Abdul Karim Ali, The Southern Cameroons (Ambazonia) Justice for Peace crusader and Islamic scholar of international repute who was abducted by a mixed contingent of the uniformed and non-uniformed gendarmes on the 25th September 2019 is being starved to death! Abdul Karim was abducted in front of the Swiss Embassy in Yaounde as he stepped out after a conversation with the Swiss Ambassador, about the recently held mediation conference in Geneva at the behest of Humanitarian Centre for Dialogue (HD).

Abdulkarim was whisked off to the Gendarmerie Headquarters better known by it’s French acronym SED where he is being incarcerated without food or water. The commander on duty at the Service Central Des Recherches Judiciaire (SCRJ), where he is confined, denied him access to family and lawyers until Monday the 30th September. When they eventually allowed only the lawyer to see him! He denied drinking any water and eating any food offered by the gendarmes and insisted that he would only drink water and eat food brought by his lawyers or family members. The Gendarmerie as of today Tuesday 8th October 2019 denied him all food and water brought by family on the frivolous excuse that hierarchy has not authorized it. Even the palette of water brought by his lawyers since Friday has not been given to him. He is reportedly very frail and worn out as of today 08/10/2019. He has now stayed without food and water for almost two full weeks!!!

Abdulkarim has neither been interrogated nor charged to court for any known offence. His lawyers Barr AYUKOTANG Ndep Nkongho and Barr FONKA TOMNYUY have filed an Application of Habeas Corpus praying the court to order his immediate production before the High Court of Mfoundi Yaounde for the court to assess the validity of his abduction and continuous incarceration and order his release and compensation.

By Berinyuy Bihkong

The phone call from my dear sister and friend Bibiana Taku once more announced the sad news of the death of Ben Muna. This phone call announcing the death of Ben Muna, replicated in some regards, that which announced the death of my friend Bate Besong which is a painful loss from which I have never recovered.

Some months ago, Ben Muna and our distinguished colleague Paul Chiy flew in from London to the Hague to discuss important professional matters with Karim Khan QC and me.  The contributions of Ben Muna in that profound professional discussion will remain indelible in my memory.

I have known Ben Muna for so many years. Barely four years in my professional career, I contested and was elected a member of the council of the Cameroon Bar Association. Ben Muna was the President of the Bar Council then. Shortly on being elected, I became his close partner in several battles for the enthronement of the rule of law and a just social order.

We fought against the politicization of justice and the militarization of constitutional rights that was imposed on the citizenry by a power cartel of power mongers. Ben was a passionate advocate of justice with a human conscience and mobilized lawyers and the citizenry to join him in this crusade.

Ben led a delegation of lawyers to the biannual conference of the African Bar Association in Abuja Nigeria in 1991, where Chief MKO Abiola presented the keynote address. My distinguished learned colleagues Chief Eta Besong Jr, Mrs M.N Weledji, Peter Monthe Tumnde, Mrs Helen Ebai, Charles Eno, and many others were in the delegation.

There, African lawyers gathered in that conference witnessed the leadership skills of Ben Muna. In a potentially tense election battle that was about to erupt, Ben took the microphone and urged the attendees, “learned colleagues, why this pushyfooting?  Why not give Mr Charles Idehen the President of the NBA a mandate to move this great continental association to higher heights?”.  There was an acclamation and Roger Chamba the Hon Attorney General of Zambia who was the outgoing President, after consultation, reconvened and the choice of Ben was endorsed by a near majority as the President of the NBA. My late friend Kamni Ishola Isobu remarked to me the end of the day’s proceedings that Ben Muna was, indeed, a great lawyer capable of providing the type of continental leadership that Chief Abiola had advocated in his keynote address.

When we last met in Stockholm last year, the first time since the African Bar Association Conference in 1991, Hon. Roger Chamba and I recalled the memorable intervention of Ben Muna in that conference.  It is regrettable that several attempts to reunite Ben and Charles Idehen  did not materialize because of the bad telephone network communication.

