In less than two months, the Southern Cameroons crisis that has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons will be two years old and despite criticism by the international community, the Yaounde government’s ferocious brutality is still going on. Indeed, there is no sign that the government is thinking of any other solution that can result in a peaceful resolution of the conflict that has already killed some 3,000 civilians and about 1,000 military men.

Despite the government’s radio silence over what is happening in the two English-speaking regions of the country, there are indications that the government is losing sleep over the situation. Instead of seeking peace, the government is still prepared to take military action that might only make matters worse. The government’s arrogance and greed are to blame for the deterioration of the situation in the English-speaking regions of the country and it has been working hard to disguise its frustration.

But it is always challenging to hide frustrations and issues. Speaking recently during a press conference in Yaounde, the country’s communication minister, Issa Tchiroma, struck a different note. While insisting that Cameroon was one and indivisible, he urged Cameroonians – Anglophones and Francophones – to remain united so as to face an imaginary foreign attack.

Mr. Tchiroma who has been very uncompromising when it comes to the Southern Cameroons crisis, insinuated that the ugly fighting playing out in the North West and South West regions of the country was the handiwork of foreign countries and agents whose sole interest is to have a grip on the country’s gold, oil, diamond and other natural resources.

But his message is not getting through. It is clearly falling on deaf ears. Southern Cameroonians will surely not be listening to those stories from a man who has worked so hard to ensure Southern Cameroonians get killed for their resources. The South West region, in particular, is a receptacle of God’s blessings for the country. The country’s oilfields are located in Ndian Division and there are huge gold deposits in Mbonge. Manyu Division has huge expanse of forest that is the envy of the world and it is alleged that this division, noted for its learned people, is sitting on huge oil deposits. There was some exploratory work in the region before the conflict broke out. This will surely continue when the guns stop spreading death.

The region’s waters are also home to large fish stocks. Its forest is home to unimaginable fauna and flora and it is not in error that the world also knows the country because of the Korup National Park which straddles Manyu and Indian Divisions. The South West region is also known for its fertile volcanic soil and this explains why agriculture is one of the many activities that have been yielding huge foreign earnings to the country. Many of the country’s neighbors have their food supply from the south west region.

Unfortunately, this region is one of the poorest in the country.  Its people are still living in abject poverty and what passes for medical, school and road infrastructure clearly belongs to another epoch. The South West deserves better, but years of marginalization have left the region in dehumanizing poverty.

While the country has been raking in millions of dollars from the region’s oil, the residents of the region have been tied up in degrading poverty. The country’s lone refinery (SONARA) is located in Southern Cameroon, precisely in the Southwest port city of Limbe formerly known as Victoria, but the natives of the region have been reduced to sorry spectators of events in their own region.

The Southern Cameroons crisis is also born of this injustice. More than 90% of the refinery staff are Francophones and to add insults to injury, staff of the refinery have their own neighborhoods that are well designed and very clean. Besides, petroleum products are more expensive in the South West region than in any other region of the country.

This economic apartheid that has been around since 1977 when oil was discovered in Ndian Division is one of the many reasons why Southern Cameroonians hold that a clear break with East Cameroon will be the ideal solution and they are willing to sacrifice their lives so that future generations will not have to deal with the same issues.

They want to walk away from this ‘political marriage’ that has brought them more pain than gain. Though it will take time to achieve such an outcome, Southern Cameroonians back home, now known as Ground Zero, hold that it better to die trying than to sit and watch other people enjoy their God-given wealth.

If they succeed to walk away, then Cameroon will be losing about 60% of its wealth. Southern Cameroons is blessed with enormous wealth and the Yaounde government holds that it is by terrorizing the people that it will succeed to keep them in the dark of what is happening to their resources.

For almost 50 years, the Rio Del Rey estuary in the South West region has been the source of more than 90% and at times 100% of all the country’s hydrocarbons, specifically oil. Since 2014, Cameroon has exported more than US$5.88 billion worth of products, of which more than US$2.65 billion, about CFAF 1,650 billion, has been from crude oil alone. This is a significant amount of money and the Yaounde government cannot afford to lose such revenues.

The government is not only frustrated, it is scared, as the possibility of secession is there. All its efforts to lay the matter to rest have been futile. Its divide-and-rule strategy has simply fallen apart as North westerners and South westerners clearly understand that they are united for a cause that will bring them happiness and prosperity. Not even the government’s military violence has succeeded to take the wind out the fighters’ sail. The more the government kills, the more determined the fighters become.

The government had underestimated the will of the people of Southern Cameroons to right the wrongs of the past. For many of them, their fate is worse than death and they have very little time to be around this planet. They want to establish their own country and even ensure that future generations do not deal with such time-consuming and energy-sapping challenges.

And they are receiving huge support from the Diaspora that has transformed this issue into an opportunity for its strength and influence to be felt. With some 4 million Southern Cameroonians out of the country, it is likely that more money will be flowing to Cameroon to feed the war that has rushed many young men and soldiers to an early grave.

The government had never thought the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora could be this influential. It had also underestimated the anger of those living abroad. Southern Cameroonians started living the country as far back as 1965 when the country’s first president, Amadou Ahidjo, displayed his huge appetite for dictatorship. For many Southern Cameroonians, it was better to live abroad a free man than to live at home in invisible chains.

Today, that Diaspora has reduced the Yaounde government into a symbol of mockery. The Diaspora is financing the war in the country and it is willing to bring down the entire country. Gradually, the Francophone Diaspora is also joining in. Francophones now know that if the current system is not brought down, their own children will be caught up in a pretty mess, as Southern Cameroonians already have a foot out of the fake union that was put together by Ahidjo, Foncha and Muna who are all dead and gone.

Cameroon seems to have been caught up in a terrible mess. 2018 may be the year the country might implode. With presidential elections scheduled for October, it is clear that things might spiral out of control, especially as the country’s ailing and aging president, Paul Biya, is running in an election, many observers say, will never be free and fair.

Mr. Biya has ruled the country for 36 years and he has nothing to show for the time he has led the country. The country’s roads have become death traps, its hospitals have been reduced to consultation clinics, its schools clearly belong to another era and its people are suffering from all types of ailments. Today, the country is beset by many diseases that have been eliminated in other parts of the world. Cholera is killing many people in the nation’s capital, Yaounde, due to poor water supply and sanitation.  The roads in the city are clearly begging for an extreme makeover, but the government has clearly run out of money.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has hit the Yaounde government like a ton of bricks. The country’s economy is suffering. Its Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) seem to be out of service. State corporations located in Southern Cameroons are already feeling the heat. Pamol, a palm oil production corporation located in Lobe, a small town in Ndian Division, has finally shut its doors as the fighting between Southern Cameroonian fighters and army soldiers takes a turn for the worse. This revenue stream has stopped flowing and Yaounde is really ill-at-ease.

