Independent journalist arrested and jailed for “Outrage to the Head of State”
By Ndzana Seme, 12/15/2009
Just like he did to the writer of this report, Paul Biya ordered his military last week to arrest Jean Bosco Talla, the publisher the independent weekly Germinal. Mr. Talla was arrested on December 10, 2009and kept incommunicado in an isolated cell of the Gendarmerie’s SED (Secrétariat d’Etat à la Défense).
He was arraigned yesterday before a State prosecutor, who sent him to jail at the Yaounde Kondengui prison. He may wait there for months to be brought to the court of law, because Paul Biya’s government will be taking all its time to prepare the most efficient charges and accusations to sentence him with jail time and heavy financial penalties. Such a court sentence is deadly tool the Biya regime favors to shut down any undesired newspapers using outward legal means.
The criminal offenses Jean Bosco Talla was arrested for last Thursday December 10, 2009, according to the local press, are “outrage to the president of the Republic and propagation of false information" (outrage au président de la République et propagation de fausses nouvelles).
The writer of this report was arrested in 1994 and 1995 in similar circumstances, received death threats similar to those Jean Bosco Talla received these last months, was jailed each time for three months without charge, and was tried each time for the same charges of “outrage to the Head of State” and “Inviting people to revolt.” These threats to Talla’s life were made mostly because he is coauthor of “Biens mal acquis. A qui profite le crime?” (Inappropriately Acquired Goods – Who Is the Beneficiary of the Crime ?), a report by CCFD-Terre Solidaire published in June 2009, with many pages denouncing Paul Biya’s and his family’s alleged hidden wealth and embezzlement of public funds.
Yet the incriminated article for which Talla was apparently arrested, published in Germinal’s edition of December 3, 2009 and titled “The Secret Pact Between Ahmadu Ahidjo and Paul Biya” (Le pacte secret entre Ahmadou Ahidjo et Paul Biya), in particular the article titled “Could Paul Biya Be or Have Been Homosexual?” (Paul Biya serait-il ou aurait-il été homosexuel?), is an unbiased reproduction in full of a book that was published in Cameroon back in 2001.
The book is titled “Sang pour Sang” (Blood for Blood) and was published in Yaoundé, Sphinx, Editions, 2001. Two of its pages, 7 and 8, are quoted in full by the Germinal’s article. Its author was Ebale Angounou, a young man who had always claimed that he had mixed with President Paul Biya and knew his secrets, was jailed several times, and had always mixed with Cameroonian political and press leaders, including the writer of this report, and finally died in mysterious circumstances just after the book was published. The book itself can be found all over Internet. Its English-translated version can be found online at http://data5.blog.de/media/451/3431451_b97b92118b_d.pdf .
Yesterday December 14, 2009, Jean Bosco Talla was locked down at the Kondengui prison of Yaounde. Jailing Talla in Kodengui may be viewed as a death sentence; because he is now mixed up with some of the former State officials he had investigated upon when he was seeking evidences of “inappropriately acquired goods.”
On February 2008, Talla was arrested along with Kemete, a reporter for the biweekly Le Front, while they were taking pictures of State officials’ luxury buildings in the town of Zoetele. He was tortured and driven from place to place, to Yaounde and Douala and back to Zoetele, before he was released without charge.
One of the buildings he was shooting, in addition to that of then minister of defense Remy Ze Meka, was that of former tax director and minister of finance Polycarpe Abah Abah now locked since April 2008 in Kondengui. Abah Abah is still awaiting trial for alleged charges of embezzlement of public funds. Several other former State officials are also jailed in Kondengui since over a year, in fact because they are all suspected by Paul Biya of being a threat for his staying in power. They are still waiting to be formally charged and tried. Therefore, Talla is set for an expected long stay in the notorious prison.
Kondengui is a place where yet to be sentenced defendants and the convicted, hard core criminals and small pick pocket robbers, disorderly conduct offenders and public fund emblezzlers are all mixed up together. The prisoners who are abandoned and are not visited by their families are left to starve to death because the prison’s food, often less than a handful of a daily mixture of boiled corn and beans, is just insignificant. Those who are weak are used as slaves and sodomized by stronger inmates. Often it doesn’t need more than 1000 Fcfa ($2) to have an inmate do for someone the job of hurting or killing another inmate.
This is the death place in which Jean Bosco Talla is currently locked up. The writer of this report was jailed in Kondengui twice for six months and was tortured several times. In that prison built to house 800 inmates and then housing about 4000, the writer saw bodies moved out on a daily basis.
