Politics

Baretanews reported that homes of denizens in Batoke were invaded this morning between 3am to 5am. Their houses were ramshackled and turned upside down . Gendarmes claimed they had Intel of weapons smuggling into Batoke so they were searching. These are dump people. Southern Cameroonians in Batoke were all in shocked as children, mothers, fathers were all wake up from sleep.

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Rita Akana

23.Aug.2017

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The mass abduction of more than 200 Nigerian schoolgirls from Chibok - the biggest publicity coup of Boko Haram's jihadist insurgency - was the accidental outcome of a botched robbery, say the girls who spent three years in their brutal captivity.

The Chibok girls made the surprise revelation in secret diaries they kept while held prisoner and a copy of which has been exclusively obtained by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Recalling the night of their kidnapping in April 2014, Naomi Adamu described in the diaries how Boko Haram had not come to the school in Chibok to abduct the girls, but rather to steal machinery for house building.

Unable to find what they were looking for, the militants were unsure what to do with the girls. 

Arguments swiftly ensued.

"One boy said they should burn us all, and they (some of the other fighters) said: 'No, let us take them with us to Sambisa (Boko Haram's remote forest base) ... if we take them to Shekau (the group's leader), he will know what to do'", Adamu wrote.

She was one of about 220 girls who were stolen from their school in the northeastern town of Chibok one night in April 2014 - a raid that sparked an international outcry and a viral campaign on social media with the hashtag #bringbackourgirls.

Championed by former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama - along with a diverse cast of media celebrities - the campaign won international infamy for Boko Haram and helped galvanise the Nigerian government into negotiating for the girls' release.

Adamu was among 82 of the Chibok girls released by Boko Haram in May - part of a second wave after 21 of them were freed in October. They are being held in a secret location in Abuja for what the government has called a "restoration process".

A few others have escaped or been rescued, but about 113 of the girls are believed to be still held by the militant group.

The authenticity of the diaries, written by Adamu and her friend Sarah Samuel, cannot be verified, nor their intended role as the government negotiates with Boko Haram for more releases.

CLANDESTINE CHRONICLES

The diaries shed light not only on the horrors the girls endured under Boko Haram, but their acts of resistance, and their staunch belief that they would one day go home.

The girls said they started documenting their ordeal a few months after the abduction, when Boko Haram - whose name loosely means 'Western education is sinful' in the local Hausa language - gave them exercise books to use during Koranic lessons.

To hide the diaries from their captors, the girls would bury the notebooks in the ground, or carry them in their underwear.

Three of the other Chibok girls also contributed to the undated chronicles, which were written mainly in passable English, with some parts scribbled in less coherent Hausa.

"We wrote it together. When one person got tired, she would give it to another person to continue," Adamu, 24, said from the state safe house in the capital, where the girls are being kept for assessment, rehabilitation and debriefing by the government.

"CONVERT OR BURN"

Life in the Sambisa involved regular beatings, Koranic lessons, domestic drudgery and pressure to marry and convert.

The girls' spirits remained intact, as they devised amusing and mocking nicknames for the fighters, the diaries show.

Yet cruelty and brutality were ever present.

When five girls tried to escape, the militants tied them up, dug a hole in the ground, and turned to one of their classmates.

The jihadists handed her a blade and issued a chilling ultimatum: 'cut off the girls' heads, or lose your own'.

"We are begging them. We are crying. They said if next we ran away, they are going to cut off our necks," Adamu wrote.

On another occasion, the militants gathered those girls who had refused to embrace Islam, brought out jerrycans and threatened to douse them in petrol then burn them alive.

"They said: 'You want to die. You don't want to be Muslim,(so) we are going to burn you," read the diary entry.

As fear set in, the militants cracked into laughter - the cans contained nothing but water, the girls wrote.

FEAR DOES THEIR BIDDING

One of the most striking excerpts illustrates the pervasive fear spread by Boko Haram in northeast Nigeria, where the group has killed 20,000 people and uprooted at least 2 million in a brutal campaign that shows no signs of ending soon.