Pamol’s closure is bad news for the government. More than three thousand Pamol workers are today unemployed and living in permanent fear, as the fighting between the warring factions rages on. Schools and courts in the region have been closed for almost two years and it is increasingly obvious that the Yaoundé government has lost control of certain parts of the two English-speaking regions.

But it is not only Pamol’s closure that is causing the government nightmares. The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), one of the country’s major employers, is also going through a rough patch. Some of its factories have closed shop, while the fighters have deliberately set some of its infrastructure ablaze as part of their economic sabotage campaign. Malende, a small town located some 6 km from Muyuka, has witnessed huge unemployment rates. The corporation’s rubber factory was set ablaze sometime last month by some unidentified men and this has hit CDC like a ton of bricks.

In other plantations, many workers have simply deserted. The fighting is disrupting economic activities in those plantations and many workers hold that it is better to quit than be caught up between the devil and the deep blue sea. The fighting, coupled with the derisory salaries the corporation pays to its workers, has made CDC unattractive and this is gradually eroding the government’s tax base.

Similarly, government revenue has taken a nosedive, as the national oil refinery located in the Southwest region is also facing some major challenges. While falling global oil prices are spreading pain and suffering among oil exporters, the declining oil output and constant attempts by Southern Cameroonian fighters to bring down the country’s lone oil refinery are leaving the government in a huge messy economic quandary. The crisis is a true nightmare to this once-upon-a-time oasis of peace. It is indeed a millstone around the government’s neck.

The government is gradually recognizing that declaring a war on its own people was a big mistake, as the impact of the war is spreading into East Cameroon. With a large influx of internally displaced people into East Cameroon, housing and food have become very expensive in those cities receiving the internally displaced. Douala and Yaounde have been home to most of this internally displaced people and these two cities lack the proper infrastructure to handle such situations.

Declining oil revenues and falling production of some of the country’s major employers like CDC and Pamol implies that the government is heading for a financial squeeze. This is exactly what is causing frustration within the government and the frustration is now manifest.

While the government is putting on a brave face in public, it is indeed worried that Southern Cameroonians might walk away from the union that was stitched together in 1972 between West and East Cameroon. Southern Cameroonians hold that the union has been predicated upon lies right from the beginning and that a review of the system is long overdue.

Reports from international rights groups such as Transparency International, Amnesty International (AI) and The International Crisis Group (ICG) have clearly indicted the Yaounde government and this is already hurting. The government has always been very critical of Amnesty International and the ICG, but this week, its spokesperson and communication minister, Issa Tchiroma, revealed that The International Crisis Group will never be allowed to set foot in the country. This is prove of its frustration and guilt. Instead of seeking to get it right, the government seems to be chasing the wrong shadows.

Cameroon is indeed at the crossroads. With elections around the corner and the fighting in the English-speaking regions raging on, it is clear that a disaster is lurking somewhere and before long the country could be transformed into an inferno. The frustration in East Cameroon is also mounting, as many people fall into abject poverty. It is becoming increasingly clear that Mr. Biya is not the man to lead the country to the land of promise. His time is up and there is a consensus around the world that he has overstayed his welcome.

It is time for him to bow out if he does not want the country to sink into a bitter civil war; the type that has destroyed many African countries ruled by dictators. The scourge of war seems to be advancing towards Cameroon and many people around the world are worried that if the Sword of Damocles descends on Cameroon, the entire sub-region might be pushed into unprecedented chaos. Tempers are already flaring in the country. For 36 years, Mr. Biya has only favored people from his own region. Though the center and south regions constitute less than 10% of the country’s population, they make up 80% of the country’s government; a situation that is hurting many Cameroonians from other regions of the country.

The world has to jump in right now. There is still time to fix a few things. If Mr. Biya stays in power, the country will never be stable. If he dies in power, Cameroon will never be a peaceful country again, as there will be revenge killings all over the country. The world cannot be blind to this unfortunate situation that has reduced the country into a ticking time bomb. There is still time to defuse this bomb. The world will have itself to blame if things really fall apart in Cameroon.

 By Kingsley Betek and Irene Nanyongo

Two years ago, when Anglophone lawyers and teachers called for a protest against the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime, there were few signs that they would have an impact. More than two years later after the protests transformed into a war, one that is yet to draw in the international community, it seemed a matter of when, not if, Biya would go the way of his fellow strongmen in former Zaire and Gambia. Biya appears now closer to leaving office than he was in the 1990s.

To be sure, Biya has kept his position, at great cost to his so-called one and indivisible Cameroon. But it would be wrong to say he is in control. It’s true that he, with the support of France and the CEMAC nations, has held on to power even after the English speaking regions declared independence from La Republique du Cameroun. Most of the Southern Cameroons population that has escaped the Ambazonian war now lives in areas controlled by the Biya regime and the Southern Cameroons Interim Government. But Cameroon as a one and indivisible nation has effectively collapsed.

Before Biya took over from the late President Ahidjo, the country was by international standard solidly middle income. It is estimated that it will take another five decades after the war in Southern Cameroons ends, whenever that happens, for French Cameroun to regain its Ahidjo economic status. The price tag to rebuild Southern Cameroons alone is already being estimated at billions of US dollars or more if the fighting endures—money that neither the 85 year old Biya, nor his patrons in Paris or the European Union, have to spare.

Then there is the human cost: More than 1,200 Southern Cameroonians have been killed, 161, 000 internally displaced, over 50,000 seeking refuge in the Federal Republic of Nigeria and entire towns and villages flattened. There are few signs the fighting is close to stopping. Troops loyal to the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime continue to kill innocent Southern Cameroonians in counties held by the Ambazonian Restoration Forces. The Southern Cameroons death toll since the most recent assault on Menka Pinyin, Kwa Kwa and Bekora began last month exceeds 1,200. With the international community doing nothing to stop Biya, it is all but certain the war will sooner or later transform into a full scale civil war. The fact that the capital city Yaoundé is in Biya’s Beti Ewondo constituency continues to give him the feeling that he is defeating the resistance.

It’s very difficult for both French and English speaking Cameroonians who have watched this Southern Cameroons war from the beginning of the revolution.  It’s unclear—and highly unlikely—that Biya can survive in power without French and CEMAC countries support. Biya says he wants to regain control of all of Southern Cameroons, but may have to settle for only a bit more than he has now. The Ambazonian Restoration forces are unlikely to give up the counties they’ve gained in the Southern and Northern zones. Some pro Biya gangs sponsored by the Cameroon government to counter the Southern Cameroons revolution are now turning their guns on each other. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group can now reveal that at least three more potential conflicts are playing out on Southern Cameroons territory, that which pits Mayor Patrick Ekema-Atanga Nji militia against the Amba Boys, Cameroon government troops against the Ambazonian Restoration Forces, and the Francophones and Anglophones within the armee Camerounaise.