Ben led us to valiantly defend the erstwhile President of the Cameroon Bar Council Yondo Black and the venerable Albert Mukong and others before a court-martial in Yaoundé Cameroun, for asserting a constitutional right to pluralist democratic governance.   From thence, I forged an enduring alliance with Albert Mukong for the struggle for freedom and human dignity leading to the creation of the Human Rights Defence Group.

Ben mobilized lawyers and human rights defenders to defend my friend Puis Njawe and Celestin Monga whose only crime was the publication of articles exposing and condemning the endemic corruption that has destroyed the economic and moral foundation of Cameroun.  Through this and other cases, Ben provided the platform for the establishment of civil society advocacy in the fight to liberate the people from the bondage and abuses of dictatorial political brigandage.  In this regard, the fearless legal luminary provided unprecedented leadership in the fight for justice and civil liberties that permeated his national and international law career.

By the verdict of fate and destiny, we met again at the International Tribunal for Rwanda in Arusha where he was the Deputy Prosecutor and I was a Lead Counsel for one of the accused persons.  I found myself alone on the defence bench while Ben, Carla Deponte and five other Prosecutors were on the prosecution bench to argue an interlocutory appeal, I filed before the Appeals Chamber of the ICTR.  I stood my ground and responded to the alternate submissions by all the members of the prosecution team. At the close of the session, Ben moved across to me and we briefly laughed at the fact that Ben was back where he began his law career as a Prosecutor. Persons present watched as we discussed courteously and pleasantly only a few minutes after we were subjected to intense legal combat with ammunition provided on both side by the very erudite judge Shahabuddin now of blessed memory and his four colleagues in the panel.  Little did they know that although a prosecutor, Ben was indeed, a champion of fair trial rights for accused persons before the courts.

Ben ended his time on earth, defending largely abducted victims of atrocity crimes and the arrogance of power before a court-martial.  His memorable prophetic submissions will inform the conscience of a nation at battle with its soul about the consequences of trivializing human rights, human dignity and politicization of justice.  The enduring consequences of these violations may never be reversed. But no one will ever say that Ben Muna the prophetic voice of reason and the conscience of true justice did not caution and provide an opportunity for the abatement of the madness that has led to the collapse of an imposed house of cards.

May the justice of the Lord, the Guarantor of true justice and all life, grant him a place of choice in God’s heavenly kingdom

May his soul rest in peace.

By Chief Charles A. Taku

Ever since the Ambazonia leader, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe reorganised the Southern Cameroons Interim Government and appointed Comrade Dabney Yerima as Vice President, the top political priority to some Southern Cameroonians in the USA has been to deny the legitimacy of the Interim Government. These individuals including the disgraced Dr Ikome Sako and the former Communications Secretary, Chris Anu are simply being short-sighted, myopic and petty.

Southern Cameroonians now know that all those refusing to join forces with the Interim Government and rally behind Vice President Dabney Yerima do not have a vision for Ambaland, or a policy position, or even a personal agenda. They simply are for Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s demise.

Clearly, the tables have turned and we now have a French Cameroun leadership that has successfully infiltrated a cream of Southern Cameroons front liners with a very different agenda and potentially dangerous ideas for the people of Ambazonia.

The all-out French Cameroun military onslaught and the deliberate silence observed by the international community has left Southern Cameroonians reeling, scrambling to protect their Interim Government, its policies and the leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe whom they hold dearly.

Progressive forces in the USA have joined Southern Cameroonians in Europe and South Africa in resisting the actions of failed leaders such as Ikome Sako and Chris Anu. These two men have been using unprecedented levels of energy against the Ambazonia leader, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. Their nasty actions against the Interim Government that brought them to the lime light of Southern Cameroons politics have not been working shockingly well so far. But we of the Cameroon Concord News Group fear that their activities which is not going to last, because it’s not enough to just be against a leader, will continue to delay our trip to Buea.

Sako and Chris are only fighting whatever President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and the Southern Cameroons Interim Government put on the table and this has greatly helped Vice President Yerima to settle down on the job and has allowed him to set the revolution agenda that badly needed a change.

