Winds are Blowing in Equatorial Guinea

November 4, 2011

Source: Human Rights Watch

Concern over politically motivated arrest of opposition member ahead of referendum

The government of Equatorial Guinea should immediately release an opposition party member and civil society activist arrested on November 1, 2011, in what appeared to be a politically motivated act, Human Rights Watch and EG Justice said today. Marcial Abaga Barril, the representative of the main opposition party on the national electoral body, was detained without a warrant outside of his home, allegedly in connection with a murder investigation. 

Abaga's arrest and detention comes just days after the start of campaigning for a Nov. 13 referendum to approve constitutional changes proposed by President Teodoro Obiang's government. Abaga's party has strongly opposed the constitutional changes. Sources close to him said that on the day of his arrest he had been helping to plan a series of public events to press for a "no" vote on the referendum. 

"Marcial Abaga's politically motivated arrest is yet another example of President Obiang's offensive against opposition voices," said Daniel Bekele, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. "The allegation that Abaga is connected with a murder simply has no credibility." 

The Obiang government has sought to silence those opposed to the referendum. Uniformed police officers and others in plainclothes disrupted events held this week by Abaga's party, Convergence for Social Democracy (Convergencia Para la Democracia Social, CPDS), and forced the participants to disperse, a witness told EG Justice, a US-based group that works for human rights and the rule of law in Equatorial Guinea. 

Abaga is on the party's national executive committee. It is one of only two political parties in the country that are independent of the governing party. He is a municipal council member in Malabo and also sits on the National Electoral Commission of Equatorial Guinea as the representative of his party. The electoral body, which is dominated by the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (Partido Democrático de Guinea Ecuatorial, PDGE) and representatives of allied parties, lacks the independence necessary to oversee votes impartially, Human Rights Watch and EG Justice said. 

Human Rights Watch and EG Justice emphasized that there is no independent judiciary in Equatorial Guinea. The government commonly carries out arbitrary arrests and denies detainees due process, holding them indefinitely without telling them the charges against them. Basic fair trial standards are disregarded. Torture remains a serious problem despite a national law prohibiting it. Abaga has not reported being ill-treated, according to the sources. 

The constitutional changes coming up for a November 13 vote would potentially allow 69-year-old Obiang to serve for two more terms of seven years each. They also would create a new post for a hand-picked vice president, widely considered to be intended for his eldest son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is his presumed successor. 

The younger Obiang has been the subject of corruption and money-laundering investigations in France, Spain, and the United States. These investigations have so far led to the seizure of a fleet of luxury vehicles outside his Paris residence and a US government effort to seize more than $70 million in assets. 

In October, the president appointed the younger Obiang, known as Teodorín, to head the ruling party's campaign to promote the referendum. In 2010, Teodorín was made the vice president of the ruling party. 

Equatorial Guinea has been roundly criticized for its conduct of elections. President Obiang was re-elected in November 2009 with 95.4 percent of the vote in an election with weak international monitoring, raising "the suspicion of systematic voting fraud," according to the US State Department. Ahead of the vote, the government stifled and harassed the country's beleaguered political opposition, denied the opposition equal access to the media, and imposed serious constraints on international observers. 

Abaga also is active as the head of a youth organization engaged in human rights education, Sensation of the Young Future (Sensación del Joven Futuro, SEJOF). And he is an advocate for greater transparency about the government's management of oil revenue through participation in the international Publish What You Pay Coalition and the now-defunct National Commission for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). Equatorial Guinea was a candidate country for membership in EITI until 2010, when it was expelled from the initiative. 

Abaga was detained outside his home at approximately 10 p.m. on November 1, by plainclothes security officials who said they were from the police but did not provide an explanation for the arrest other than to say they needed to question him as part of an investigation, a family member said. He was taken to the Malabo jail known as "Guantánamo" because of its reputation for abuses against detainees, where he has had access to visits from family members, colleagues, and his lawyer. Equatorial Guinea's law allows for a suspect to be held in detention without charge for up to 72 hours. 