Germinal’s editor in-chief Duke Atangana Etotogo is also wanted by one gendarmerie officer named commander Atangana, who is allegedly in charge of the Talla case investigation. Duke Atangana Etotogo knows well what his publisher is going through now, since he was himself arrested by the Military Security forces (SEMIL) back in September 2006 when he was publisher of the monthly L’Afrique Centrale.
Duke had thus just published the first edition of his L’Afrique Centrale, including an investigative story exposing networks of embezzlement of public funds in the Army, some of which were run by former minister of defense Remy Ze Meka himself. After torture, Duke was forced to sign a letter of apology to the minister of defense and was released; while the State media were spreading false information such as Duke and Ze Meka were long time friends, thus downplaying the content of Duke’s investigative story.
By Ndzana Seme 12/15/2009
Changing FARA – The Case of Cameroon’s Paul Biya
Because of his use of corruption to secure Washington’s blessing - which he needs so much to get the international support for his continual stay in power through rigged elections and terror over the People of Cameroon -, Paul Biya’s case should be an emergency call to the Barrack Obama’s administration. The law that regulates foreign lobbyists - the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 (FARA) - simply is not up to the task. FARA should be modified, if not repelled, to be in line with current administration’s positions on lobby groups and their negative influence on Washington.
By Seme Ndzana
NEW YORK 12/15/2009 - It has been demonstrated since the September 11 attacks, with regard to Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and other States harboring terrorism, that there is a strong link between a country’s level of social poverty, despair and injustice, and its being a potential breeding ground for terrorism.
In an open letter to president Obama coinciding with his planned inauguration address to the Muslim world, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) attributed the “root causes” of terrorism to “deprivation, poverty, despair and, most importantly, political injustice.” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband argued on January 2009 that “Islamic terrorist groups’ motivations were disparate”.
Addressing the United Nations’ development conference in the Mexican city of Monterrey(*), former President Gearge W Bush acknowledged the link between poverty and the terrorism, which is so easily bred by economic and social despair, warning that "poverty and hopelessness, lack of education and failed government ... often allow conditions that terrorists can seize".
Yet, dictators like Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea, Paul Biya of Cameroon, El Hadj Omar Bongo Odimba of Gabon, or Nursultan Abishuly Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, were held on a different standard when former President Bush granted them official visits at the White House, in addition to increased military assistance to Egypt and Colombia and expanded aid opportunities to Cameroon and Angola. Those dictators were able to seize those opportunities through Washington lobbyists.
Stuck into poverty, insecurity and despair, Cameroonians are thirsting for well being. In 2008, 48% of Cameroonians lived below the poverty line.
Under the current regime, Cameroon has become poorer today than it was in the 1950s, a period when it was wealthier than South Correa. Cameroon has currently the reputation of being one of the world’s most corrupt countries in the world. Paul Biya, the President of the French-backed, neocolonial republic, is credited with instituting one of the more creative tactics in the history of rigged elections.
Cameroonians have exhausted all peaceful attempts to establish a democratic State in their country, including “Ghost Towns” in early 1990s, student riots, and the youth’s general uprising of February 2008; which Paul Biya ordered his military to bloodily crush, killing over 100, wounding and arresting thousands, and having them hastily sentenced to long years in prison by a corrupted court system.
In 2004, as Paul Biya was about to secure a fifth presidential term despite widespread disapproval of his neocolonial administration by the people of Cameroon, he resorted to his favorite tool: corruption. The U. N., the Carter Center and other credible international election observing organizations rejected his offers to do the dirty job. Many, like the observer group led by former Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark, which denounced its rigged registration process, concluded that the 2004 presidential election was “a massive masquerade”.
Yet Paul Biya was able to secure Washington’s support for his 2004 reelection process, through both the local U.S. Ambassador who praised the “progress made” and concluded that “the irregularities where not severe enough to impact the final outcome of the elections,” and through an obscure, Washington-based Association of Former Members of Congress.
Since the lobby group Patton Boggs had won by August 2004 a $400,000 contract with the government of Cameroon to represent it with the U.S. Congress, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, in an account held by lobbyist Joseph Brand, the help Paul Biya had just so purchased was delivered to him in the form of a six former U.S. Congressmen team headed by then Patton Boggs’ law practicing partner Greg Laughlin. Laughlin is the former Democratic Representative of Texas, who later joined the Republican Party. He was defeated in 1997 by Libertarian Ron Paul.
The team of corrupted former U.S. Congressmen publicized the statement Patton Boggs had prepared for them before their travel to Cameroon, which was aimed at selling the sham election as legitimate. It read in part that the polls were “fair and transparent;” which contributed to turning the Cameroonian people’s favorable opinion towards Americans to hatred, despite the support to the country’s democratic process they had experienced from the U.S., in particular from the Bill Clinton administration.