The Republic of Cameroon was once the power broker in Central African Republic and a major force in the CEMAC region but is now dependent on the largesse of its few allies such as Chad and Gabon. Biya’s military forces are depleted. The most effective pro-Biya fighting forces are Fulani soldiers recruited from the Far North region by Vice Prime Minister Amadou Ali. With Buhari’s departure imminent in Nigeria, international players will get involved in the Southern Cameroons war—and it will prolong the fighting and make the outcome far more difficult to obtain.

Frankly speaking, CEMAC countries are already preparing for life without Biya in Yaoundé—no matter how distasteful that may sound to them. As for the population that’s left in Southern Cameroons, 80 percent of Ambazonia lived in poverty and life expectancy has fallen. The Chinese including International funders are reluctant to give Biya their money for fear it will benefit a regime accused of war crimes.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chief Charles Achaleke Taku who was recently elected president of the International Criminal Court Bar Association has broken his silence on the Southern Cameroons crisis. In a conversation he shared with the Gideon, the Southern Cameroon royal and Man of Law revealed that the world with the help of the French Cameroun government has documented crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide in the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

PAV: What is your reading of the political situation in your native Cameroon especially on the fighting and gross human rights abuses in the North West and South West regions of the country?

Chief Taku: On the basis of statements made by Cameroon government officials themselves which are well documented, the scale of the crimes committed by government soldiers and operatives are crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. I have come to this conclusion based on statements and evidence made public by civilian and military government officials and commanders. Of course, there is a lot more evidence out there from credible reports filed by Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, diplomatic missions accredited to Cameroon and the physical perpetrators themselves. I have examined the declaration of war statement made by President Paul Biya on his arrival from a conference in Abidjan Cote D’Ivoire in November 2017. He clearly defined the enemy he deployed the army to take out as Southern Cameroons civilians whom he called terrorists. Although he in subsequent speeches attempted to nuance his definition, that was insignificant and did not affect the orders to exterminate and commit crimes on a massive scale under the pretext of waging war against terrorism. He was aware of the definition of terrorists in the war against terrorism against Boko Haram carried out by an international alliance in which Cameroon is a party. Characterizing Southern Cameroonians freedom seekers as terrorists placed the direct responsibility for the crimes perpetrated on the President and his subsidiary civilian and military commanders.

PAV: Is the ICC aware of the situation in those regions and would you say some of the excesses there fall in the category of cases the ICC could entertain?

Chief Taku: Cameroon signed unto the Rome Statute establishing the court but did not ratify it. Cameroon is therefore not a state party to the Rome Statute. Does this preclude the ICC from intervening in the situation in Cameroon? The answer is no. The Security Council may refer the situation to the ICC. If crimes against citizens of Cameroon are committed by Cameroon in the territory of a state party, the ICC may intervene. The abduction of Seseku Ayuk Tabe and others who were under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and their deportation to Cameroon are criminalized by the Rome Statute. The massive deportation of Southern Cameroons civilians from their ancestral homes in Manyu division towards Nigeria and the cross-border abductions and targeted killing of many of them in the territory of Nigeria falls within the jurisdiction of the Rome Statute. A senior member of the Nigeria intelligence service Babagana Mungano a national security adviser to President Buhari confessed his involvement and that of his government to these crimes, suggesting a coordinated inter-government policy of criminality. These crimes occurred at a time the ICC Prosecutor is conducting a preliminary examination in the crimes committed by Nigerian soldiers and security operatives against civilians in the war against Boko Haram. The crimes of the multinational forces in which Cameroonian forces are participants are surely under the radar of the preliminary investigation which has been on since 2010. The recent execution of a woman of Nigerian nationality and her child by Cameroon soldiers deployed to the multinational force against Boko Haram and its outcry must surely have attracted the attention of ICC investigators. The unsuccessful denial by Issa Tchiroma whose key role
in inciting genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes are well documented against provides an official character to the crimes.
The magnitude of the crimes committed and its progression towards a wider escalation in the Gulf of Guinea, and the entire region may irresistibly end in the United Nations establishing a Special Court for Cameroon. I do not see an alternative to the creation of this court if the international community genuinely wants to abate this genocide and the international crimes that will sooner or later engulf the entire sub-region. The magnitude of the crimes and the resolve of the Southern Cameroons to fight on may already have made any form of dispute settlement that will retain Cameroon as one nation impossible.

PAV: Thanks for granting this interview Chief
Chief Taku: You most welcome.

Extract from the Gideon No O36/July 30th/18 pages 6 and 7
FAR

When Cameroon’s long-serving dictator, Paul Biya, declared war on Southern Cameroonians in January 2018, little did he know that government casualties will become the next crisis he will be dealing with. His defense minister, Joseph Beti Assomo, had overtly declared that his troops would implement the president’s decision without batting an eyelid. A veiled threat that did not cut ice with Southern Cameroonian fighters who had secretly hatched a plan to get weapons that would leave the country’s military in grief for a long time.

Today, some 1,000 soldiers, police and gendarmes have been sent to an early grave by poorly trained Southern Cameroonian fighters who have shown great valor and determination to keep the country’s military in permanent fear. The government is yet to come out of its shock. But that is the truth. Those who have died will never come back. They died doing what they loved doing. Fighting for their country even when the ruler is a bloody dictator whose interest is to stay in power.

Currently, there is a bill at the country’s national assembly for the approval of some CFAF 600,000,000,000 for the compensation of families that have lost loved ones. This is a very guarded secret, but a source at the National Assembly that has elected anonymity has hinted Cameroon Concord News Group that this has become a hot potato, as those who sold the idea that a fast military action in the two English-speaking regions would produce the best results are clearly disappointed. Their so-called professionally trained military has not lived up to its billing.

There is fear within government circles that when Cameroonians will understand that they have lost so many soldiers, they would rise up against a government that has been working so hard to hide the truth.  The government had felt that by killing a few Southern Cameroonians and by burning down some villages, Southern Cameroonians would be silenced forever.

Unfortunately, their best effort has been counter-productive. Southern Cameroonians have displayed a lot of bravado that has left the government in shock. Their unity of purpose has forced admiration on the docile Francophone population that thought the government’s action would only be second to Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

The government had clearly underestimated a lot of things. Southern Cameroonians are a very determined people and nothing short of a true and sincere resolution of this crisis that has been on the horizon for more than half a century will bring peace to Cameroon.

