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Yaounde: Supreme Court Judges protest detention of Lord Justice Ayah Paul
Some judges of the Supreme Court of Cameroun have openly protested the arrest of Lord Justice Ayah Paul Abine by secret service agents loyal to the 83 year-old dictator, Paul Biya. According to the judges, Ayah’s arrest occurred in violation of article 629 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.
The Supreme Court judges pointed out that the nation is now being run like a banana republic. The leaders of the judiciary also indicated via a Yaoundé based tabloid that the legal provision to which a judge of the Supreme Court or a magistrate of the judicial order is liable to be charged with an offense has been violated.
The Judges revealed that for any arrest to be carried out, the competent Attorney-General must submit an application to the President of the Supreme Court who has to appoint a magistrate responsible for examining the case and three others, with a rank at least equal to that of the defendant, with a view to the eventual judgment of the case.
Lord Justice Paul Ayah Abine was arrested last Saturday at his home by six armed men and taken to the Secretary of State for Defense (SED) where he remains detained. The executive branch of the government reportedly wrote a letter to the President of the Supreme Court claiming that Ayah Paul was involved in politics as leader of the People’s Action Party. The Cameroonian judges have however made it abundantly clear that this part of his life cannot justify the form of his arrest.
“He was arrested because he expressed his opinions. But when he was appointed to the Supreme Court, they knew who he was, what political ideas he had! Why pretend today to be surprised by his political struggle? “Said a Judge. For them, the arrest of Paul Ayah Abine shows them that no one is safe.
By Cameroon Concord News
Mixed reactions as Fru Ndi summons NEC meeting in Bamenda
The members of the National Executive Committee of the Social Democratic Front, SDF will meet this Saturday January 28, 2017 at Ntarikon, Bamenda in the residence of National Chairman Ni John FRU NDI for an emergency meeting.
The agenda of the meeting which begins at 9:00 AM, convened Wednesday by the chairman has not been made public but there are two schools of thought with one having as opinion that the SDF party might use article 8.2 of the party’s constitution to axe out the fire brand member of parliament from Jakiri, Hon Joseph Wirba for his numerous outings often not in the name of the party.
Some insiders hold that the NEC meeting will instead congratulate and declare unflinching support for Honorable Nso ‘Warrior’ in restoring the rights of Anglophones in Cameroon. This second take seems popularly within the party as any trouble with Wirba now will stifle the SDF’s popularity among Anglophones who are ready to dissociate with anyone fighting against the course.
The SDF Facebook page has shared the historic video of Hon Wirba at National Assembly when he said “When Injustice becomes Rule, Resistance becomes a Duty.” Since then he has garnered popularity from home and abroad and has held several meetings to push the Anglophone agenda forward. His ‘resistance’ to the DO of Kumbo and subsequent organization of a ground breaking rally was mind blowing to the Anglophones which saw the presence of famous Mancho Bibixy now arrested and detained in Yaoundé.
The Stance of the SDF following the massive arrest of Anglophones could also be on agenda, they had earlier given government an ultimatum to release all those arrested in former West Cameroon before January the 9th and to find a sustainable solution to the Anglophone crisis.
Cameroun Info.Net
West Cameroon Crisis and the Consortium: Know Where You Stand In The Resistance
The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is about protecting Southern Cameroons and improving the lives of its people. It is thanks to the careful management of the Consortium that we now have a beaming Head of State signing an empty decree to promote bilingualism. The leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium have been arrested for demanding a return to the 1961 two state federal structure.
Southern Cameroons covers a huge area on Cameroun’s west coast and billions of dollars of profit is being made from West Cameroon oil and agro-industrial plants but the people have been excluded from every economic benefit the nation can offer. Instead their well established economic institutions inherited from the British, the German and the Dutch which had sustained livelihoods have all been devastated by the Francophone political elites. The West Cameroon Shipping Company, the West Cameroon Ports Authority, the Tiko International Airport, the West Cameroon Power Authority, the West Cameroon Bank, the National Produce Marketing Board, the PAMOL Plantations, the CDC etc
The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is simply calling for a more humane environment to live in and a measure of political autonomy for Anglophone Cameroonians to manage their own affairs. The 83 year-old Paul Biya and his Francophone army generals, Governors, SDOs and DOs are saying that asking for federalism is sacrilege. To the Francophone political elites, giving West Cameroon a share of their own wealth means reducing the profits that goes into their private pockets. Giving Southern Cameroons any form of federalism means questioning the exploitative colonial, political and economic structures bequeathed by the French. Such demands have to be brutally repressed.
The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium has deeply crafted what we can now call the Southern Cameroons Bill of Rights to Resistance and it has captured the economic, cultural and political aspirations of every West Cameroonian. To be sure, the Consortium has put an end to the North West/South West divide and provided a road map for a Southern Cameroons nation where people will have the right to control their own resources and political life. The leaders of the Consortium believe firmly that Southern Cameroons and its resources belong to the Cameroonian people, not the Francophone political elites.