Paul Biya is about to play the same song again soon. He is thirsting to secure a State visit to Obama’s White House; which he would use to anticipate in 2010 the elections that are supposed to be held on November 2011.
And every time he is about to launch rigged elections, Paul Biya muzzles independent and investigative newspapers. Last week on December 10, 2009, he ordered the arrest of a journalist. The publisher of the weekly Germinal is now in jail and allegedly charged with “outrage to the President of the Republic” and “Propagation of False Information” even though the incriminated article is simply a full reproduction of a book published in 2001 in Cameroon.
This is the dictator who is now determined to land a State visit in the White House and an official audience with President Barack Obama. He is currently negotiating actively with various Washington to meet his goals, according to a Cameroon’s government insider requiring not to be named. An official visit at the White House and an audience with the world popular Barack is a manna Paul Biya needs badly to bolster his coming (anticipated?) reelection during rigged elections.
America cannot be a good advocate of good governance and anti corruption in the world as long as corruption is rooted in Washington through the influence of unscrupulous lobbyists. FARA should be reviewed and toughened with clear limits upon foreign lobbyist activities.
(*) Called the "Monterrey consensus" in Bush accepts link between poverty and terrorism By Rupert Cornwell in Washington, The Independent, UK, Saturday, 23 March 2002
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Journalist Arrest: a Signal for Anticipated Elections in 2010?
By Ndzana Seme 12/15/2009
It is suspected that, by so muzzling the press for news that is all over Internet, namely Ebale Angounou’s book titled Sang pour sang, Paul Biya is set for another rigged reelection.
For, it is very amazing to watch how Paul Biya, who is known to be a specialist in the use of time to wear down all kinds of scandals by avoiding any reactions, suddenly becomes very sensitive to and offended by an article that reproduces abstracts of a published book.
History of the relationship of Biya’s regime with its critics had shown that Paul Biya has always remained insensitive to the following series of information:
Paul Biya was referred and recommended back in 1961 to former President Ahmadou Ahidjo by former French colonial congressman Louis Paul Aujoulat and former Charles de Gaulle’s African connections master Jacques Foccart. Yet when Paul Biya, a former seminarian student, was a political science student in Paris back in the 1950s, his best friend was Damase Omgbwa, a tailor and a procurer then running networks of prostitution. He was also known by his former fellow Cameroonian students as an individual who was too close to be a love friend to priests and colonizers, in particular Louis Paul Aujoulat. This information was published in the past in Cameroon and President Paul Biya did never show he was offended.
To get promoted in Ahidjo’s government, just like it is still alleged today in Biya’s regime, a candidate had to show his/her total loyalty to the President. The test for such loyalty, for the male candidate, was to give his wife as a sexual toy to Ahmadou Ahidjo and/or his close ruling Fulbe relatives. The female candidate was invited to become the President’s sex toy in exchange for her appointment in government. It was also alleged that Mason Ahmadou Ahidjo was sodomizing some candidates, including in particular Paul Biya who had passed most of his administrative career besides the ruthless dictator at the presidency. This information was also published in the past in Cameroon and President Paul Biya had never shown he was offended by it, until Germinal reproduced this information by Germinal quoting Ebale Angounou’s book.
Back in 2006, the Cameroonian press has been publishing the names of government officials on lists of alleged homosexuals. The homosexuality saga started when some women who were reportedly frustrated by their husbands' homosexual practices, complained to the Archbishop of Yaounde, His Grace Victor Tonye Bakot. For two hours during his sermon at the Yaounde Metropolitan Capital, Archbishop Bakot condemned homosexuality as one of the worst sins.
In his national address during the 2009 February 11 National Youth Day, Paul Biya reacted to the homosexual saga. One of the main issues he harped on concerned Cameroonian journalists “violating professional ethics.” He strongly condemned journalists for what he called “digging into people's private lives.”
Although he made no direct reference to the homosexuality saga currently rocking the country since over three years, it was clear in the minds of many observers that he was talking about the publication of lists of presumed homosexuals in the country. Is it because he found that Jean Bosco Talla was not in line with what he called for, namely “to exercise press freedom with limits so as to respect peoples' privacy and professional ethics,” that Paul Biya ordered the persecution and prosecution of the publisher of Germinal ?