During their captivity in the Sambisa forest, some of the Chibok girls escaped, and ended up in a nearby shop where they asked the owners for help, as well as food and water.

"The girls said: 'We are those that Boko Haram kidnapped from (the school) in Chibok,'" Adamu wrote. "One of the people (in the shop) said: 'Are these not Shekau's children?'"

The shop owners let the girls stay the night.

But the next day they took them back to Boko Haram's base, where the girls were whipped and threatened with decapitation.

Despite being flushed with relief at her own freedom, Adamu worries about her closest friend and co-author, Samuel, who is still with the group, having married one of its militants.

"She got married because of no food, no water," Adamu said from the government safe house in Abuja.

"Not everbody can survive that kind of thing," she added. "I feel pained ... so pained. I'm still thinking about her."

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Rita Akana

17.Aug.2017

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1.    WE NEED A NEW PACT ON THE FUTURE BETWEEN EUROPE AND AFRICA
– Africa’s population is set to double by 2050. It will then be home to 20 per cent of all people in the world. Ensuring that hundreds of millions of young Africans have enough food, energy and jobs and that their natural resources are protected presents massive challenges but also opportunities. European countries in particular can play a role in tackling these massive challenges by offering their knowledge, innovations and technological advances and getting directly involved.

→ Cameroon’s dictator Paul Biya, like some other long-term dictators in the two Franc currency zones of Africa, who were enthroned by France to serve the interests of French corporations and Swiss banks, does not protect the natural resources of Cameroon, but exploits them recklessly to fill not only his private pockets but mainly the pockets of foreigners, who allow him a luxurious life in hotels in Geneva and Paris’ shopping miles.    

2.    AFRICA NEEDS AFRICAN SOLUTIONS
– The founding of the African Union (AU) and launching of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) were encouraging expressions of Africa’s desire to make a fresh start. And reform-minded politicians have outlined Africa’s own vision of the continent’s future in the AU’s Agenda 2063. Germany and Europe must now listen to what African countries are saying and bring a new quality and a new dimension to their cooperation with Africa. We need to move away from the donor-recipient mentality that has predominated for many decades and shift towards an economic partnership based on initiative and ownership. Africa is Europe’s partner – not only on matters of economic cooperation and development policy but also in such key policy areas as trade, finance, the environment, agriculture, economics, foreign affairs and security.

→ Cameroon’s 84-year old dictator Paul Biya likes the “Françafrique” and not any original African solution. He also does not desire a fresh start. Instead, he puts reform-minded politicians in prison and tortures or exiles them. Then, he is only too happy, that the African Union is postponing reform goals until 2063 and that naïve European politicians keep sending economic delegations to him without asking his legitimacy as president of a country. They keep hoping that a little different “development help” under the new color of a “new partnership” but with the same old embezzler-in-chief would work differently, although his ministers eat up half of the expected profits as bribe as usual.   

3.    PRIORITISING JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
– It is vital that Africa’s young people can see a future for themselves in Africa. The average age in Africa is 18. Soon Africa’s population will top 2 billion. That means that 20 million new jobs will be needed each year, in both urban and rural settings. Developing the necessary economic structures and creating new employment and training opportunities will be the central challenge. Africa’s young people also need contact and interaction with Europe. Europe must develop a strategy that allows for legal migration whilst combating irregular migration and people smuggling.

→ Cameroon’s illegitimate, never democratically elected dictator Paul Biya, since 35 years in power by the mercy of France, also creates new jobs for the youth, both in urban and in rural settings, although new jobs for the youth are not in Cameroon, but abroad … mostly out of Africa. Because most young people, who come out of Cameroon’s schools or universities have to learn, that their Cameroonian degree in biochemistry, law or engineering qualifies perfectly for either becoming a taxi driver, food seller, hotel cleaner or – if your marks have been really low – to get hired at the government or police, where the salary is ten to a thousand times higher, if you like bribes. There are so many, who don’t like Biya’s great and inflating training opportunities … places where you learn how to take bribes, falsify documents or rip off fellow citizens, flee out of Africa where there are jobs matching better to the qualification. Yes, Biya is really creating a lot of jobs and interaction for youth with Europe. Disregarding of how they are paid and how long they have to suffer in exile because they were incorruptible ...  
   