Cameroon has lost its charm. Its peaceful nation image has been shattered. Southern Cameroonians are still prepared to take on the government. The killing of their people and burning of their homes will not deter them.

Today, it is reported that more than three thousand Southern Cameroonians have been sent to an early grave by government militia and soldiers who have been working in close collaboration to decimate the English-speaking region’s population.

The number of atrocities and deaths has continued to rise as the government keeps on dilly dallying on the creation of the right conditions for the holding of the inclusive dialogue that the international community has called for.

According to Humans Rights Watch in its July 19, 2018, report published in New York, “Government security forces and armed separatists have committed grave abuses against residents of Cameroon’s Anglophone region, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The region has been rocked by protests and violent clashes rooted in long-standing political grievances by the country’s Anglophone minority.”

The report, based on research in the region, satellite imagery and video analyses and entitled, “These Killings Can Be Stopped’: Abuses by Government and Separatist Groups in Cameroon’s Anglophone Regions” found that both government forces and armed separatists have abused civilians in the western part of the country, displacing over 180,000 people since December 2017.”

“Anglophone separatists have extorted, kidnapped and killed civilians, and prevented children from going to school. In response to protests and violence by armed separatists, government forces have killed civilians, used excessive force against demonstrators, tortured and mistreated suspected separatists and detainees, and burned hundreds of homes in several villages,” the report also adds.

“The human rights situation in Cameroon has reached crisis level and could still get much worse,” said Mausi Segun, Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “International action is needed to ensure that both sides protect civilians and ensure justice for crimes against them.”

Human Rights Watch documented abuses by both government forces and a variety of separatist between late 2016 and May 2018. It interviewed 51 victims, relatives of victims, or witnesses of abuse, as well as 31 education and medical professionals, lawyers, and key international sources. The interviews were conducted in the northwest and southwest regions of Cameroon in April.

Southern Cameroonians have seen the worst and they strongly hold that if they do not stand up to the bully that the government is, they will never know their peace. They are determined to walk away from a poorly stitched marriage with a dishonest and ineffective Francophone government that has been robbing them of their natural resources.

Initially, Southern Cameroonian fighters depended on hit and run tactics, but after more than five months in the jungle, they now believe they can take on government troops that are properly equipped, but poorly trained. In the last week, they have been moving from one city to the next, chasing out faint-hearted government army soldiers who have already begun asking why the government is killing its own people.

Southern Cameroonian fighters have made their presence felt in the city of Buea which was considered by the government as impenetrable. Limbe, Southern Cameroon’s port city, was considered off limits to the fighters, but last week, they broke the myth and sent many residents running in different directions. Even soldiers and policemen had to flee for their dear lives. It is even reported that policemen and gendarmes are those who are helping to enforcement ghost towns declared by Southern Cameroonian fighters for fear of being targeted by the merciless fighters.

The pseudo-peace in Limbe has vanished. Southern Cameroonian fighters who were initially lurking in forests around the region have made up their minds to come to the cities and Limbe is now hosting lots of them. They are sick and tired of constant attacks from mosquitoes and poisonous reptiles who consider their presence in the jungle as an unfriendly intrusion into their private space and territory.

With an influx of people coming from other cities, it is obvious that Southern Cameroonian fighters have used the opportunity to establish a foothold in the city. Residents of the city are now respecting ghost town orders from the Southern Cameroons Interim Government that is widely considered as the legitimate authority in region to the letter.

The Southern Cameroons crisis stems from events in late 2016, when local lawyers and teachers mobilized over demands for respect of the region’s educational and judicial systems. This escalated into armed confrontations following heavy-handed repression by government security forces. The Cameroonian government negotiated with lawyers and teachers’ unions in early 2017, but its security forces continued to clamp down on Anglophone protesters, including the arrest of two prominent negotiators on January 17, 2017.

This caused the crisis to escalate. Calls for a federal system quickly turned into demands for secession. This rapidly metamorphosed into a full blown civil war, making the independence of the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon a certainty, especially as the government engaged in targeted killings.

Ever since the crisis, started, the country’s economy has taken many punches. State corporations located in Southern Cameroons have been significantly affected. Pamol, a palm oil production corporation located in Lobe, a small town in Ndian Division, has shut its doors as the fighting between Southern Cameroonian fighters and army soldiers takes a turn for the worse.

More than three thousand Pamol workers are today unemployed and living in permanent fear, as the fighting between the warring factions rages on. Schools and courts in the region have been closed for more than two years and it is increasingly obvious that the Yaoundé government has lost control of certain parts of the two English-speaking regions.

The Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), one of the major employers in the region, is also going through a rough patch. Malende, a small town located some 6 km from Muyuka, has witnessed huge unemployment rates. The corporation’s rubber factory was set ablaze last week by some unidentified men and this has hit CDC like a ton of bricks.

In other plantations, many workers have simply deserted. The fighting is disrupting economic activities in those plantations and many workers hold that it is better to quit than to be caught up between the devil and the deep blue sea. The fighting, coupled with the derisory salaries the corporation pays to its workers, has made CDC unattractive and this is gradually eroding the government’s tax base.

Many of the fighters hold that it is time to target the country’s lone refinery located in the region’s port city of Limbe. They hold that they have never benefitted from it and they will have no remorse for burning it down to ashes.

In a taped message sent to the Cameroon Concord News Group’s Global Headquarters in the UK, the fighters say that is their target and they are prepared to bring Cameroon to its knees. They argue that their God-given wealth has never trickled down to them.

The last two years have really been challenging to the government, its revenue base has been eroded, as the national oil refinery located in the Southwest region is also facing really challenges. The crisis is a true nightmare to this once-upon-a-time oasis of peace. It is indeed a millstone around the neck of the government which is gradually collapsing under its weight.

While the government is putting on a brave face in public, it is indeed worried that Southern Cameroonians might walk away from the union that was stitched together in 1972 between West and East Cameroon. Southern Cameroonians hold that the union has been predicated upon lies right from the beginning and that a review of the system is long overdue.

Southern Cameroonians stress that much blood has already flowed and this makes it hard for the warring factions to sit around a negotiating table to narrow their differences. The killing of many Southern Cameroonians and the burning of their homes have left Southern Cameroonians with just the option of quitting their French-speaking counterparts.

Walking away from that ‘political marriage’ implies taking with them about 60% of the country’s wealth. Southern Cameroons is blessed with many resources, including oil, gas, diamond and timber. Its rich sub-soil has brought lots of economic benefits to the country. For almost 50 years, the Rio Del Rey estuary has been the source of more than 90% and at times 100% of all the country’s hydrocarbons, specifically oil.

