Politics

The Boko Haram Islamist militant group raided a cement facility owned by the French group Lafarge as part of an attack on two towns in northeast Nigeria on Thursday, witnesses said. "The gunmen kept shouting 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) and firing guns haphazardly. They went into the cement factory and took away some vehicles," said Samail Adnan, who lives in Ashaka, in Gombe state.

A company staff member, who asked not to be identified, said the factory was evacuated before the raid. Lafarge is a leading producer of building and construction materials with 23 production sites and more than 11,000 employees in Africa.

It was the latest militant attack in northeastern Nigeria, where Boko Haram maintains a stronghold. At least five people were killed on Monday when two female suicide bombers blew themselves up in an attack targeting a crowded market in the northeastern Nigerian city of Maiduguru. Two teenage girls blew themselves up at the same crowded market a week earlier, claiming the lives of at least 44.

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Ngwa Bertrand

08.Dec.2014

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By Julius A. Agbor, PhD

The Biya government recently passed a bill through the lower chamber of parliament instituting the death penalty on anyone guilty of terrorism. Article 2(1) of the law defines terrorism as any act or threat with consequence being death, bodily or material harm to humans and the environment alike. Falling within the scope of terrorism are all acts undertaken with the aim of intimidating the population, instigating fear, or coercing the victim, the government or national and international organizations to take certain actions or renounce from taking a particular position. The law also characterizes as terrorism, any attempt to disrupt the normal functioning of public services as well as any attempt to incite general uprising among the population.

There are three crucial problems with this law. The first is that it terrorizes the Cameroonian people in that the scope of what is considered terrorism clearly encroaches into the domain of individual liberties and expression. If Cameroon is a democracy, then its citizens have the right to use every peaceful means of expression, including popular uprising, to coerce its government to go in a particular direction. This law forbids that by pronouncing the death penalty on anyone caught instigating Cameroonians to rise up against the government. While most Cameroonians agree on the need to stamp out terror and its perpetrators from the national perimeters, we need to agree on how to go about that. Mr. Biya with his rubber stamp legislature should not have abrogated to themselves, the right to choose the methods of dealing with this worldwide phenomenon.  My sense is that Mr. Biya, as cynical as he is, is taking advantage of the present dispensation to legally outlaw protests and potential acts of insurrection.

The second issue is that, Mr. Biya failed to engage the broader Cameroonian fabric (civil society, religious groups and the academia) in discussions on a crucial topicas this and a referendum would have been warranted given the gravity of the sanctions suggested (which are now law).  That again suggests that Mr. Biya is not acting in the best interest of Cameroonians but is rather seeking to eternalize his grip on power. The third issue is that Mr. Biya’s government lacks the credibility to implement this law. This is a government with a reputation for infringing civil liberties, cannibalizing opposition leaders and rigging elections. Can such a government be trusted with the will to decipher between a political opponent and a terrorist? Clearly not!

Mr. Biya and his agents must know that even if Cameroonians do not massively revolt against this law, history will judge this government,either in presence or abstentia. Further, Mr. Biya must know that by making peaceful change in Cameroon impossible, he is making violent revolution inevitable.

[1] Author is a political economist, research associate at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and a former research fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Ngwa Bertrand

08.Dec.2014

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The Nigerian Islamic sect Boko Haram carried out a mine attack early this morning at Fotokol in the Far North region of Cameroon, Cameroon Concord has learnt. The mine went off under a public transport vehicle with no casualties recorded. The secret service of the Cameroon military is reported to have arrested the Boko Haram militant responsible for the attack.

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Ngwa Bertrand

07.Dec.2014

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Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Ever since the Burkinabe spring, there have been acute tensions within the Paul Biya regime-a regime that is taking the last kicks of a dying horse. Even prior to the overthrow of the Burkinabe thug Blaise Compaore, several Biya lieutenants had undermined the president, humiliating his minister of Secondary Education, Mbape Mbape. The jockeying for political appointments has virtually come to an end as the proud Francophone Beti-Ewondo elite are no longer interested to be identified with failure. However, because the regime controls the administration, the military, the legislature and the electoral process, its spin doctor the ageing Martin Belinga Eboutou raised up in the Congo recently made history by teleguiding our national assembly into voting a terrorism law.