4.    INVESTMENT IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP
– It’s not the governments that will create all the long-term employment opportunities that are needed, it’s the private sector. So it’s not subsidies that Africa needs so much as more private investment. That means creating an attractive environment within Africa itself. But it also means developing new instruments for
mobilizing and safeguarding investments. That will be topped off by proposals for corporate tax incentives and new investment opportunities, such as Africa funds or infrastructure bonds.

→ Cameroon’s often smiling dictator Paul Biya, who has no grey hair developing out of any worries for “his” people, cannot hear the screams of his tortured opponents and the cries of the thousands of road accident victims each year, while he is far away from all the malady of the ordinary people, hiding in his palace in the capital or in hotel Intercontinental’s king’s suite in Geneva, where nobody disturbs his planning of further beauty surgeries. Yes, this beautiful Paul Biya has always money left over for himself, because he does not see any need to build roads in his country other than where French trucks need to drive oil or timber to French or Chinese ships. Why should he not smile again about the great European incentive to reduce any political criticism on African leaders & governments and let the companies now focus on merely private business, funds and bonds? Good for Biya, that they shall create more and more “attractive environments” exactly where Biya & France want them to be, since the untouched Cameroonian government still stays in control of these private projects, funds and bonds anyway, by sending blackmailing killers to every successfully running business, which doesn’t want to pay the inofficial tax to the government. Yes, there is no reason not to smile or to hinder the Europeans on this reduction of pressure on African regimes, leave alone prosecutions ...
    
5.    VALUE CREATION, NOT EXPLOITATION
– Africa must be more than the continent of raw materials. The Marshall Plan is powered by a new kind of economic policy – one focused on economic diversification, the establishment of production chains, targeted support for agriculture and small and medium-sized businesses, enhanced status for trades and crafts and thus the creation of a new SME sector. Europe needs to support this by offering improved access to the EU single market and dismantling trade barriers.

→ Cameroon’s experienced dictator Paul Biya knows also very well that Africa is much more than the continent of raw materials. He has understood since decades that Africa is also the continent of raw humans, who can be exploited as well. And now with dismantled trade barriers and improved access to (or for?) the EU market, they can be exploited even more in ever more sophisticated production chains and wonderfully crafted new sectors in which the Europeans have the monopoly and no African company can compete. This way Biya can earn double and triple from the French or Chinese corporations, which exploit the cheap labor and super cheap resources in Cameroon, by claiming a double and triple bonus for keeping the salaries low in his land and the access of the non-African monopolies to Cameroon’s resources unhindered, since the Marshall Plan is not saying who owns the resources ….
 
6.    DEMANDING THE RIGHT POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT AND SUPPORTING ITS DEVELOPMENT
– Sustainable economic development is reliant on the rule of law, on both
men and women enjoying political participation and on efficient and non-corrupt administrative structures. Everyone should benefit from economic progress in a country, not just the elites. That is something to be supported and also demanded on a daily basis.

→ Cameroon’s extraordinally sympathetic dictator Paul Biya, who also seems to be a real man, since he killed his first wife and then the father of the twins of his second wife, what the French leaders seem to like about him so very much, since it proves he as a Head of State can really stand above the law and control the judiciary or any constitutional nuisance, which would limit the terms of any Head of State, yes, this manly Paul Biya, who put the chief justice in jail and let bishops kill after their genitals were mutilated, is really full of fear now from this serious threat by the Marshall-Plan to add to the never existing international prosecution of his steady crimes on millions of people now the daily verbal reminder that any administration should be non-corrupt. God beware, if some of his many scapegoat administrator head’s may roll again? Or if another international protest note lands in the drawers of his desk on top of the other thousands of protest notes? Daily verbal reminders! Wow! That is really shaking the fundaments of a totalitarian regime like in Cameroon to the core …
 
7.    REFORM PARTNERSHIPS, NOT A BLANKET APPROACH
– The members of the African Union have committed to specific reforms in their Agenda 2063. We will be taking Africa’s commitments seriously and will step up our development cooperation with those partners who implement reforms aimed at good governance, protection of human rights and economic development.