In 2014, Cameroon exported US$5.88 billion worth of products, of which US$2.65 billion, about CFAF 1,650 billion, was from crude oil. This is a significant amount of money and no government can afford to stay on the sidelines and watch manna vanish into thin air.

But the government’s indifference to calls for an inclusive dialogue is giving secessionists more confidence and time to spread their gospel. The government’s military action has transformed it into a monster and this has pushed the civilian population into the arms of secessionists who are making hay while the sun shines.

However, with international pressure mounting on the government and the fear that the presidential election scheduled for October may be derailed, the government is gradually considering smoking the pipe of peace. But how possible is it to make peace in less than three months with all the blood that is all over the place?

Experts argue that the first step to such an effort is to ensure that the killings and burning of homes stop. They posit that this could be possible if the government grants a general amnesty and releases all Southern Cameroonians that are currently being held in jails across the nation. For the moment, everybody is holding their breath, hoping that the country’s president who has been indifferent to many calls for inclusive dialogue will finally see wisdom in the advice the world has given him.

By Kingsley Betek in Yaounde

It was formerly called the North West and South West regions of the Republic of Cameroon; today’s Federal Republic of Ambazonia (also known as Southern Cameroons) was declared independent from the French Cameroun recently.

Although the government of La Republique du Cameroun started waging a war against the Southern Cameroons after the independence day declaration and the abduction and extradition of its leaders from Nigeria, Africa’s newest nation has been relatively stable under the guidance of the Interim Government (IG) since Sisiku Ayuk Tabe was elected Interim President.  President Paul Biya – one of world’s longest-serving leaders – announced he would hold presidential elections this October in an already fragmented society.

The French Cameroun dictator’s reign has been marred by corruption and violence including untold misery. Ever since he joined the French Cameroun government as a junior minister and had a meteoric rise in the Cameroon political system, the former Roman Catholic seminarian has never lost a top seat.

The frustration and vicious marginalization of English speaking Cameroonians for over 57 years has prompted the creation of numerous militia – known as the Dragons, the Odeshi Warriors, The Tigers and the Amba Boys, respectively – drawing fighters from all Southern Cameroons ethnic and political backgrounds.

Biya’s government was aided by President Buhari of neighbouring Nigeria and consequently, the Interim President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and senior members of the Southern Cameroons government were abducted in Nera Hotel in Abuja, Nigeria and extradited to Yaoundé. Ever since Nigeria took that line, the conflict has escalated.  Violent clashes have been the order of the day between the Francophone dominated army and Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

Naked arrogance and resisting talk on the part of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime has already claimed the lives of some 1000 Southern Cameroonians including nearly 300 Cameroon government troops. The UN says some 160,000 Southern Cameroonians have been internally displaced and some 50,000 are seeking refuge outside the nation’s borders.

France and Nigeria are supporting the Biya regime that has also attracted a number of Chadian soldiers. Biya has continued to work closely with a number of Western powers, notably Britain and France, and allowing their firms to explore and extract Cameroon oil and gas.

Repression has always been a key factor in his renewed reign and the 86 year old has always taken the top seat with almost 90% of votes and extended his term when a new constitution came into force.  A general ghost town operation is largely observed in Southern Cameroons, but ignored in French Cameroun, where Mr. Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate are in charge.

Cat calls have greeted the announcement that Mr. Biya will be seeking another 7 year mandate at 86 and it is anticipated that sooner or later there will be a significant outbreak of violence in French Cameroun. We understand that dozens of panicked French speaking Cameroonians are already migrating to other African countries such as Gabon, Congo-Brazzaville including the Ivory Coast. In Southern Cameroons nearly all police stations have been set ablaze by Ambazonia forces.

Cameroon government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary has been blaming the attacks on government buildings and state institutions on Southern Cameroons separatists. Thousands of Cameroon government police and troops, some in armoured vehicles have invaded and destroyed Southern Cameroons towns and villages killing hundreds of civilians including women and children in a warlike operation.

Amnesty International has hinted of crimes against humanity being committed in Southern Cameroons and the renowned human rights organization says it’s collecting information to identify the perpetrators of the violence in Ambazonia. Amnesty International has also recently denounced widespread arrests of Southern Cameroonians and the fact that many have been illegally detained and harassed – including a number of members of the civil society and Anglophone journalists.

The Biya regime has always promised the international community that it will keep a watchful eye on government troops operating in Southern Cameroons and look into any excessive use of force by soldiers deployed across Ambazonia. These promises have been nothing but plain fiction.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Paul Biya has accepted and announced a President Macron initiative to hold presidential elections in French Cameroun without any attempt at resolving the crisis with Southern Cameroonians. This could be the greatest political disaster in the making for both Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun including the European Union.

The deliberate silence maintain by the 85 year-old head of state and the ever growing influence of the Ambazonian Interim Government in Southern Cameroons  cast doubts on the feasibility of securing the October elections, making it premature to envisage a path towards peace and stability in lawless Cameroon.

The French are currently presenting the presidential elections as the way forward for the so-called one and indivisible Cameroon. However, it is abundantly clear that the French government’s position is more international than local. The plan is very ambitious and very risky, for a country that has been gripped by chaos since the emergence of the Nigerian Islamic sect, Boko Haram and the numerous rebel movements in the Central African Republic.

A plethora of armed organizations and the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia are now in control of Southern Cameroons. Consequently, the idea of postponing municipal and parliamentary elections and focusing on holding presidential elections is unwise.

This President Macron-Buhari led initiative that did not consult powerful local forces and the leadership in Southern Cameroons will achieve nothing but a civil war. Europe and the US want to stabilize Cameroon but the Trump and Macron administrations are not reading from the same script. One very important issue in diplomacy is that whenever the equities are equal, the first one prevails. So, President Biya has opted to listen to French ambassador Gilles Thibault than the prophetic voice of US ambassador, Peter Barlerin.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are of the opinion that the presidential elections will not change anything. To be sure, it will make the political situation more intractable. President Buhari does not care about the difficulties of the people of Cross River and Benue States in curbing with the influx of Southern Cameroons refugees.  President Macron and French multinationals, on the other hand are only interested in French business interest and the oil fields in the Bakassi Peninsular.  Both Buhari and French President Macron claim to support Cameroon’s stability and President Emmanuel Macron’s push for a presidential election is an indication that France is ready to gamble with the giant of the CEMAC region.

The French can live with the risks from a destabilization of the Sub Saharan region and will still run the oil and gas fields in Cameroon but spikes in Southern Cameroons refugee numbers crossing into the Federal Republic of Nigeria could generate new security challenges for the Buhari administration. On one hand the Germans and the US government to a large extent believe a transition from Biya to the new generation should come before elections but the French are for presidential elections first.