The Southern Cameroons resistance is not against Biya and his CPDM crime syndicate. It is not against the so-called Anglophone political elites in Yaoundé! It is a call to action to the people of West Cameroon to reject the French imposition of a colonial structure such as the appointments of Governors, SDOs, DOs and District Heads. It is a call for Southern Cameroonians to seek political autonomy and to be represented in all Cameroonian institutions as English Speaking Cameroonians rather than in two regions dominated by the Francophone political elites.
This bold demand is not a direct threat to ELF as the Francophone political elites want the French to understand. The call for self determination is only growing due to the delay and bad faith manifested by the regime in Yaoundé. The French government has the power to stop these arrest and extra judicial killings going on in Southern Cameroons. They can stop it at any time if they want to; the French have that kind of power in Yaounde. But from every indication, the French embassy in Yaoundé is basically encouraging state violence against the people of Southern Cameroons.
The Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC and numerous Anglophone groups fighting for the independence of British Southern Cameroons should know that history often raises certain people over others, but the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium have all been equal in this struggle and West Cameroonians have shown that they are a formidable force.
The repression in Southern Cameroons has not stop with the arrest of the leaders of the Consortium-the resistance too will not stop. The Francophone government has set up a fierce crack team of police officers and soldiers with the single duty of uprooting dissent. Military checkpoints have been erected all over Southern Cameroons and anyone suspected of being a member of the Consortium or SCNC is arrested and detained. Many of those arrested in 2016 have never been seen again. Women are being raped and properties looted. Those who can find their way out of Southern Cameroons are going into exile.
Southern Cameroons is the most deprived region in Cameroon. Schools in Ndian, Akwaya, Menchum, Bui and Fontem areas look like they belong in the 18th century. The roads are bad and medical care almost non-existent. The general hospitals in the divisional capitals can hardly be called a hospital. To have a minor medical procedure in places like Mamfe, Wum, Bali, Kumbo, Ndop Kumba, Ekok, Akwaya, Eyumojock, Njakiri people must provide their own power generator.
The government of La Republique and its French ally, ELF are thinking that if they killed the leaders of the Consortium and other Anglophone activists, the struggle would be over. It is not true as their blood will water the seeds of the revolution. The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is teaching us to KNOW WHERE YOU STAND; how to take on the devil without losing your moral belief in the tools of nonviolence, the power of resistance and the power of people.
This is the plan of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium:
- 1. We continue keeping our children home to ensure that no school resume.
- 2. We continue observing Ghost towns on Mondays and Tuesdays
- 3. We prepare for the final destruction of 11th February by ensuring that on that day, it is very ghostly
All these actions are meant to ensure that the school year becomes blank which will soon happen, then the dynamics will change. It will also frustrate Government to call for a genuine dialogue as well as releasing our leaders unconditionally. Additionally, the Diaspora continues its pressure in foreign embassies.
The consortium is also putting and gathering a diplomatic push to some quarters as well as investing in media relationship especially foreign. The twitter strategy is also getting more foreign media involve in our case. Let us continue ensuring that schools remain closed, Ghost towns continue respectively, tweeting and preparing for 11th February boycott while diplomatic push continues in the background.
By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai
Editor-in-Chief
Cameroon Concord News Group
Consortium says Leader had a hall full of Pontus Pilates in Yaounde
“Our Lord Jesus Christ had to deal with just one Pontus Pilate” However, the Chairman of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, Barrister Agbor Balla Nkongho appeared before a hall full of them and that comprised top Francophone military personnel including army generals and state prosecutors. The Wednesday meeting at a police station in Yaoundé was the leader’s first interrogation ever since his arrest in Buea on January the 17th 2017.
Consortium sources say the forum was an attempt to bully the leader to submission with treats of a death sentence. Our intelligence officers in Yaoundé who were at the hearing opined that the Chairman of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium remained calm during the process and blatantly refused to say a word in the French language despite pressure from his Francophone military oppressors.
Barrister Agbor Balla was questioned about his relationship with Lord Justice Ayah and his meeting with Cardinal Tumi some months ago. He rejected allegations that the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium was receiving funding from secessionists militants abroad. After the exercise he was taken back in a bus to his cell at the Kondengui maximum security prison.
By Soter Agbaw-Ebai with files from Sama Ernest
Corruption in the US to worsen under Trump
US President Donald Trump’s proposed policies will increase corruption and inequality across the country, says global watchdog Transparency International. The anti-graft watchdog said Wednesday that populist politicians like Trump and French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen will bring about corruption and social inequality in societies.
Such autocratic leaders often weaken democracies, reinforce crackdown on civil societies and limit freedom of the press, the Berlin-based group said. “In the case of Donald Trump, the first signs of such a betrayal of his promises are already there,” TI’s research chief Finn Heinrich wrote in a blog about the report. TI generally defines corruption as “the misuse of public power for private benefit.”
Trump has spoken about “rolling back key anti-corruption legislation and ignoring potential conflicts of interest that will exacerbate, not control, corruption,” he noted. The US has already fallen two places in the group’s latest annual Corruption Perceptions Index, ranking 18th on the list with a score of 74 out of 100.