Comrade Dabney Yerima is not playing games and he is not a man to mess around with! He has taken Southern Cameroonians back to the revolutionary principles and is slowly but surely crafting Ambazonia’s own new vision for what the Federal Republic of Ambazonia should be.

Frankly speaking, politics is a battle of ideas but NOT during a war of liberation. In spite of Paul Biya’s incoherent speeches, his disregard for historic facts on the Anglophone problem and his obvious personal flaws, Southern Cameroonians are miles away from Buea because some are still listening to empty talk from the disgruntled Sako and his Chris Anu gang.

It was very hard to pin Chris Anu to the job description assigned to him by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. As we write, Southern Cameroonians are still to comprehend whether Chris Anu was Communications Secretary or an ABC TV anchor man or better still a social media activist. He has never been clear about his ideas for Ambazonia, beyond attacking Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and picking up a regular cheap quarrel with the Secretary of Finance over unpaid ABC TV bills. Chris Anu’s slogans helped him recruit Barrister Fru into the anti Sisiku Ayuk Tabe wagon. But with the dust now settled, Barrister Fru has come to understand that slogans are not the same as a cohesive idea.

Sako, Boh Herbert, Chris Anu and Akwanga have never been more unified on any one topic than their dislike for the Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe.  However, powerful men are almost always defined by what they are for, not what they are against.

Southern Cameroonians should know that the modus operandi of Sako, Boh, Chris and Akwanga has many perils and it is allowing the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime to set the agenda for the Ambazonia war of independence. As long as they are only holding meetings waiting for what President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe or Vice President Dabney Yerima would say to launch an attack. Not only will Ambazonians be always on the defensive, it is also limiting our imaginations to a reality within the boundaries of Biya’s French Cameroun world.

Southern Cameroons will lose. The chips are stacked in favour of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government under the stewardship of Vice President Dabney Yerima. Even with unprecedented levels of attacks, it’s unlikely those fighting the Interim Government will be able to effectively resist every move by Comrade Dabney Yerima. Consequently,  Ambazonia will remain a deeply divided country.

Correspondingly, if we are to take steps to mend the deep tears in the leadership of the struggle and the Southern Cameroons political fabric, Southern Cameroonians should not be defined by what they are opposed to.

Winning this war against La Republqiue du Cameroun does not require attacks on the Interim Government or an impeachment against Sisiku Ayuk Tabe. That has created its own problems. Winning this war against La Republique du Cameroun is not about seeing Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides bleed in Kondengui. Winning is far grander: channelling unprecedented levels of activism and financial resources into an idea for our beloved Ambazonia that not only combats the corrosive policies we’ve seen, but can lead to a permanently better future. That idea will create lasting good for future generations of Southern Cameroonians.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

French Cameroun colonial occupation and brutal oppression of Ambazonia is now close to sixty long years. That country is daily plundering and looting the resources of Ambazonia, violently imposing on the people, humiliating them, and terrorizing them.

The die was cast three years ago. We took one giant step to end our shameful status of a colonised people. Like all slaves, we revolted. The colonial oppressor then demonstrated its determination to exterminate us and steal our Homeland. It unleashed an unjust war on us. Since then we have been in the throes of an existential armed threat.

We are fighting for survival as a people. We are literally fighting with bear hands, apparently with no expertise in the art of war. But against all odds, we continue to resist the mighty onslaught of a well-resourced French Cameroun army backed by mercenaries and well-known foreign governments.

But we remain defiant and undaunted. We shall fight on for 100 years, if need be. We shall fight on until our Homeland is totally liberated. We shall fight on until we are free. We shall fight on until we unfetter the shameful shackles around our necks and feet, like those of slaves of old. We shall fight on until we defeat the enemy. We do not doubt success and final victory.

Let the world know and bear witness that we are fighting for the decolonisation of Ambazonia. That territory is historically and legally our Homeland. It has been oursfrom time immemorial. It belongs to us and to none other. Sovereignty over it lies with us, the people of Ambazonia. No other people can possibly assert a superior title to that land.