Sources close to Abaga said he was informed on the afternoon of November 2 - more than 12 hours after he was detained - that he was being held in connection with a police investigation into an alleged killing two weeks earlier of a cook working for President Obiang. No such incident had previously been publicly reported. Abaga firmly denies the allegation, which Human Rights Watch and EG Justice described as implausible.

The Vampire of Francophone Africa

October 24, 2011
By Christian Mbouende

The government of France has for too long dealt with Africa in inconsiderate, disgraceful and unrepentantly diabolic ways. This was recently repeated during and after the recent presidential election in Cameroon. This government is a disgrace to humanity and its people. Their filthy ways is of the highest degree for a nation who has made a place in the world at the expense of Africans by extortion, deceit, blood shedding, killings, wars, division, oppression and other diabolic devices which have contributed to keep Africa from progressing and in constant deprivation. In all confidence, the devil itself must be drawing lessons in diabolism from this government. 

This government of a country that advertises itself as the example of human refinement in intellect, fashion, mannerism and good living has been a disgrace to its people and humanity as it continues one administration after another to work on its eternal goal of sucking Africa of its God's blessings, by any necessary means, both in peace and war times which it orchestrates at will to meet its materialistic and financial aims. But the so called peace times in countries like The Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Gabon, Cameroon, Congo Brazzaville, Burundi, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Algeria, until recently Tunisia and Rwanda, and many more have only been opportune times for this government and the dictators it has handpicked to tyrannize a truly peaceful people who simply demands to live in dignity and freedom in their lands and to choose their own destiny. Whenever the aims of this imperialistic government are not achievable in Africa in periods of stability it would ignite wars and chaos to assert greater influence and extort. The French government for nearly half a century has maintained defense treaties with African dictators in order to discourage internal rebellion, when in fact the only defense French speaking Africa truly needs is to be freed from the tyranny of its dictators and of the French government. Of course, those dictators too are subjected to the sanguinary might of France if they no longer meet the objectives of France. 

President Obama coming to the White House gave many Africans hope that France tyranny toward Africa can subside. It's clear that he has tried behind the scene to influence the current French administration to allow Africans to get rid of their dictators if they choose to. This diabolic and nearly century old ways the French government has continuously dealt with Africa is clearly a well-entrenched and hugely lucrative habit it is not ready to let go as the recent upheavals in Tunisia and Ivory Coast and its approval of and involvement in rigged presidential elections in Gabon and just recently Cameroon confirm. In Gabon it has manipulated the last presidential election result with the use of its sophisticated technology to put into the presidency the son of the deceased dictator who ruled Gabon for several decades with an iron fist and the full support of the many successive French administrations. Last week, after less than a third of Cameroonians voted in presidential election which is considered with undeniable and abundant evidences by most observers, independent news medias and opposition parties as non-transparent and pervasively imbued with massive frauds, irregularities, logistical nightmares and unfair rules, the French government from Paris was quick to assert its opinion by declaring the election to have been acceptable and without serious concern, this in its attempts to influence public opinion in order to maintainin in power the ruler of Cameroon of the past 29 years. Within short time after that the American ambassador in Cameroon before a news conference asserted a totally different opinion of the election by declaring that the election was full of irregularities and the results were unreliable. The next day the French government recanted its prior statement by nearly reasserting the opinion of the American ambassador. Well, this is simply another case of the French government being caught with its pant down in its dealings with Africa, and the sight of it is never pretty.

Any followers of Africa's events understand that without the assistance of the French government most of Africa's dictators would not be long lasting and without those dictators who do not reflect any modernism let alone any viable legacy for their decades long reign, Africa would be confidently marching toward a meritocratic and progressive society and its best talents would find it viable to return to and remain in Africa to pursue their aspirations without being subjected to constant fear of persecution, bureaucratic nightmares, corruption at every level of daily life and from its sham institutions, tribalism, mediocrity, disregard of human and property rights, imprisonment without charge and judgement, kidnapping, lawlessness frequently perpetrated by those expected to legislate, judge and enforce the law. 