→ Cameroon’s dictator Paul Biya finally needs to really listen! The Europeans declared seriously that they want to check on the African Union’s specific reforms and select only those countries for preferred partnership who implemented actual reforms. Too bad for Cameroon’s regime now, right, since there is never any reform? At least not too bad for uncle Biya, because he has got this very preferred relationship with France, which guarantees that his decade-long reliable refusal to reform anything will always be highly rewarded. And the Europeans – that is for sure – will never check on France & Françafrique, our dear ally and WW2-winner and money maker out of Africa … , or will they?

8.    EQUITABLE GLOBAL STRUCTURES AND INSTITUTIONS
– Reforms in Africa must also be matched by reforms in Europe and at global level. The main areas are fair trade, combating illicit financial flows and putting a stop to arms sales to areas in crisis. New forms of political cooperation also demand closer cooperation between European and African institutions. That means a permanent seat for the African nations on the United Nations Security Council and an enhanced role in all international organizations and negotiations, such as the
World Trade Organization (WTO).

→ Cameroon’s excellency, highest of the highest, ruler of rulers, pa of all pas, chief all of chiefs, head of state, dictator of everything and arch democrat Paul Biya is impressed and challenged now. The reforms in Africa “must” be matched by reforms in Europe and even by the whole globe. They must. That means as long as they are not really matched they still have to. That duty is not ending until they are all matched everywhere. Wow. That will indeed happen fast then. It is unconditional. It is a “must”. All this must happen. Very soon. It must …. Especially since it is not said, that France “must” also. Because France is sending arms sales to areas in crisis in Africa and nobody cares. A permanent seat for the African nations in the UN Security Council and WTO will certainly give Cameroon a big weight. Among 53 other African nations … that will change everything. “Totally new and closer forms of political cooperation in all international organizations and negotiations.” Wow. Especially when the Marshall Plan didn’t exactly define which kind of reforms, actually …   
 
9.    ODA CANNOT PROVIDE ALL THE ANSWERS
– A lot has been achieved with Official Development Assistance. Yet it cannot cope with the challenges of an entirely new dimension we are facing. ODA should instead serve more to facilitate and promote private investment. African countries themselves must also mobilize considerably more domestic revenues, for example in the form of higher tax receipts.

→ Cameroon’s dictator Paul Biya says thank you! “Higher taxes? Great! My finance minister will transfer me these higher incomes immediately. Very good for my Swiss accounts and for my wife’s shoe shops in Paris! Gives a real push for my salary from the oil wells, where I steal only 1.5 million dollars from my people per day yet!”

10.    WE WILL LEAVE NO ONE BEHIND
– Germany will deliver on its shared responsibility for the least developed countries. The Marshall Plan highlights people’s basic needs: food security, water, energy, infrastructure, digitalization, health care and access to education – particularly for women and girls. We need to acknowledge the opportunities and challenges
presented by urbanization. And, just as much, we need to harness the potential of rural development and agriculture.

→ Cameroon’s beloved, francophile dictator Paul Biya says hi to his beloved Germany, which was so reliable to treat him in private clinics for small peanuts under exclusion of the press and never criticized France for robbing the Cameroonians and never criticized the Cameroonians for annexing the Ambazonians! (Ambazonia is an anglophone country between Cameroon and Nigeria with about 8 million people, which francophone La “Republique” du Cameroun had occupied illegally in 1961 and maltreated and marginalized ever since.) Germany never says a word that France is producing millions of fugitives by the still ongoing French neo-colonialist, exploitative monetary rule over its former colonies in Africa. Thank you Germany, for caring now for the least developed countries in Africa, which could have developed themselves easily, if France, Switzerland, America, China etc. etc. would not support dictators, who rob their countries for their post-colonial masters of the 21st century. Thank you, Marshall-Plan, for wanting good things without bothering us with naming the reasons for the bad things! Thank you, Europe, for not leaving us behind your economic interests!
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!   