It is our right and duty to institute a government on that territory, laying itsfoundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to us seems most likely to secure our national interest, our safety, our welfare, and our happiness.No one, no country and no organisation should presume to do so for us or to deflect us from doing so.

In the past:

• We allowed the UN to impose on us an unwarranted and choice-less plebiscite that took place on 11 February 1961;
• We attended a purposeless and agenda-less charade in Foumban in July 1961;
• We submitted to an annexationist document framed and adopted by French Cameroun on 1 September 1961 and dressed up as a so-called federal constitution whereas it was a mere framework for the cannibalisation of Ambazonia;
• We submitted on 30^th September 1961 to the British transfer of powers not to the Government of the Southern Cameroons as ought to have been the case but to a foreign country, namely, French Cameroun, resulting in the re-colonisation, rather than the decolonisation, of the Southern Cameroons;
• We submitted on 1 October 1961 to occupation by French Cameroun forces and to rule by a French Cameroun pro-consul deceptively known as ‘federal inspector of administration’;
• We allowed in 1962 French Cameroun to extend to Ambazonia its torture outfits and its draconian Subversion Ordinance that sanctioned the trial of our people by military tribunals for a number of ill-defined crimes and, in effect, made every Ambazonian a prisoner in the closed society imposed on us by French Cameroun, practically converting our space of existence into an open prison system;
• We submitted in 1962 to French Cameroun imposition of its French colonial currency, its metric system, its system of driving on the right hand side of the road, and of the French language as the language of governance;
• We allowed in 1966 French Cameroun to impose on us its one-party despotic rule;
• We failed in 1972 to oppose the odious plot and historical swindle of a so-called referendum which purported to have given a veneer of suspect legality to the continuing cannibalisation of Ambazonia;
• We failed in February 1984 to confront Biya when he purported to have completed the cannibalisation of Ambazonia by resurrecting extinct la République du Cameroun as a legal, territorial and political expression, while at the same time asserting an unsubstantiated territorial aggrandisement claim to the territory of Ambazonia;
• We failed in 1990 and 1992 to reject the poisonous and conditioning fake ‘peace’ discourse of French Cameroun;
• We failed in 1994 at the tripartite to reject and denounce French Cameroun’s continuing perfidy and efforts to get us to accept its brutal colonial rule and oppression;
• We allowed ourselves in 2010 to be manipulated by French Cameroun’s deceptive and aggressive use of the term ‘reunification’ to think that the independence of French Cameroun involved us and that our Homeland is part of the territory of French Cameroun;
• We allowed ourselves to be hoodwinked in 2016 to agree to ‘dialogue’ with the devil, a ‘dialogue’ which ended with the kidnapping and incarceration of our then leadership.

All this nonsense is now over. Never again shall we give ear to and act on anything other than what we, as a sovereign people, have decided. French Cameroun, like an invalid, has used Ambazonia as footstool for decades. It hasgot free lunch from Ambazonia for over five decades. It must now grow up, get rid of its mentality of an invalid, start living on its own, and begin to cater for itself.The era of Santa Claus is over.

On this auspicious occasion I pay tribute to the memory of our valorous soldiers who have gained honourable death in battle. I pay tribute to all those, including babies and the elderly, who have been cowardly murdered by enemy forces.  I commiserate with all those who have been raped or maimed.I salute all our valiant people, our brave refugees and internally displaced persons. I salute our gallant and resourceful freedom fighters. We stand together until the end.

I salute our friends who continue to stand by us in various ways in this our hour of great tribulation, the darkest hour of our history as a people. Our life of sorrow will not last long. May our enemy be put to eternal shame! May our merciful Lord hasten the advent of our redemption!

Darkness tarries only for a while before dawn. The dawn of national liberation, the dawn of a free people, is about to break.

Long live the invincible people of Ambazonia!  Long live Ambazonia!

By Prof Carlson Anyangwe

It was a long court session.

A military tribunal in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon, had convened some hours after noon on August 19 to pass verdicts on a case involving a group of ‘Ambazonia’ separatist leaders. But the sitting did not end until around 5:30am local time the next day.