Paul Biya has been turning a deaf ear to the UN’s and non profit organizations’ calls both for lifting the ban on homosexuality - which is illegal in Cameroon and punishable with imprisonment of five years and a fine between 20,000 and 200,000 francs Cfa, ($40 to $400) - and for bringing defamation laws in line with international standards by eliminating criminal penalties. Apparently he wants everything both ways, which leaves impunity to become a fair game for his entourage of friends and protected officials.
When Paul Biya took office as the President of the Republic in November 1982, the quitting President Ahmadou Ahidjo wanted to stay in control and to use him as a puppet leader. Ahidjo thus left him with a slush fund estimated at 400 billion francs Fcfa (about $900 millions) to be used for funding elections that would legitimize him in power. A few years later, when it was time in 1984 to organize the elections, the slush fund money had disappeared. Paul Biya had allegedly embezzled it all and had laundered and hidden the money over into financial and tax paradises. This information was published in the past in Cameroon and President Paul Biya has never expressed any reaction about it.
From 1986 to 1988, just like Ahmadou Ahidjo had used the individuals he appointed at the head of State-owned banks to grant “political loans” to his Northern relatives in a clear drive to quickly transform former Fulbe cattle breeders into a new class of wealthy businessmen, Paul Biya stormed Cameroon’s national banks to serve himself and the Southern Beti “elite” he surrounded himself with to govern. Through middlemen, namely his late wife Jeanne Irene Biya and ones named Albert Cherel Mva’a and Aze’e Jérémie, Paul Biya bled the national banks of cash to fund the constructions of a personal palace and plantations in his village Mvomeka’a.
At the Société Camerounaise de Banque (SCB) where the writer of this report was working as an officer and witnessed the events, Paul Biya’s middlemen were just showing up, telling CEO Robert Messi Messi (exiled since then in Canada as he is personally charged with embezzling 2.3 billion francs Fcfa) that the President wanted money. At each time they loaded cash for 1 or 1.5 billion francs Fcfa ($2 to $3 millions) on a peak-up truck and left.
Paul Biya’s and his new sharks’ excessive cash withdrawals in the banks, worst of all without any loan applications based upon any anticipated economic activities, drove the bled banks into bankruptcy as they became unable to meet their cash obligations and ratios at the Central Bank.
With the help of the IMF - which was then hunting for State-owned enterprises to list those as privatization candidates as the exclusive economic solution -, Paul Biya and Credit Lyonnais, SCB’s second shareholder, pronounced SCB’s bankruptcy in what they called “scission-liquidation.” After unjustifiably under-evaluating the bank’s assets, the best loans were granted to the French to create a new bank called SCB-Credit Lyonnais; while the remaining loan portfolio was transferred to a newly created Société Nationale de Recouvrement des Créances (National Collection Company). Up to this day, millions of Cameroonians’ savings left in their accounts at the time of bankruptcy have never been reimbursed. All moneys collected by both the SCB-CL and the Collection Company had been disappearing since then, as they are nowhere to be found on the national budgets.
To pay back his and his entourage’s cash withdrawals that bled the banks to bankruptcy, Paul Biya used and abused of his power as the President. He engaged the Republic of Cameroon to contract and to pay a loan for 15 billion francs Fcfa (20.1 billion over a total of “political loans” of 35 billions, according to other readings) at the Central Bank. Cameroonian taxpayers, through the National Treasury, reimbursed the loan plus interests for seven years. This information was published in the past in Cameroon and President Paul Biya has never expressed any reaction about it.
In the CCFD-Terre Solidaire report published in June 2009 and titled Biens mal acquis. A qui profite le crime? (Inappropriately Acquired Goods – Who Is the Beneficiary of the Crime?), many pages denounce Paul Biya’s and his family’s hidden wealth, means used to embezzle public funds and other abuses of power. His son Frank Biya is beneficiary of exclusive licenses for lumber exploitation on vast Cameroon’s forest areas, and makes excessive benefits free of taxes on European lumber markets, while he also a government minister salary living in Monaco, France.
Paul Biya’s new slush fund has become the National Oil Company (SNH). The different amounts he has embezzled from the SNH coffers, including disappearance of 20 billions in 2006 discovered and denounced by the World Bank, sneaking funds to purchase a personal, second hand plane called “Albatros” in the U.S. by circumventing World Bank’s control, and untold other financial crimes committed before the IMF’s control over the SNH, are still to be investigated. He also uses international middlemen, such his New York American representative Peter Brigger, chairman of the hastily created bogus Hydromine Inc., who is beneficiary of an exclusive license for the exploitation of Cameroon’s vast reserves of bauxite mineral. All this information was published in the past in Cameroon and President Paul Biya has never expressed any reaction about it.
©2003 The African Independent, Inc. All rights to republication are reserved.