I am confident that this American administration will continue to pressure the evil French government to mend its way toward Africa. But, lasting change will be possible if the French people become less tolerant of this state of affairs for the sake of our common humanity. There are many Africans, their children and wives who are French citizens, they too must awake and organize and participate in the politics of France and help stop this ever insatiable monster that is their government, the diabolic government of France. And Africans living under this tyranny on the daily basis must accept that this evil will not depart from them as long as they remain fractured, unwilling to bond together for the common purpose of liberating themselves.

When Protest is Called “Disorder”

October 16, 2011 

By Juliette Abandokwe 

Douala, Cameroon 

On October 4th, five days before the general election, seventeen of Mboua Massok’s young militants were arrested as they were disseminating invitations for the next pre-electoral meeting to be held two days later. Mboua Massok, also commonly called “Acting Combatant”, has become over the years the symbol of resistance to the trivialization of the intolerable and ruthless rule of Paul Biya. 

According to the newspapers, the seventeen arrested youth are facing charges for having caused disorder; their trial will take place on Monday 17 October. 

A young 22 year-old Cameroonian on Facebook commented this arrest by saying that “they weren’t fighting for liberty but for disorder (according to the newspapers). The next one who’ll act in that sense will be punished and charged”. 

It is nice to know that in Cameroon one is punished first and then charged! 

This kind of talk just shows how well Paul Biya’s rule is using young Cameroonians in his efforts to disseminate terror, by convincing them to believe how bad it is to have a different opinion, and to stand up for it. These youth are then left to criss-cross all over the place for systematic intimidation and demonization of independent thinking. The warning of this young man is just drenched in abuse of power and impunity, supported by the climate of terror instilled by the brutal national system of repression. 

Biya's newspapers and television: A very efficient and well financed brainwashing scheme 

To protest against the high-jacking of basic liberties, against institutionalized brutality, and against the rape of a people's right to chose its leader freely, is not "fighting for disorder" as the Cameroonian state controlled media are proclaiming. That is the language of coldblooded dictation, aimed at the destruction of any attempt for self-determination. 

For the sake of their business, Paul Biya and France need a system in Cameroon where Cameroonians are superfluous. They would lose too much money if the people of Cameroon succeeded in standing up to ask for more justice and fair partnerships. So all heads must be kept down, and any head that comes up will be chopped off. That is in essence what the state media are telling Cameroonians. 

In reality, the self- and France- proclaimed part-time president has declared war on “his” people, by continuing the 51-year old denial of the right for the Cameroonian people to organize an efficient, coherent thus strong opposition. The global picture of today’s’ opposition is the direct result of a systematic psychosocial destruction of society, operated mainly through imported and well used propaganda methods. 

As protest is called “disorder”, everybody naturally agrees that is has to be put in order. That is part of the brainwashing procedure. In reality, Biya is forcibly suppressing any kind of protest, with the support of a completely rotten "justice" system, where it is his friends who are in charge. As he considers the Cameroonian people as superfluous, it would be contradictory if he cared about their fundamental rights. 

Biya, “The Choice of The People” 

For Paul Biya, the people of Cameroonian have no rights; his has done the utmost efforts to prevent them from asking for their civil liberties, by managing to make them believe that the misery they are living in, is what is called “peace”. 

Intimidation, repression and propaganda will not stop the wheel to turn round. When the “too much is too much” will have gone over the brim, the time will come when a miserable tyrant called Paul Biya will himself be punished and charged in the bitterest way. That moment is slowly coming, however sarcastic people think about it. 

That is except if he runs off without paying his bill, which at his age can happen anytime.

Evil ruling never lasts for ever

In Nigeria, Militancy Raises Specter of Civil War

12 October 2011 

David Francis

On Oct. 2, Nigeria celebrated the 51st anniversary of its freedom from British rule. A large gala was planned in Abuja, the fast-growing Nigerian capital located in the center of the country.

But, days before the celebrations, Boko Haram, a Muslim extremist group based in the country's north, and the Movement to Emancipate the Niger Delta (MEND), based in the country's oil-rich south, both threatened to disrupt the festivities with violence. Boko Haram had already made it clear that it was capable of attacking Abuja on Aug. 26, when it exploded a bomb at the United Nations building there, killing 23. And just a week before the scheduled gala event, a bomb scare at the country's National Assembly sent lawmakers scrambling for safety.