The charges against them were, like the proceedings, long: secession, complicity in acts of terrorism, insurrection, hostility against the state, financing acts of terrorism, and spreading fake news, among others.

In its final verdict, the tribunal sentenced the 10 separatist leaders to life in prison and asked them to pay a civil award of 250 billion CFA francs ($419 million USD) to the government and civil claimants. If they fail to pay the fine as and when due, they will have to pay an additional cost of 12 billion francs ($20 million USD).

Among the leaders convicted was Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the self-declared president of the breakaway ‘Federal Republic of Ambazonia’. The state was declared in October 2017 to spite the government’s heavy-handedness in response to peaceful demonstrations across the English-speaking South-West and North-West regions.

Cameroon, a central African country, is made up of 10, semi-autonomous regions. Eight are Francophone and two Anglophone.

The French-dominated government in Yaoundé is led by 86-year-old Paul Biya, the current head of state who has been in office since 1982.

Frustrations over lack of equal representation have roiled the Anglophones since the 1990s, sometimes culminating in demands for a referendum or a return to a federation.

Similar worries forced lawyers and teachers to organise strikes over the use of French in their courts and the dominance of French language in their schools in late 2016.

The government’s response, including transferring French-speaking teachers, establishing Common Law Sections at the Supreme Court and the National  School of Administration and Magistracy, as well as creating a national Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and  Multiculturalism did little to address the grievances.

Gradually the anger spread across the South-West and North-West regions. Residents organised peaceful demonstrations over the perceived marginalisation of the Anglophone minority, which makes up 20 percent of Cameroon’s 24 million people.

But the government responded with extreme force, arresting demonstrators, firing live rounds at protestors and jailing a few people. In response, an alphabet soup of separatist groups sprang up to fight for the independence of Ambazonia.

“We feel like second-class citizens because Biya’s government has never for once accepted that there is a problem in the Anglophone regions,” a Cameroonian refugee in Nigeria told TRT World.

“Our complaints about a failed system have only brought us imprisonment, destruction, death, displacement and difficulties.”

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused government forces of indiscriminate killings, arrests, torture and destruction of villages during operations.

Armed groups, the watchdogs say, have also burnt down schools, attacked students and teachers and killed security officers.

The simmering conflict has displaced some 530,806 Cameroonians within the country and forced about 42,887 to cross the border to Nigeria, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Some 1,850 have been killed so far.

In January 2018, some 47 Anglophone separatists, including Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, were arrested in Nigeria by security agents. They were detained and later deported to Cameroon that same month. Most of them had filed asylum claims. A Nigerian court sitting in the capital Abuja in March ruled that the extradition of 12 asylum claimants was “illegal” and awarded them compensation.

Upon his extradition, Ayuk Tabe was, alongside his fellow comrades, incarcerated in a well-secured facility in Yaoundé and later charged with “terrorism” in December last year at a military court.

It was this same court that would, after an all-night sitting on August 20, give him a life sentence.

In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, angry separatist fighters announced a three-week lockdown in the Anglophone regions, forcing thousands of residents to leave their homes to avoid the curfew and any follow-on confrontations.

Local media reported that shops, offices, markets, and bus stations closed following the order.

This is a usual tactic for the fighters who have periodically enforced curfews — or “ghost towns”.  This often happens on a Monday.

Ayuk Tabe and some of his fellow leaders are seen to be more open to dialogue. The recent sentencing, analysts argue, would only exacerbate the ongoing conflict.

“Some of the approaches adopted by the Cameroonian government has more or less tended towards inflaming tensions,” Dr Emeka Okereke, an expert in African affairs, remarked.

In May, local newspaper Journal du Cameroun reported that 54-year-old Ayuk Tabe had written a five-page letter presenting conditions for dialogue, including releasing prisoners arrested during the crisis, removing government security forces from the Anglophone regions, holding peace talks outside the country and involving foreign observers in the process.

“The arrests and sentencing indicate an attempt on the part of the Biya government to take a harder line and apply the principle of striking the shepherd in order to disperse the sheep,” said Cheta Nwanze, Head of Research at SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based political and economic consultancy.