Biya’s Cameroon is now the first nation on earth to successfully defined terrorism. We of Cameroon Concord have been wondering how terrorism can be defined in Cameroon so easily when the process of defining it globally is wholly frustrated by the presence of irreconcilable antagonisms. Correspondingly, definition is truly an art. The artist seeks to paint in abstract or concrete terms something observed so as to give it some meaning of a distinctive character. So, is it futile to attempt to define terrorism? The answer is a vehement NO!! This is true because the Cameroonian dictator and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have given us one!! Biya and his Beti-Ewondo hegemony have agreed that terrorism is the intentional generation of massive fear by the CPDM regime for the purpose of securing or maintaining control over other Cameroonians. 

Cameroon has passed legislation purporting to combat terrorism in which constitutionally protected civil liberties and liberties protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Cameroon is a state party were criminalized. While "acts of terror" have been criminalized under different circumstances," terrorism" is so far not a cognizable crime in international law because its definition is mired in international politics. The International law Commission notes that the Western, Eastern and Arab definition of terrorism differs significantly from a conceptual and normative perspective. Cameroon thought that it had found definition, and an underlying crime that conflates civil liberties and acts of terror. In so doing, it purported to rely on an African Union treaty criminalizing acts of terror which it has never ratified. Cameroon Parliament authorized the ratification of this treaty in the same session in which it passed the law on terrorism. This legislative acrobatics was intended to rush a law whose real import is to criminalize the Burkinable-type revolution, free speech and civil liberties.

This attempt may have suffered a major setback if one considers the judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights recently, depriving dictators on the continent the weapon which the Cameroon legislation intended to use to stifle free speech and constitutionally protected fundamental human values. The Cameroon legislation criminalizing alleged acts of terror and terrorism calls into question the legality of its prior judgment and conviction of SCYL Chairman Ebenezar Akwanga and some 82 Southern Cameroons activists for alleged acts of terror more than a decade ago. If a law criminalizing acts of terror did not exist as we argued then and now, on what basis were these armless Southern Cameroons citizens tried and convicted? How do we characterize the judicial blackmail in which they were abducted to a Military Tribunal far from their homes and tried in a language they did not understand? How does Cameroun account for the many abductees who died in that illegal legal process? The present law vindicates Chairman Akwanga and gives greater meaning and urgency to the Judgment of the UN Human Rights Committee in General nullifying the Judgment of the Yaounde Military Tribunal and urging Cameroun to compensate Chairman Akwanga.

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

07.Dec.2014

Hits: 2748

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Ever since the Burkinabe spring, there have been acute tensions within the Paul Biya regime-a regime that is taking the last kicks of a dying horse. Even prior to the overthrow of the Burkinabe thug Blaise Compaore, several Biya lieutenants had undermined the president, humiliating his minister of Secondary Education, Mbape Mbape. The jockeying for political appointments has virtually come to an end as the proud Francophone Beti-Ewondo elite are no longer interested to be identified with failure. However, because the regime controls the administration, the military, the legislature and the electoral process, its spin doctor the ageing Martin Belinga Eboutou raised up in the Congo recently made history by teleguiding our national assembly into voting a terrorism law.

Biya’s Cameroon is now the first nation on earth to successfully defined terrorism. We of Cameroon Concord have been wondering how terrorism can be defined in Cameroon so easily when the process of defining it globally is wholly frustrated by the presence of irreconcilable antagonisms. Correspondingly, definition is truly an art. The artist seeks to paint in abstract or concrete terms something observed so as to give it some meaning of a distinctive character. So, is it futile to attempt to define terrorism? The answer is a vehement NO!! This is true because the Cameroonian dictator and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have given us one!! Biya and his Beti-Ewondo hegemony have agreed that terrorism is the intentional generation of massive fear by the CPDM regime for the purpose of securing or maintaining control over other Cameroonians. 

Cameroon has passed legislation purporting to combat terrorism in which constitutionally protected civil liberties and liberties protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Cameroon is a state party were criminalized. While "acts of terror" have been criminalized under different circumstances," terrorism" is so far not a cognizable crime in international law because its definition is mired in international politics. The International law Commission notes that the Western, Eastern and Arab definition of terrorism differs significantly from a conceptual and normative perspective. Cameroon thought that it had found definition, and an underlying crime that conflates civil liberties and acts of terror. In so doing, it purported to rely on an African Union treaty criminalizing acts of terror which it has never ratified. Cameroon Parliament authorized the ratification of this treaty in the same session in which it passed the law on terrorism. This legislative acrobatics was intended to rush a law whose real import is to criminalize the Burkinable-type revolution, free speech and civil liberties.