It is really shocking for the French to still continue to present Biya to the west as a strong leader who can bring order to the country. Biya is expected to continue his often brutal military campaign under the banner of fighting separatists and terrorism in Southern Cameroons. That may well extend from the recent fighting in the South West and the North West into Littoral and West regions.

French support for Biya and granting him international legitimacy without ensuring there is any real form of genuine dialogue with Southern Cameroonians and rewarding potential Ambazonian spoilers such as Paul Atanga Nji in a corrupt, fractured environment may help to disintegrate what is left of French Cameroun.

Pro Biya comedians including French Cameroun political elites are now using the presidential elections as a political tool to avoid dialogue or reconciliation. Cameroon as a nation remains too chaotic for elections with Ambazonian Restoration Forces and the Cameroon government army soldiers indulging in extra-judicial killings, attacking civilians and civilian infrastructure, and abducting and disappearing people.

Southern Cameroonians residing in French Cameroun are now facing the risks of beatings, torture, extortion, sexual violence, and in detention centers nominally under the Francophone dominated army control. The UN revealed that some 161,000 Southern Cameroonians have been displaced internally and another 21,000 registered as refugees in Nigeria. This has created some new dramatic demographic changes and has led to more instability, poverty and violence thus pushing desperate Ambazonians across to Nigeria.

The upcoming presidential elections with the 85 year-old Biya as a candidate will further destabilize the already fragmented political situation. Keeping Biya in power in a divided country through a counterfeit presidential election will undermine efforts to achieve peace and stability making reconciliation between Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun much more difficult to achieve.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Actions by French President Macron and Defense Minister Joseph Beti Assomo this week have given a seal of approval to Ambazonian Restoration forces and could mark the beginning of the end of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo dictatorship that has ruled Cameroon for more than 35 years. Despite the fact that French president Emmanuel Macron all but confirmed the presence of French soldiers in Cameroon, the Biya regime denied that French soldiers were fighting in Southern Cameroons.

In the words of our senior contributing editor, Valerian Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai, Defence Minister Joseph Beti Assomo told MPs that the Anglophone crisis is a Cameroonian problem that will be solved by Cameroonians. He denied the presence of any French soldier either in the SW or NW region an indication that  Beti Assomo did not listen to President Macron during his live town hall in Nigeria, where he said, the goal of the French soldiers in Cameroon was to help re-establish “stability” in the Anglophone regions.

Top aides to the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako and members of other Southern Cameroons restoration groups expect the process to gain independence for Southern Cameroons to be long, complicated and bloody. But they say that events in French Cameroun and President Biya’s succession palaver – once the symbol of Anti Southern Cameroons nationalism – will embolden Ambazonian forces and encourage key foreign countries such as Nigeria to turn decisively against the regime of President Biya.

The United States Senate has had a hearing on the happenings in Southern Cameroons and slowly but surely the Trump administration will agree to allow the Interim Government to open an office in Washington. German MPs have also been pressing for sanctions against the Biya crime syndicate and the SPD party is expected to call for deploying of monitors in Southern Cameroons.

A source in the Bundestag hinted this reporter that the intent of such a deployment would be to deter the Francophone dominated armed forces from killing more Southern Cameroonians and provide independent accounts of clashes with Ambazonian Restoration Forces when they occur. With French government support, it is highly unlikely, however, that the consortium of CPDM crime syndicate headed by the 85 year old Biya would allow monitors into the country after killing more than 1000 Southern Cameroonians since 2016.

The Southern Cameroons opposition to the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia has yet to unify as most South Sudanese did during their struggle for independence. The externally-based Morisc and an obscure organization known as ADF are at odds with the Interim Government.

French Cameroun opposition to Biya including the much respected NOW Movement of Barrister Akere Muna have said the only thing they want to negotiate with Biya is the manner and timing of his departure. Several members of the Cameroon government military have already defected, with many escaping to the Ivory Coast.

The Biya regime’s genocidal campaign in Southern Cameroons is being carried out largely by soldiers from the North and Far North regions and the Presidential Guard – both largely comprised of members of the Beti Ewondo minority. The commanders are predominantly Beti- Ewondo.

Fear of Cameroon devolving into a multi-sided civil war among its numerous ethnic components was a major factor during the President Buhari-Macron meeting in Abuja. But Yaoundé is yet to stop the shooting of innocent Southern Cameroonians.

Over the past few weeks, Biya who lacks the strategic finesse of his legendary political god father, the late Ahmadou Ahidjo – has managed to alienate most of his once ardent CEMAC backers, including President Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea who has reportedly chosen the path to dialogue for his country than excessive use of force.

Recently, a senior French Cameroun political elite told our Yaoundé correspondent, that Biya should see the tragic ends of the ones who declared war against their own people. The MP who hails from the Obala constituency also added that if he were in President Biya’s shoes, he would step down. The American Ambassador Peter Barlerin has also called for Biya to leave and an immediate end to the violence in Southern Cameroons.

Pressure from Paris forced the regime in Yaoundé to allow family members and a group of legal practitioners to meet with the detained Interim President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and nine others who were arrested in Nera hotel in Abuja but there were no indications that France, which virtually owns La Republique du Cameroun, was ready to break with the Biya regime.

The main Nigerian opposition party, the PDP has said it will keep the military option open to convince Biya to step down.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

It is impossible to speak of any segment of the unrest that has irrupted in the North West and the South West of Cameroon since November 2016, without understanding it as a metaphor of the general Anglophone problem? The answer is simple: No. Why is it so? Answer: Because each aspect of the Anglophone problem brings us to the root of it, which is the wrong done to our people. How can one right that wrong? Answer: By giving our people, and they now call themselves Ambazonians, their statehood back. To get to this conclusion, it is important to not take the question at its face value, for that question can be transformed into various forms: from 1961, the date of the federation of the two formerly German colonies that were then called Grosskamerun, to 1994, during thirty-three years thus, why was there no university of English tradition in Cameroon? Since 1916, why did it take until 2016, one hundred years then, for Cameroon to awaken to the fact that it had lawyers of British tradition in its populace, and needed to respect their judicial system based on common law? Why is there no noteworthy hospital in the part of Cameroon that speaks English? Why is there no science and technology university in the North West or South West? Why does the biggest city in English-speaking Cameroon, Bamenda, have the worst roads in the country?

The list of what reveals the depth of the injustice done to our people since 1961 is endless, but its systematically criminal nature can only be understood if one also remembers that oil was discovered in that part of the country as early as 1970, and its extraction as well as the amount of the revenue it generates have always been a state secret – run straight from Yaoundé, from the presidency of the republic, and managed off-shore by French companies, and on-shore by SONARA, the State oil company, a company always headed by a Francophone, mostly from the tribe of the president, and that means never headed by an Anglophone since its creation, a company whose major shares until 2010 were held by two French companies, Total and Elf.