With this approach, Nwanze argued: “[The government is] probably making the fundamental mistake of removing those who have something to lose and are, as a result, more open to negotiations.

“They may thus be left with more hardliners who will make things more difficult for them.”

Amid tensions resulting from the lockdown imposed by separatists, the presidency announced that Biya would address the nation on September 10. This is a shift from the traditional times the head of state addresses the nation: on New Year and the National Youth Day on February 11.

In the rare national address broadcast on TV and radio at 8pm local time, Biya admitted that there was, indeed, a “crisis” with “far-reaching consequences” for the entire country.

He recalled that he had ordered the release of 289 persons arrested in connection with the crisis and outlined other measures taken to address grievances.

To address the conflict, the government would convene a national dialogue, he announced. Parties would include government officials, opinion leaders, leaders of government security forces, armed groups and victims, he added.

A delegation would be sent to the diaspora to allow Cameroonians there to make their input.

“How can there be dialogue when some of the key actors you are supposed to dialogue with have just been sentenced to life in prison?” asked Okereke, who argues that granting amnesty to all political prisoners should be part of the solution.

Nwanze, of SMB Intelligence, also thinks the proposed national dialogue is not a solution.

“Biya was offering more of a stick than carrot, and like many autocrats before him, seemed not to understand, nor care, about the complaints of those who have stood against him,” he explained.

As the impasse drags on, students continue to be kept out of their classrooms.

Around 80 percent of schools in the North-West and South-West region have been closed due to the crisis, UN Children’s Fund, Unicef, reported in June. This has affected more than 600,000 children and left at least 74 schools in ruins, Unicef said.

When schools tried to re-open on September 2 this year, suspected separatist fighters opened gunfire to scare students and teachers away, local media reported.

Businesses and livelihoods, too, have been jeopardised due to the ongoing crisis.

For instance, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDD), the state-owned agro-industrial company in the South-West region, had to shut down most of its factories, estates and oil mills.

The country’s second largest employer after the government, the CDD, has a workforce of about 22,000 employees and has operations in banana, palm oil, semi-finished rubber, and palm kernel oil. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs, as the company’s financial struggles linger.

Nwaze calls for better representation.

“Give the Anglophones a sense of belonging by ensuring that their communities are run in English, and creating a path to top positions within the government for people from the area,” he said.

Okereke believes the government alone cannot singlehandedly address the problem.

“There needs to be a frank, all-inclusive dialogue that requires granting amnesty to political prisoners, active international participation, and the parties to the conflict putting aside their political interests to find a common ground.”

Source: TRT World

Former French President Jacques Chirac, a major force in French politics who opposed the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, died in Paris on Thursday at the age of 86.

A seasoned politician, Chirac’s career included two presidential terms, two stints as prime minister and nearly two decades as mayor of Paris.

Charming, statuesque and a consummate political animal, Chirac was a presence on the French political arena for more than four decades. But he is best known internationally for his final term at the Élysée presidential palace, a five-year period that proved extraordinary from start to finish.

Chirac is probably best remembered in France for his 2002 presidential bid, when the centre-right politician made it past the first round despite corruption allegations to face National Front (FN) candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the run-off following the latter’s shock advance.

French voters and politicians who were expecting Socialist incumbent, Lionel Jospin, to make it through to the second round, rallied around the 69-year-old Chirac in a bid to prevent Le Pen from clinching the presidency. Chirac won the runoff with more than 82% of the vote, a tally that critics never failed to underscore was achieved by millions of Frenchmen and women holding their noses and voting for the less offensive candidate. “Pas de choix” (“No choice”) was the refrain as the French sniffed about having to choose between voting for a “crook” or voting for a fascist.

Chirac was barely a year into his second presidential term when he was faced with the biggest diplomatic challenge of his career as then US president George W. Bush attempted to build a “coalition of the willing” against Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq.

The French leader was resolutely unwilling to join the coalition, emerging as a formidable voice of opposition against a military invasion. His Gallic “non” frayed France’s relations with the US and Britain, but it also won him legions of admirers at home and abroad.