This attempt may have suffered a major setback if one considers the judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights recently, depriving dictators on the continent the weapon which the Cameroon legislation intended to use to stifle free speech and constitutionally protected fundamental human values. The Cameroon legislation criminalizing alleged acts of terror and terrorism calls into question the legality of its prior judgment and conviction of SCYL Chairman Ebenezar Akwanga and some 82 Southern Cameroons activists for alleged acts of terror more than a decade ago. If a law criminalizing acts of terror did not exist as we argued then and now, on what basis were these armless Southern Cameroons citizens tried and convicted? How do we characterize the judicial blackmail in which they were abducted to a Military Tribunal far from their homes and tried in a language they did not understand? How does Cameroun account for the many abductees who died in that illegal legal process? The present law vindicates Chairman Akwanga and gives greater meaning and urgency to the Judgment of the UN Human Rights Committee in General nullifying the Judgment of the Yaounde Military Tribunal and urging Cameroun to compensate Chairman Akwanga.

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

07.Dec.2014

Hits: 2118

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Ever since the Burkinabe spring, there have been acute tensions within the Paul Biya regime-a regime that is taking the last kicks of a dying horse. Even prior to the overthrow of the Burkinabe thug Blaise Compaore, several Biya lieutenants had undermined the president, humiliating his minister of Secondary Education, Mbape Mbape. The jockeying for political appointments has virtually come to an end as the proud Francophone Beti-Ewondo elite are no longer interested to be identified with failure. However, because the regime controls the administration, the military, the legislature and the electoral process, its spin doctor the ageing Martin Belinga Eboutou raised up in the Congo recently made history by teleguiding our national assembly into voting a terrorism law.

Biya’s Cameroon is now the first nation on earth to successfully defined terrorism. We of Cameroon Concord have been wondering how terrorism can be defined in Cameroon so easily when the process of defining it globally is wholly frustrated by the presence of irreconcilable antagonisms. Correspondingly, definition is truly an art. The artist seeks to paint in abstract or concrete terms something observed so as to give it some meaning of a distinctive character. So, is it futile to attempt to define terrorism? The answer is a vehement NO!! This is true because the Cameroonian dictator and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate have given us one!! Biya and his Beti-Ewondo hegemony have agreed that terrorism is the intentional generation of massive fear by the CPDM regime for the purpose of securing or maintaining control over other Cameroonians. 

Cameroon has passed legislation purporting to combat terrorism in which constitutionally protected civil liberties and liberties protected by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights which Cameroon is a state party were criminalized. While "acts of terror" have been criminalized under different circumstances," terrorism" is so far not a cognizable crime in international law because its definition is mired in international politics. The International law Commission notes that the Western, Eastern and Arab definition of terrorism differs significantly from a conceptual and normative perspective. Cameroon thought that it had found definition, and an underlying crime that conflates civil liberties and acts of terror. In so doing, it purported to rely on an African Union treaty criminalizing acts of terror which it has never ratified. Cameroon Parliament authorized the ratification of this treaty in the same session in which it passed the law on terrorism. This legislative acrobatics was intended to rush a law whose real import is to criminalize the Burkinable-type revolution, free speech and civil liberties.

This attempt may have suffered a major setback if one considers the judgment of the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights recently, depriving dictators on the continent the weapon which the Cameroon legislation intended to use to stifle free speech and constitutionally protected fundamental human values. The Cameroon legislation criminalizing alleged acts of terror and terrorism calls into question the legality of its prior judgment and conviction of SCYL Chairman Ebenezar Akwanga and some 82 Southern Cameroons activists for alleged acts of terror more than a decade ago. If a law criminalizing acts of terror did not exist as we argued then and now, on what basis were these armless Southern Cameroons citizens tried and convicted? How do we characterize the judicial blackmail in which they were abducted to a Military Tribunal far from their homes and tried in a language they did not understand? How does Cameroun account for the many abductees who died in that illegal legal process? The present law vindicates Chairman Akwanga and gives greater meaning and urgency to the Judgment of the UN Human Rights Committee in General nullifying the Judgment of the Yaounde Military Tribunal and urging Cameroun to compensate Chairman Akwanga.

Details

Ngwa Bertrand

07.Dec.2014

Hits: 2169