MEND had long ago showed itself capable of such an attack. It is responsible for a string of bombings, kidnappings and killings against the Nigerian government as well as against oil companies in the south over the past decade. And as Boko Haram has emerged, MEND has become even more active in an effort to reinsert itself into Nigeria's national conversation.

Paul Biya, the Killer of Innocent Cameroonians

3 October 

Tila Bokado

Voice Of Cameroon is calling on the United Nations, the United States government, human rights organizations and media groups around the world to advise Paul Biya who have continuously torture and savagely murdered innocent Cameroonians , to watch his evil ways because we are ready to take down his armed chickens. We understand that they're some members of the Cameroon armed chickens who are dedicated to brutalize and murder innocent Cameroonians in order to please Paul Biya the tyrannic dictator. That will be the greatest mistake if that happen because our Freedom Troopers will use every means necessary to equalize any bloody killings in the South Cameroon camp by the evil regime. The Cameroon People's Liberation Troopers want the following issues to be resolved immediately between paul biya and Southern Cameroonians.

1.  Paul Biya must immediately release every Southern Cameroonian and political prisoners who are in prison or house of arrest. Our people have every rights to walk freely and enjoy their natural fatherland without fear of anyone.

2.     WE need the names of every Southern Cameroonian and political activists who are held captive by the illegal regime of Dictator paul biya. We have seen recent videos of filthy, crowded house of arrest and detention camps where our citizens are held captive by Paul Biya.

3.    If any Southern Cameroonian or citizen of Cameroon who have been arrested lost their life in the hands of paul biya and his armed chickens, that will be the beginning of a bloody war. The Cameroon People's Liberation Troopers will not sit and watch paul biya murder our citizens anymore. Those Cameroonians who are supporting Paul Biya will automatically be classified as enemies of the State because they are knowingly promoting violence by supporting a brutal dictator.

4.   We are giving paul biya less than 24 hours to meet our demands and if Paul Biya decided not to let them go, The People's Liberation Troopers will forcefully release every Southern Cameroonian and political prisoner in Cameroon.

Live Either Free or Die

8 octobre 2011

Patrick Sianne

Let Paul Biya go, now! 

Let him vamoose and leave the Cameroonians held in bondage for this too long in an uncaring dictatorship, FREE. This Freedom that I am calling for is not just for me and my family members and friends. It is deep and meaningful Freedom that allows people to think and act and even fly freely without turning around and looking back and left and right to protect their back and sides from a dictator, be it this Biya’s or the one that may come after.

Liberty has no price. Many are those of the ruling cabal, friends inclusive, who have come to me in private and public, day time and in the thick of darkness at bight, to ask me, Patrick Sianne, since coming back from China, “Patrick, but what do you really want? We are prepared to fix your conditions, if you are ready to tell us, we settle it and you remain silent.”

My answer to them has been then, now and tomorrow viz: “Let Paul Biya go, now! Let him vamoose and leave the Cameroonians held in bondage for this too long in an uncaring dictatorship, FREE. I want Freedom, so, has been my answer. This Freedom that I am calling for is not just for me and my family members and friends. It is deep and meaningful Freedom that allows people to think and act and even fly freely without turning around and looking back and left and right to protect their back and sides from a dictator, be it this Biya’s or the one that may come after.”

It is a natural law for all to be free. Man does not have to be a burden to man, as Biya has become one big bug to a cross section of Cameroon, just in an effort to preserve a power that he inherited accidentally on that objectionable, damned November 6, 1982.

“Je pense donc je suis,” said Descartes, the famous French Mathematician-Philosopher to illustrate how vital is Freedom to Humans in particular and to society at large. Limiting Freedom is holding everyone and everything back from enlightenment and advancement.

So much of import is the necessity to feel free that one of the fifty states of the United States of America, Newhampshire, a State in the East Coast part of the USA called New England, adopted this telling slogan as its State Motto: “Live Either Free or Die.”

This notion is not of just today. It has a historical significance birthing right from the days of the American Revolution, the then nascent nation’s War of Independence from colonial and Imperialistic England or the United Kingdom.