Corruption allegations, including charges dating back to his time as Paris mayor, however continued to dog Chirac until the end of his term and after. Nevertheless the rakishly handsome politician retained a measure of popularity. When he left the presidential office in 2005, one of France’s leading cartoonists quipped, “I’ll miss Chirac in the same way you’d miss your granddad who used to nick the cash you left in the kitchen.”

From prime minister to president

Born in Paris in 1932, Chirac’s father was a bank manager who went on to become managing director of the Dassault aircraft company. His mother was a housewife.

He graduated from France’s prestigious Ecole nationale d’administration (ENA), which trains the country’s top civil servants, before volunteering to fight in the Algerian War.

Chirac began his political career in the 1960s when he was appointed head of the personal staff of Gaullist Prime Minister Georges Pompidou. In 1967, at Pompidou’s bidding, Chirac ran and won a seat in the National Assembly for his native Corrèze region.

But it was under President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing that he was first appointed to high office when he was nominated prime minister in 1974. The two men had an uneasy relationship though and Chirac ended up resigning from the post two years later citing Giscard d’Estaing’s unwillingness to give him authority.

The centre-right politician’s second term as prime minister under Socialist President François Mitterrand — a period known as “cohabitation” in France — saw an uneasy cohabitation best encapsulated during the 1988 presidential race.

Opening a televised debate, Chirac began, “Permit me to say to you that tonight I am not the Prime Minister and you are not the President of the Republic. We are two equal candidates who are submitting themselves to the judgment of the French people. Permit me then to call you Mr. Mitterrand.” His opponent, the Socialist incumbent promptly replied, “But you are entirely right, Mr. Prime Minister.” Mitterrand won the race.

Finally in 1995, with Mitterrand ailing with cancer and out of the race, Chirac won his first presidential election, a position he held until 2007.

The Bosnian challenge

Chirac’s two presidential terms left a profound mark on international relations — not just because of the dramatic events that unfolded during that period, but also because another phase of awkward cohabitation with a Socialist prime minister meant that foreign policy was one of the few areas where the president could manoeuvre freely.

Barely days into his presidency, with the Bosnian War raging, Chirac faced a diplomatic challenge when Serb forces in May 1995 captured French troops serving under a UN peacekeeping mandate on the frontline Vrbanja bridge.

Chirac’s muscular response, which included the deployment of a French rapid reaction force, worked as a message to the Serb forces that UN peacekeeping mission UNPROFOR’s attitude to the conflict had changed.

Months later, Chirac hosted the signing of the Dayton Peace Accord — which was initialed in Dayton, Ohio – that brought an end to the Bosnian War.

A bulldozer in the Middle East

Inside the Beltway in Washington DC, the new French president came to be called “the bulldozer,” a moniker first adopted by Pompidou that apparently best characterised Chirac’s personality.

It was on public display in October 1996 during a visit to Jerusalem’s Old City, where Chirac had deliberately refused to be accompanied by Israeli municipal authorities to underscore France’s adherence to the UN commitment on the status of the Holy City.

Hemmed in by a heavy-handed Israeli security presence in the Old City’s crowded streets, Chirac famously let rip in an outburst that immediately turned him into a hero in the Arab world.

“What do you want – me to go back to my plane and go back to France?” Chirac exploded in English to the Israeli security guards. “Then let them go. This is not the method. That is provocation,” he roared.

News of the outburst travelled across the world, cementing Chirac’s reputation as a “friend of the Arabs” and granting him unprecedented leeway in his dealings with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

While the Palestinians regarded the French president as an objective Middle East negotiator, unlike his US counterparts, Chirac is remembered in France for his historic recognition of the country’s responsibility for deporting thousands of Jews to Nazi death camps during the German occupation in World War II.

Chirac’s landmark July 1995 speech put an end to decades of official denials and equivocations of the role played by French citizens and the state in the deportations, marking a turning point in France’s post-war reading of history.

Eight years later, Chirac was to make history again when he stood up to Washington’s war drums calling for a military intervention in Iraq. Chirac’s threat to veto a US-introduced UN resolution calling for regime change in Iraq put severe pressure on France’s relations with a key ally.