I was challenged to speak only French around SONARA, writes a former employee, Oliver Zhie, I worked with one sub-company there. All my Francophone colleagues addressed me like this, ‘hey Bamenda!’. There is a lot of hate there.

Now, in Cameroon, ‘Bamenda’, is the slang word by which Francophone people associate Anglophones with servitude, as it means slave, and servant.

Today’s upheavals have a long history, and no aspect of Cameroon’s political life is immune of it. To give you an example, even Cameroon’s awakening to democracy in 1992 – and the opposition party in the country, SDF, Anglophone-based, was born in blood –, has been spearheaded by the Anglophone revolt, the Anglophone dissent, the Anglophone discontent. A quick rundown of the transformation of the Anglophone problem into violent discontent, and this means, of the quite impossible existence of an Anglophone identity inside the Cameroonian public landscape becomes essential when one remembers that the person who effectively transformed what from November 20, 2016 to December 7, 2017 was mostly a corporatist demand of lawyers and teachers into a popular uprising was simply a radio journalist – ‘No Fear’ Mancho Bibixy, and before his arrest, he used to have one of the most popular talk radio shows in Bamenda. His arrest triggered a riot in the city, and he was sentenced a few months ago – in French bien sûr – to fifteen years in jail, on charges of ‘terrorism’, ‘secession’, ‘revolution’, ‘hostility against the fatherland’, ‘propagation of false information’, ‘insurrection and ‘contempt of authorities’, and of paying an impossible fee, by the military tribunal, during a session headed by a Francophone judge, Abega Mbezoa, of the ethnic group of the president.

And yet as outrageous as it is his sentencing is but a small chapter of a general and systematic marginalization of the English-speaking population that effectively started in 1972, and was sanctioned by the State on April 14, 1984 when a decision by the president named the country after what was French Eastern Cameroon until 1961 – la république du Cameroun. The narrative of Anglophone marginalization can be read in the requests with which Mancho Bibixy kick started what he called the coffin revolution, and that has now become a civil war – he was asking for better roads, for better hospitals, for better services, joining teachers who were asking for a school system that respects their English-language education, and lawyers asking for a respect for common law. By doing so, he effectively transformed the journalist that he is, into the mouthpiece of our people’s anger at being denied access to the basic necessities, despite the richness of their land. Or into the fact that activists from the Diaspora are routinely delivered a refusal of entry into Cameroon by the state police, a Notification et motivation de decision de refus d’admission sur le territoire camerounais even when as nationals with a foreign passport, they are in possession of a regular visa delivered at the Cameroonian embassy. The thousands of people from the Anglophone Diaspora living in Nigeria, but also in South Africa, England, and here, in the United States can testify to that systematic exclusion of their kind. Which is to say that it is effectively impossible to disconnect the situation of any Southern Cameroonian, from the impossible condition of being an Anglophone in la république du Cameroun?

Why is it that from the Consortium’s strike to today Cameroon saw a fast erosion of its most talked about peace, and so rapidly sank into a civil war? The answer to this question lies the long history of an impossible cohabitation between two parts of what was a German colony until 1916 and according to the League of Nation and the UN’s trusteeship and mandate had to be marshaled in their own right into independence, and the mismanagement of a federal structure they chose by a francophone State incapable of understanding that the gentlemen’s agreement that brought Eastern and Western Cameroon together in 1961, was neither a certificate of annexation by one part nor one of surrender by the other, and most importantly, had no precedent amongst the fifty-three African nations. Was thus a gem, a historical opportunity? As a matter of comparison: Tanganiya and Zanzibar entered into an agreement to form Tanzania, and the wisdom of their statesmen made them understand that their separate traditions also needed a State structure that respected it – they formed a confederation. Senegal and Gambia entered into a gentlemen’s agreement to form Senegambia, but needed only a couple of years to realize their misjudgment, and did not shed any blood to go apart. Why is it that la république du Cameroun has to kill thousands of Anglophone people, has to sink into a civil war because of a gentlemen’s agreement the kind of which other African states and leaders walked away from without a bloodshed? The answer lies in the riches of Anglophone lands – oil. In the fact that the oil that is tapped on Limbe’s coasts has never been invested in the North West and South West. And oil is without doubt what explains the rigidity of Paul Biya, the Cameroonian president, when he says that the form of the Cameroonian state cannot be discussed, and it is also what explains a statement of the French president Emmanuel Macron to him, on the eve of what would become the bloodiest national unity day in the country, May 20, 2018:

Je souhaite également vous dire la solidarité de la France face aux crimes commis contre, notamment des représentants de l’Etat, dans le contexte de tensions que connaissent les régions Anglophones du Cameroun. Je forme le vœu que ces tensions puissent être résorbées de manière pacifique et concertée, dans le strict respect de l’unité et de l’intégrité de votre pays.

I also wish to express the solidarity of France in the face of the crimes committed against representatives of the State, in the context of the tensions in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. I wish those tensions to be solved in a pacific manner and through dialogue, and this, in the strict respect of the unity and integrity of your country.

‘Strict respect’? No word regarding the thousand civilians’ dead, those of December 2016, September 2017, October 2017, and of literally every day – the Pa Bertika Edward Penda, 95 who died of lack of medication because he was chased from his village, Depanda Bakundu, burned down by Francophone soldiers. No word regarding the students of the university of Buea raped by mainly Francophone soldiers, some of whom became vipers and like Sidonie were shot and killed in Menka-Pilly while protecting herself in the roof of a home. No word regarding the targeted killing of more and more civilians by Francophone soldiers. No word regarding the thousands of Anglophones hiding in Nigeria because they are unsafe in their homes, dying of malnutrition and hunger in Nigeria, the 75 villages burnt down by Francophone soldiers, the farms looted by Francophone soldiers. No word on the grandmothers and grandfathers – the Mama Monica Appih Sereh, 95, of Kwakwa, or Mama Pauline Ayele Adia, 86, of Mungo Ndoi – who were burned in their homes. No word on the infants killed. No compassion for a Wiyfenga Eileen Fola, 14, whose face was destroyed by a soldier’s bullet. No word on the torture of civilians by Francophone soldiers, on the war crimes that are being committed in Southern Cameroons as I speak. No word on the Anglophone regions that are cut away from the world. No word on the Anglophones, refugees or the like, who are being denied entry into Cameroon even to bury their dead. The victims of the criminal deeds of the francophone State speak louder than any protest of mischaracterization – and the victims are all Anglophones. A demand for the ‘strict respect of the country’s unity and integrity’ is not only a blank check given to a government that is effectively committing a genocide in front of our very eyes, it is also a brutal disregard of Cameroon’s history, and particularly of the history of Western Cameroons, for Southern Cameroon was indeed a State before joining Eastern Cameroons – a State with a functioning government, with its own Constitution, a State that had its own newspapers and only relied on Nigeria for more complex structures like a television network. So much disregard for history, and so much disregard for human life by the head of a State like France can only be interest driven, and the interest here is what manufactures the silence of the media in France over the genocide currently happening in Southern Cameroons. These are important elements to mention and to remember, as la république du Cameroun’s behavior as a colonial conqueror in Southern Cameroons is only possible because Cameroon was always governed as a French-speaking country, as a Francophone country, in fact as a country that has never ceased being a French colony, and as such, the international backing of France was always guaranteed to Paul Biya.