Revolution is first and foremost a question of freedom of the mind. Bob Marley, the great legend of Reggae, underlined this fact in one of his hit tunes of liberation and redemption when he asked us to “emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, non but ourselves can free our minds.”

Sick and tired of oppression, exploitation and cheating by the British colonial masters, patriotic American nationalist of high intellects like Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Jay and Alexander Hamilton (Founding Fathers) , as revolutionary ideologues, set out first of all, to provide the ideas markets from which the people were to buy and use to use to free their mind to the critical point when they gather the necessary courage to start challenging the evil system fearing nothing else, but fear itself.

That was the trend of thoughts that pre-set the chain of events, little-step-by- little-step culminating in the famous Boston Tea Party when precipitated the transformations leading to the war and liberation of America under the able leadership of the person who became the first president, General George Washington, the man in honour for whom the capital of th present all-powerful United States of America is named in thanks for his selfless bravery and commitment to the noble cause of FREEDOM.

Message Approved by LVP: Libertas – Veritas – Probitas

Motto: One for all, all for One; All for one, one for All. What goes around, comes around!

Cameroon: Biya's Liberticidal Cruelty and his Free and Fair Election of 9 October 2011

5 October 2011

Patrick Sianne

While Mr. Biya has been always saying that he would like to be remembered the days after his too long a one-man show and reign over Cameroon to be remembered as the man who brought democracy in Cameroon he and his boys do all before and behind the scenes to kill the very freedoms he purported to want to nurture and culture. 


Some sort of democratic representation and representative is the ploy in play here, like any other system or policy that Mr. Biya has said he is instituting in Cameroon since November 6, 1982 that he took over from El Hadj Ahmadou Ahidjo as second present of the Second Republic of Cameroon.

Now that the English speakers of the Third Republic are staking their calim to a moral imperative to take the helm from Biya and preach by example by being the real purveyor belt for sustainable democratic institutions and traditions in Cameroon wth courageous woman and men like Kah Walla, Fru Ndi, Ayah Paul, Ben Muna and George Nyamndi, the Biya Boys are behind the scene wanting to thwart all the forces for change that is surfacing at the bud stage wherever and whenever they germinate or attempt to burst out.

Here is a new case arising in where the wonder lads of the very combative, radical Mboua Massock Movement have been picked up and put under keys at a gendarme jailroon somewhere in Bonanjo, Douala, as per this missive I just received via facebook from a trustworthy source.

This group of 17 were manhandled and taken off the street for nuisance, just because they were trying to say it loud, to speak like James Brown in his hit song of the sixties or seventies, tittled Say it Loud, I'm Black and Proud.

These proud and promissory and patriotic Cameroonian's were in the streets distributing flyers announcing a show-down with dictator Biya come October six, tomorrow Thursday, when the police visited with them unceremoniously and took them away against their basic human rights, not without a bare-arms resistance.

This other Douala public and unconstitutional cruelty by these forces of everything else but Law and order comes on the of the heavy crack down that is still to settle in Buea after the actvists of the Southern Cameroons National Council were prevented to hold their 50th anniversary commemorative grand rally by the same Biya liberticidal forces.

In Buea, the heavy arms used in the sweep was indiscriminate, catching even the watch-dogs of society, protectors and defenders of freedom of expression that are journalist in their noble role of news gathering and dissemination.

Patrick Sianne, Elvis Tah and Adams Bouddih, of The Post newspaper and Solomon Amabo of Equinoxe television are four of the know reporters impolitely accosted, violently molested and humiliated and then whisked of for detention and questioning and intimidation, just for being at the right place at the right time and attempting to do their job, provider of their daily living, how it is supposed to be ina real democracy, and not the simulacrum Paul Biya wants to seal and sell for real, this new election season again, as he has done to bag one genration of dilly-dallying at the head of the state. This callously executed political cacophony and buffoonery must come to nought this yea by any means necessary, see Malcolm X. It is the opinion of Libertas - Veritas - Probitas that the battle should leave the mainstreet to the mean street, where we the people can in quick shift respond to fire by fire, bully for bully, tit for tat.