This write-up is partly using the original text of the European MARSHALL PLAN WITH AFRICA, which is downloadable in English, French or German language at
http://www.bmz.de/en/countries_regions/marshall_plan_with_africa/index.html,
as part of a political education project. Everybody is free to forward this write-up to any politician, journalist or organization in the world, preferably to people in the second and third rank of power, because those in the first league don’t listen, but they listen to collective efforts of the second and third leagues. The main purpose of this project is to educate as many people as possible about the necessity to differentiate between the democratic movements and the totalitarian players in Africa in order to make mutually beneficial partnerships between Africa and the World work. The Ambazonia Liberation Movement for example, www.ambazonia.org, is a good example where millions of people, who are well educated and of highest integrity and who live between Nigeria and Cameroon, want nothing else but peace and democracy and a fair share, they so badly need to be supported. But “puppet-holder” Françafrique with its puppet dictators and African-Franc currency controllers in the treasury of Paris is an example of an exploitative, human-rights-violating octopus, which needs to be criticized and forced down, before any good intentions in the Marshall Plan can become a reality. Non-Africans have to be taught to stop the bad habit to throw both the African culprits and the African victims, the freedom destroyers and the freedom fighters, into the same pot and they have to drop the prejudice that all Sub-Saharan Africans would not be able to govern themselves well because of tribalism or corruption. No, how can the true democrats in Africa develop something when Europe is flattering with the Stalins, Hitlers & Pol Pots of Africa? Anyway, the upcoming, better educated generation of African leaders is not only willing but able to govern themselves very well. And they will stop the non-African exploiters of Africa rather sooner than later, because colonialist stealing & robbery has never been legal nor legitimate anywhere in the world. The awakening of the NEW AFRICA is unstoppable and It goes parallel with the NEW EUROPE, which gradually learns, that it is not ruling the world anymore, especially not by the same old methods in new disguise. Nevertheless, the European “Marshall-Plan With Africa” contains some substantial changes in European Africa-policy which we can build on, if the Europeans start supporting the progressive movements and depowering the monetary-economic neo-colonialists.   

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Christoph Messner

15.Aug.2017

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Martha, 44 and a resident of Mbengwi in the North West Region of Cameroon was arrested on Thursday 3rd August,2017. This arrest was laid right in front of her kids( age range between 8-25years), her sister Bridget Agei and her aunt Christina Tah.

From eye witness accounts, two men came to her house that also hosts a liquor joint and demanded to buy drinks. She told them that she couldn't serve them first of all because she had family visitors and above all, her stock was empty. The men then called a bike rider to pick them up. Three minutes after the customers took of, uniform officers showed up and asked for the two men. Someone pointed to the direction they took and the police men went after them,apprehended them to her house. The commissioner of police came and asked for guns that were in their keeping. 

They all said they hadn't guns on them and an instant body search was carried out on them. Southern Cameroon adherent cards were alledgedly found on the men  and they were ferried straight to the charge office. At 10.30am that same day, some police officers came and took Martha away telling everyone around that the Senior Divisional Officer wanted to have a chat with her. She was brought back to her house later that sameday, all her children and relatives sent out at that time for them to conduct a search. Her house was frantically ransacked but nothing was discovered.

They then took her back claiming that they needed to take some statements from her. She willingly got into their car and followed them. The following morning, her brothers Elias and Joel, her sister Bridget and her aunt went to the Mbengwi charge office to look for her but were told that she had been whisked-off to Bamenda.

When they arrived Bamenda, they were also told that she was not there until a smart sister of hers tipped one of the officers on duty who led her to see Martha. She was seen in a very disturbing physical and psychological condition. She had been tortured to the extent that her eyes were all swollen and she had marks all over her face.

That was the last time any family member set eyes on her. They were later informed that she had been transferred to Yaounde. On Monday 7th, the whole family went to the Kondengui maximum prison to look for her but to their greatest shock, they were told that the group that was arrested in Mbengwi was slated for execution today August 14.