The Bush administration’s disproportionate “you’re either with us or against us” response rattled French businesses, but Chirac was resolute in standing up to the latest challenge.

In time, French-US relations eased, but Chirac will be forever remembered as the leader who said “non” to war even if it meant putting France’s relations with a key ally at stake.

Chirac is survived by his wife Bernadette and two daughters.

Culled from France 24

The French Cameroun dictator has reportedly been using the enormous influence his regime wields within Europe and the United States including Canada to get away with the crimes Cameroon government army soldiers are perpetrating against the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group believe and fervently too that it basically makes Europe and the US a cosponsor of French Cameroun terrorism against a people Yaoundé had once described as its own citizens.

Never in the history of the African continent has a regime been allowed to go scot-free after trampling on the legitimate rights of a people. More than 4000 Ambazonians have been killed, thousands of Southern Cameroonians have been relegated to a lower class in French Cameroun detention centers, thousands are living in the bushes and thousands are now refugees in neighbouring Nigeria. By some strange happenstance, certain European countries are complicit in Biya’s crimes against Southern Cameroons.

The truth is that the Biya Francophone regime has been able to get away with these crimes against humanity not only by the political influence in Europe guaranteed by the French government and support from lobby groups in the US but by given bribes to UN and Commonwealth diplomats.

Biya is slowly but surely criminalizing any political speech or disagreement from Southern Cameroons over the political future of the so-called one and indivisible nation. In Yaoundé and in some areas in Douala, Southern Cameroonians can disagree about any Cameroonian political figure or any French Cameroun government official on any issue except separation or federation including who will be Cameroon’s next head of state.

The Francophone Beti Ewondo political elites have twisted Cameroon’s penal code laws..to say that any agitation for better living standard by Southern Cameroonians is only motivated by hate for fatherland and therefore, anybody Ambazonian that protest is exposed to terrorism charges.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The consortium of CPDM crime syndicates headed by the 86 year old President Paul Biya is in the final stages of its life, and the youthful Beti Ewondo political and military leaders are expediting the regime’s demise through their policies against the people of Southern Cameroons.

The Biya administration is old, unbearable, intolerable, unacceptable and at best primitive and is definitely in the final stages of its life because of natural reasons like its cruel measures over the past 37 years, the systematic corruption in the regime, suppression of the Cameroonian people, and totalitarianism of its rules.

The performance of incumbent Beti Ewondo French Cameroun political elites such as Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Joseph Beti Assomo – which is in sharp contradiction to that of their French Cameroun predecessors such as the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo – will expedite the collapse of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime.

Biya and French Cameroun’s war on Southern Cameroons, the crimes committed by the regime’s army soldiers and Biya’s polarization of every aspect of the Cameroonian society has seriously affected the future unity of the so-called one and indivisible state.

We are currently seeing for the first time French Cameroun taxation officers intimidating business owners and collecting money to pay the army and civil servants and we are also seeing major Cameroonian partners such as the USA and Germany withdrawing support they had provided the Cameroonian people for decades.

An ex-convict Paul Atanga Nji was appointed Minister of Territorial Administration while a mentally deranged person is deputy minister for justice. Deranged means insane!

Biya started his hostile policies toward Southern Cameroons after the declaration of independence by the Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and the establishment of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Biya’s rare address to the nation recently in which he accepted for the first time that there was indeed a serious crisis in Southern Cameroons and the silence of CPDM hardliners over the issue showed the regime’s ultimate humiliation and indicates that pressure is mounting.

French business tycoon, Bollore and the Chinese are taking over whatever is left of Cameroon in exchange for the political support that Biya receives from Paris and Beijing. French and US lobby groups are forcing Biya to pay more for political service offered in the West.

United Nations diplomats including Secretary General Gutteres are happy to keep Biya and his ruling CPDM elites as close partners because of Yaoundé’s extravagant payments in gold constantly being made to them!   To be more accurate, Biya and his CPDM regime have nothing but cash that they dish out to lobby groups in Paris, Washington, Geneva and New York.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai