about what Cohen would say about him.

Presstv

A senior cleric of the Holy Roman Catholic Church has said that the Vatican is ready to mediate in the Southern Cameroons crisis.  Commenting of the developing story, local media houses in Cameroon revealed that the Vatican made public its position during the recent UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva.

The Secretary in charge of Relations with States at the Vatican, Bishop Paul Richard Gallagher reportedly told the Minister of External Relations Lejeune Mbella Mbella that the Vatican was beginning to be very concerned with human rights abuses in Southern Cameroons.

We gathered that the meeting with Mbella Mbella lasted for 45 minutes. Nothing about the brutal murder of Bishop Bala of the Bafia Diocese featured in the conversation.

By Rita Akana with files from Journal du Cameroun