Since then,we learned that they have been transferred to the SED concentration camp and no one has heard her or seen her again. Her family are now languishing in utter bewilderment and wondering what must have become of her or what the future holds for her. They are praying that people of good will should intervene so that their whereabouts should be known and her release secured. 

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Mbi James

14.Aug.2017

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AYAH PAUL UNDER MORE TORTURE
At the time of my official assignment as Advocate General of the Supreme Court of Cameroon, my University classmate, Mr. Ndjodo Luc, was of the same grade and seniority in the legal profession as myself. But by law in force, he could not be my head of Department because I was/am older than him by two years. In this particular case, Ayah the ‘anglophone’ was not only marginalized but he lost even his position as a second class ‘citizen’. A francophone judge of index 1115 was appointed the deputy head of department, relegating Ayah the Anglophone on index 1400 to the third position. 

This was just the starting point of my road to Calvary. Even as I embraced all the ignominy in stunning resignation, I waited for six months before being given an office. When the first consignment of new vehicles came, Ayah was given but a second hand official car which shortly went bad. I then took to my boss a list of spare parts needed for repairs but the latter, The Procureur General, hurled the list at me, insisting that the list must be translated into French before he would even look at it.
By the list of ‘seniority’ made by the court, I was the 9th (Number 1 Anglophone) in a descending order. What was all the stranger was that I was not given a new official vehicle even when the second consignment of fifteen new vehicles came. As a result, I had to go to work often by taxi. How could we get to this? It is no news that I went for 17 months without salary which has been confiscated by the state. That money, some of which was due as far back as 2013, is being owed me, even as these words are being written. I was therefore left without even a personal car!

Surprising as it is that, in the face of all these trials, I remained calm and uncomplaining; it is anyone’s guess that a conspiracy was still hatched to get rid of me. May I spare the readers the boredom of their re-reading a narrative of all that I have gone through in recent times. But I would be doing no-one justice if I failed to recount that I have been in captivity seven months now without an inkling of the reason for my ordeal and that by God’s grace I am still alive. Nor do I find it superfluous to repeat the plots and intrigues to see me dead ‘’naturally’’.

It is no news that after withholding my 17 months arrears of salary, they have sent me on retirement to further send me to an early grave in a two-pronged attack. As a sudden cardiac patient (which condition developed as a result of this aggression on me) put on a special diet, disconnecting my salary is a lethal injection. And being in captivity, I would not be able to follow up the payment of my pension. Bringing me even food as prescribed would cease; of course…..
As for Ndjodo Luc, why give me such a long rope? He has withheld my allowance for the second quarter of the year on the curious ground that I must hand over as a condition precedent. There can be nothing short of malice here because it is he who has to notify the decree of my retirement to me. He has not done so yet. It would be insulting to suppose that, at his level, Mr Procureur General does not know that notification comes before handing-over. His action then should be nothing short of persecution – torture!
And to buttress that, Mr Procureur General is eager to seal the only crevice that sustains my life, he broke into my office within weeks of my unofficial information that I am retired and installed someone in it. The very Procureur General who took six months to give me an office! God alone knows where all my personal effects in the office are after this official breaking – in (robbery)…

In an attempt to stem the conspiracy against me and in frantic struggle for survival, I wrote to Mr. Procureur General, demanding notification of the decree of my retirement. In my captivity, the letter was via the Secretary of State for Defense – another University classmate, Mr. Jean Baptiste Bokam. It is dead silence since the letter landed on Mr. Bokam’s table about July 25, 2017.
Gosh! So many war fronts against a single individual – Ayah Paul the Anglophone: a sudden cardiac patient whose blood pressure rose to close to 280 (276 to be precise) during the last cardiac crisis! The Price of being outlandish! The price of being ‘anglophone’! The price for standing by the truth at all times and against all odds!
Solace! My God is alive! 

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Rita Akana

14.Aug.2017

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Akuroh John Mbah from the SCACUF advocacy committee announces major victories, re-iterates need for 3 days ghost towns . A must watch.

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Rita Akana

13.Aug.2017

Hits: 2090