TFT Magazine | Cameroon News | Southern Cameroon News

Friday, 15 August 2008

The Southern Cameroons National Council has met with European Commission representatives and raised afresh their concerns over human rights in Cameroon.

As the institutions of the European Union begin to prepare themselves for a return to business as usual after the summer months, UNPO was able to bring together members of the Southern Cameroons Nations Council (SCNC) and representatives of the Union’s Development and External Relations sections in a meeting to discuss the current situation in the troubled country of Cameroon.

The SCNC delegation, headed by Chief Ayamba Otun Ette, who was accompanied by Prince Lawrence, and members of the SCNC (Belgium) branch, used the meeting to reiterate the ongoing human rights abuses in the Republic of Cameroon and the discrimination encountered by Cameroonian citizens living in the former British Cameroons area of the country.

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By Mola NJOH LITUMBE
Senior Citizen, Politician & Opinion Leader

On 13 December 1946 Her Majesty’s Government of Great Britain executed a Trust Agreement over a clearly defined territory known as British Cameroons . A similar Agreement was executed with France over the neighbouring territory of French Cameroun . The terms of the trust agreements were similar, for the Administering Authorities (viz Britain and France) contracted to prepare the respective trust territories and their inhabitants to self-government or independence pursuant to Art 76b of the UN Charter which states as follows:

“76b. to promote the political, economic, social and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, and as may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement.”

2. In conformity with the UN Trust Agreement over French Cameroun, France granted independence to French Cameroun on 1 January, 1960 under the baptismal name of La Republique du Cameroun (LRC). Consistent with international law, the boundaries of the new corporate state of La Republique du Cameroun were those inherited from France , and as specified in the trust Agreement of December 1946 with the UN.

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Tue 5 Aug 2008, 15:00 GMT
 By Arthur Asiimwe

KIGALI (Reuters) - Rwanda formally accused senior French officials on Tuesday of involvement in its 1994 genocide and called for them to be put on trial.

Among those named in a report by a Rwandan investigation commission were former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and late President Francois Mitterrand.

Kigali has previously accused Paris of covering up its role in training troops and militia who carried out massacres that killed some 800,000 people, and of propping up the ethnic Hutu leaders who orchestrated the slaughter.

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TFT Magazine Editorial
July 27, 2008

A few years ago, the former UN Secretary General, Mr. Kofi Annan, was reported to have been unceremoniously frisked at the Nsimalen Airport in Yaoundé as he boarded an Air France flight from the Camerounese capital. The reason for this, it has been rumored, was to retrieve a document signed by President Paul Biya in his bid to provide lasting peace to the Bakassi conflict in which Biya committed his government and himself to respect the international boundaries of Republic of Cameroun at her independence on January 1, 1960. International law calls it the concept of uti possidetis, and the African Charter recognizes this by calling on all states to respect their international boundaries at independence.

It does not take a legal expert to know that the Republic of Cameroun had no maritime boundary with Nigeria on January 1, 1960, and therefore Bakassi, indeed the entire Southern Cameroons, is not legally, a part of the Republic of Cameroun. This is the crux of the legal arguments for the self-determination of the people of the Southern Cameroons.

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Copyright © 2008 Reuters Limited
By Tansa Musa

Cameroonian soldiers killed 10 gunmen who attacked them on Thursday in the Bakassi peninsula, a long-disputed territory Nigeria is transferring to Cameroon under a World Court order, Cameroon’s Defence Ministry said.

A spokesman for the Niger Delta Defence and Security Council (NDDSC), a little-known armed Nigerian group opposed to the handover of the oil-rich territory, said its men had launched Thursday’s attack but said only four of them had been killed.

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By Onyango Oketch

Now let the blame game begin. Schools in Kenya are going up in flames, together with the ideologies they espouse. We might say nothing new in these. That the kids are at the barricades - laying waste to millions of ideological indoctrination investment centers and are being met with a ban in cell phones in educational institutions by the education minister - is a sign of high incompetence and incomprehension.

High society in Kenya bereft in knowledge of anything signaling cultural resistance and youth rebellion resort to political innuendos and fire breathing. In a culture where high stake impunity, economic shenanigans and high incompetence reign supreme, this hand wringing and head shaking smacks of hypocrisy. In a land where mob justice, vigilante justice and sheer survival reign supreme, it is idiocy to assume that its youngster are going to turn out any different from what the national dominant cultural milieu offer.

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By Julius Nyamkimah Fondong*

According to local newspaper reports and eye witness accounts, on June 14 this year at the border with Chad, ten Cameroonian cattle rearers were kidnapped and then brutally murdered by Chadian armed gangs ostensibly because the cattle rearers could not pay the ransom their captors were asking for. When the local Member of Parliament met with the Minister of Defense to ask for greater military presence and protection for his people, the Minister advised him to educate his people on the need to henceforth keep their money in banks!

In the south of the country the situation is no better. Between November 2007 and July 2008, the Cameroon military’s combat positions in the disputed Bakassi peninsula were attacked three times resulting in 27 deaths and scores wounded. During one of the attacks on June 12 2008, The Divisional Officer of Kombo Abedimo and five members of his armed escort – among whom was an officer - were captured by armed assailants. Their bullet-ridden bodies were found in the mangrove swamps nine days later. During all three incidents, Cameroonian soldiers never convincingly fought back; they simply abandoned their post and fled, leaving behind their arms and ammunitions which were promptly looted by the assailants.

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Culled from Huffingtonpost.com
July 19, 2008

Hong Kong’s English newspaper The South China Morning Post reported Friday that Chinese authorities have issued a secret ban on blacks, Mongolians and other “social undesirables” from Beijing’s bars during the Olympics.

As the content on South China Morning Post’s site is for subscribers only, here is an excerpt of the article c/o the Beijing drinking blog Beijing Boyce:

Beijing authorities are secretly planning to ban black people and others it considers social undesirables from entering the city’s bars during the Olympic Games, a move that would contradict the official slogan, “One World, One Dream”.

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It was really a joyful event to have more than 80 members of the Platform of Fighters against AIDS in Cameroon PAFAC-network in Bamenda come together in a first big conference in the Presbyterian Church Center. The Conference which kicked off from July 7-9, 2008 was a historic one given the attendance and caliber of resource persons at the said come-together.

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