Denmark and New Zealand came out best in 2016, with scores of 90. Somalia remained the worst performer with a score of 10. The TI report came two days after constitutional and ethics lawyers lodged a lawsuit, saying that Trump was “submerged in conflicts of interest.” Trump, however, dismissed the allegations, saying the suit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was “without merit.”
Trump was one of the most unpopular candidates ever elected as president, according to opinion polls. During his campaign, he made controversial remarks about Muslims, undocumented immigrants as well as African Americans. A recent Gallup poll found that 45 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Trump was handling his new job as president, while the same percentage approved of Trump’s job.
Presstv
Southern Cameroons Crisis: Consortium seeking UN, EU resolution against La Republique
The Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium is reportedly drafting a document that will push for a UN resolution slamming the Biya Francophone regime for systematic unlawful killings of Southern Cameroonians since 2016. Our correspondent in Paris has gotten intelligence that some Southern Cameroonian legal practitioners will be meeting a group of French lawyers this coming week in a bid to begin legal proceedings against the Yaoundé government.
Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that the resolution and the proceedings will include travel bans on senior government and military officials of La Republique du Cameroun. Inside sources say the group of French and Southern Cameroons advocates will be targeting the Director of the Civil Cabinet at the Presidency of the Republic, Martin Belinga Eboutou, the Minister of Higher Education, Jacques Fame Ndongo, Minister Atanga Nji, Prime Minister Philemon Yang and General Rene Meka.
We understand that some Anglophone lawyers based in the US have been contacted to join the team in Paris. The lawyers are expected to pressure France and the European Union to charge the Francophone regime with excessive and intentional force without justification against Southern Cameroons civilians including against Anglophone lawyers, journalists, activists and peaceful protesters.
Cases of deliberate fatal shooting of individuals who posed no imminent danger to life are being assembled by the group. Southern Cameroons has become so uninhabitable that many of its residents are migrating to French Cameroun and some to neighboring Nigeria.
By Chi Prudence Asong in Paris
Policy not politics will resolve Cameroon’s internal debt issues
The Minister of Finance Alamine Ousmane Mey has chaired the annual conference of officials of the central and external services of the Ministry of Finance. Ousmane Mey revealed that some areas within his department were in need of some form of structural adjustments. The Biya acolyte identified excessive debt as one of them.
He said the ministry of finance will in 2017; ensure that investment will not hinder growth. The CPDM regime plans to rely on contributions from financial vote holders to finance development projects without necessarily consuming public resources. The Minister recommended that public and external debts be maintained at reasonable levels. He identified the mobilization of tax revenue as means of sustaining the country’s internal debt.
Alamine Ousmane Mey said finance officials should be more vigilant and discipline in the handling of public expenditures. The Finance minister expressed satisfaction at the elasticity of the domestic economy. Between 2010/2015, the Cameroon’s internal debt has increased from 1904 billion to 4489 billion FCFA representing 26.7%n Gross Domestic Product.
CRTV
Anglophone Crisis: Cardinal Tumi condemns arrest of Consortium leaders
Cardinal Christian Tumi has called on the ruling CPDM government to listen to all shades of opinion in the ongoing Anglophone crisis. The 86 year old former Archbishop of Douala now retired made the declaration as guest on Radio France International on Tuesday, January 24, 2017. The renowned Prelate believes that everyone has something to say.
Reacting to the crisis that has rocked the Anglophone regions of the country over the last two months and the shutting down of internet services including the arrest of several Southern Cameroons leaders , the Cardinal said he was trying to understand both sides of the divide.
“I am trying to understand what is happening because I spent nearly thirty years of my life as priest and bishop in French-speaking Cameroon and I am from Anglophone Cameroon. I try to understand both sides. It is now young people, who have not yet become aware of reunification and have started to protest about working conditions, the conditions for living together, and they want us to go back to where we were at the beginning of reunification. That is federalism. The central power no longer wants this. So this is where we are and there is tension.”
The Roman Catholic Cardinal told RFI that the appointment of Francophone judges who do not have a mastery of the English language and who render their judgment in French is an indication that Common Law is not applied in Cameroon. The man of God pointed out that in his native constituency of Bui, the prefect, the sub-prefect and the first deputy are all Francophones, in a region that 99% of the population speak only English. The Retired Cardinal also noted that there are Francophone university lecturers who teach in the Anglo-Saxon Universities of Buea and Bamenda without having mastery of English. “There is need to reform the education system.’
Cardinal Tumi said the decision to outlaw the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium was ill advised. “Too bad. I am against any ban. Everyone has something to say, listen to them. There is no one who loves this country more than others. Even if others prefer federalism, let’s talk about it, to see what is best for everyone. When we repress, it is not a solution. We must try to convince them including those that have gone to the extreme to demand complete separation. There will always be extremists. But the majority of Anglophones want us to go back to where we were, that is, to federalism. They do not want separation, not at all.”
The Cardinal dismissed claims made by the Minister of Communication Issa Tchiroma Bakary observing that federalism is not division of a country. “The current system is showing its faults, with regard to corruption everywhere and we are seeing examples in the world where federated states are progressing well. There has to be dialogue because Anglophones are also Cameroonians. With violence, nothing is built, nothing at all.”
Culled from CAMCORDNEWS