Of Turkey, UN, VOA and Killer Paul Biya ⁰

After the UN Security Council on May 13 held belated “Arria formula” session about Cameroon, an informal one with no outcome on which even co-sponsors Germany and the UK refused to answer Press questions, hypocrisy and cover up of the UN’s failure remain evident.

Now Turkey, which longs to be a big(ger) power in the UN, paying for example to re-name and bar the Press from the area next to the Security Council, now the “Turkish Lounge,” is lavishing praise for its business with Paul Biya’s Cameroun: in Ankara, “Cameroon’s ambassador hailed his country’s relations with Turkey Monday while marking National Day.  Victor Tchatchouwo made the comments at a gathering in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, under the theme “Unity in Diversity, a major asset of the Cameroonian people in their determined move towards emergence”.  Tchatchouwo expressed the importance of excellent cooperation and solidarity between Turkey and Cameroon. 

The ambassador said the number of high-level visits between authorities of both countries and commercial exchanges have been increasing in recent years.  During his speech, Tchatchouwo also highlighted the role of other mutual projects, including the scholarship program granted by Turkey’s Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities (YTB).  The envoy added that Ankara and Yaounde are engaged in many fields, including politics, commerce, economy and education.  Youth and Sports Minister Mehmet Muharrem Kasapoglu attended the embassy’s National Day celebrations.  He stressed the importance of Cameroon’s decision to open an embassy in Turkey for the first time.  “It will improve bilateral relations between our countries in every field,” Kasapoglu said.  “Cameroon is one of the important countries in Central Africa for us.  “The bilateral trade volume between Turkey and Cameroon was around $200 million last year,” he said.  He added that the two countries aim to reach a trade volume of over $200 million this year. 

Citing Turkish contractors’ ongoing infrastructure projects in Cameroon, Kasapoglu said: “Our companies’ interests in Cameroon have been significantly increasing.”  Tchatchouwo presented his letter of credence to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in December 2018.  He is Cameroon’s first ambassador to Turkey.  On May 20, 1972, Cameroonians voted for a unitary state in a national referendum.” Really?  The blathering about business with Biya is just blood money – with an echo of the Kurdish issue. Inside the UN, Guterres’ Global Censor Alison Smale, now leaving in August, used a false complaint of Inner City Press daring to cover events in the Turkish Lounge as one of the few bases in her no due process ouster order of Inner City Press, now in its 321st day. We’ll have more on this.

Kuwait is a member of the Security Council, for seven more months, and heard what was said in the UNSC on May 13. Even the sanitized Lowcock and handpicked NGO version was troubling. But now on May 30 the Amir of Kuwait and the Crown Prince, Al-Sabah, told cabled congratulations and best wishes to 37 year ruler now killer Paul Biya. Kuwait’s mission to the UN, when Inner City Press was roughed up and banned from entering the UN amid its questions about Guterres’ performance, opined that “as long as UNCA is against you, nothing will change.” So much for freedom of the press: UNCA has had a president who gave an UN/CA screening to Sri Lanka government’s war crimes denial film, a photo op to UN briber Ng Lap Seng, and now has Chinese state media judging its “journalism” awards for UN coverage – no reporting on Chinese UN bribery, nor mention of the exclusion of Taiwanese journalists from the UN, etc allowed! We’ll have more on this.

On the other hand, publicly (mis) funded Voice of America which has Guterres favored access to the UN ran an article about the Arria meeting not by its UN correspondent but by another, who now writes about the Cameroon military with NO MENTION of its killings in the SW and NW of the country, or even abuses of civilians in the North. This is from VOA: “A Cameroon military engineering corps compactor is constructing a portion of the road linking its northern border town of Kousseri to the Chadian capital Ndjamena and Borno state in northeastern Nigeria.  Colonel Jackson Kamgain, director of Cameroon military engineering corps, says they re-launched the World Bank-sponsored project in March 2018 after it had been abandoned for four years.  He said since independence in 1961, the Cameroon military engineering corps has participated actively in the development of all localities and insures that major projects in conflict zones are not abandoned unlike in many other countries where military engineering departments concentrate only on making access easy for troops in areas of war or conflicts.” Why are taxpayers funding this? Or VOA after it lobbied UN Stephane Dujarric to oust Inner City Press? We’ll have more on this.

Because it was an informal meeting and the proponents would not answer questions and Antonio Guterres’ UN has yet to provide requested information to Inner City Press, it has allowed Paul Biya’s government to claim, in effect, that no meeting took place: “Some member states of the United Nations Security Council had an informal meeting on Monday to discuss the worsening humanitarian crisis in the Anglophone region of Cameroon.  A communiqué issued by the Cameroonian Ministry of External Relations however denied reports of a UN Security Council Meeting on the Anglophone region crisis.  According to the communiqué no such meeting is scheduled.    The communiqué further stated that, this meeting was a ‘’ free consultation entirely outside of the Council on the initiative of certain members who are interested in the humanitarian situation in Cameroon.’‘  It further added that outcomes of this meeting will not be binding on the government since the meeting was informal as specified by Cameroon’s diplomacy.”

The meeting ended without any outcome, after Paul Biya’s longtime Ambassador Tommo Monthe lashed out at social media as UNSG Antonio Guterres does. Monthe told Inner City Press, as it asked about Biya cutting the Internet in the Anglophone zones, that Inner City Press could get thrown out of the UN. And it was, by Guterres, now 321 days and counting.

(Inner City Press went and began interested at the Ambazonia / Southern Cameroons demonstration in the 47th Street park.

Culled from Inner City Press