For how long?

The demand for a restoration of statehood in Southern Cameroons, which is tantamount to the demand for a creation of the federal republic of Ambazonia, will always be misunderstood if the social movement that carries it is called ‘separatism’ or ‘secession’, for secession and separatism result from a prior unitary position. Yet the people of Southern Cameroons were never given the opportunity all African states were given by their colonizer – to vote upon their independence, upon their statehood. To understand it better, one has to imagine that instead of choosing between independence and the continuation of colonialism, or of apartheid as all African nations did between 1956 and 1994, Burkina Faso for example, had to choose to remain with Côte d’ivoire or join Mali, because the three countries composed what was then called the Federation of Mali. The country’s fate would have been doomed by the question itself, and yet it is the choice Southern Cameroonians had to face – to join Nigeria, or Eastern Cameroon – the farcicality of which was repeated in 1972 when they had only one option regarding the form of the state – to vote for a unitary system of government. They were never given the choice all African nations had! Not in 1916, not in 1961, and definitely not in 1972! In other words, the League of Nations and the United Nations in particular, both dropped the ball on Southern Cameroons, and allowed our people to be governed as if they had been colonized by a francophone State, and in effect by France. There lies the Anglophone problem, deep seated in it is the very long disregard of a people’s right of self-determination, of sovereignty, the consequence of which can be seen in the absence of basic infrastructures in the two Anglophone regions of the country, in the shutting down of the internet across Anglophone lands, in the jailing of Anglophone journalists, and in the sentencing of an Anglophone activists to fifteen years in jail on charges of ‘hostility against the fatherland’, and in the hundreds and thousands of refugees and internally displaced persons.

In the government of people, there is no lack of wisdom in recognizing that one has committed a mistake. There is no crime in recognizing that one’s parent’s generation has entered into an agreement with which one cannot live, for education is there to have us realize the mistakes past and it gives us the means to rectify them. That the 1884 generation had signed treaties sealing the fate of our land, did not deter the generation of 1960 from asking for independence for the same land. After all, there is no such thing as an eternal agreement between men and women who themselves are not eternal. A government is there to protect the life of the people, to give a shelter to minorities and have everyone have their fair share of the riches of the soil. A government that kills people to protect itself has lost its meaning, and has become a manufacture of injustice. A government that burns villages has become a murdering machine turned against its own population. A government that has its soldiers shoot at hospitals and mosques has lost its right to exist. As for the Anglophone problem, the solution to the deep-seated systematic injustice that created it is multiple, of course, but its multiplicity shall not have us forget the need to also systematically right the wrong, such as to avoid the transformation of what is now a civil war, into a state that is not soon to disappear from the memory of our people, by creating a returning cycle of violence in their midst. To do so there is one door – that door is to come back to the wrong beginning and start anew by restoring the Southern Cameroons statehood. That door is the independence of Southern Cameroons. Of the federal republic of Ambazonia. Needless to say, the fall of Paul Biya is the key to unlock that almighty goal.

By Prof Patrice Nganang

Ever since he returned from his holiday, His Excellency Peter Barlerin current US ambassador to Cameroon has been everything but vocal. Before travelling to the US recently, Ambassador Barlerin had commented on a whole host of matters including President Biya’s continued stay in power.  To be sure,    most of Peter Barlerin’s verbal missiles have targeted matters which are domestic in nature. They range from the issue of ageing leadership, corruption, bad governance, press freedom, and the list goes on.

In recent times, there have been two very significant issues which concern the US-Cameroon relations, but on neither matters we have not heard the customary loud and emphatic pronouncements coming from ambassador Barlerin. They are the fake aid package announced by Prime Minister Philemon Yang for Southern Cameroons refugees and internally displaced persons and the refusal of US visas to the Cameroon women military team.

We understand the United States has reacted positively to the Biya regime initiative to address the problem of humanitarian assistance and access in Southern Cameroons. Ambassador Peter Barlerin was quoted as saying “We will be examining the proposal closely with a view towards considering how we may be able to support it.  We call on both sides to renounce further violence and urge broad-based dialogue with no pre-conditions.”

The so-called Cameroon government humanitarian aid package will be paid for through the state budget, a national solidarity fund that has seen barons of the ruling crime syndicate donating millions of FCFA and contributions from international partners such as the USA.

The package includes 7.6 million Euros for reconstruction, 5.7 million Euros for food and 4.7 million Euros for basic necessities such as blankets and mattresses.  Southern Cameroonians are happy that the US Chief diplomat spoke of “examining the proposal closely.” Ambassador Peter Barlerin should not put his name on the Honor Roll of Shame in Cameroon. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are saying that there is really no honour among thieves. The US should start refusing visas for Cameroon government officials including top military officers and visas already issued should be revoked.

The Biya regime has released a list of highly placed Cameroon government officials and members of the Yaounde consortium of crime syndicates who reportedly raised FCFA 230 million to complement Biya’s FCFA 12.7 billion Relief fund for victims of his genocidal war against Southern Cameroonians. Ambassador Peter Barlerin must really wonder where these public servants got the money to make such contributions. If you divide FCFA 12.7 billion by an estimated 200,000 displaced victims, it means every Ambazonian will get approximately FCFA 63,500 to rebuild their homes and businesses that have been destroyed by nihilistic Francophone soldiers.  Ambassador Barlerin should not be absolutely silent on the matter.  It is part of the function and duty of Mr. Barlerin to stand in support of the people of Southern Cameroons. To the ambassador we say, your silence is deafening on the Southern Cameroons war.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The rather combative government riposte to the Amnesty report was an unnecessary own goal that sullies and casts aspersion on Cameroon’s image before the international community.

The alarm bell sounded by Amnesty International on the vicious cycle of violence currently taking place in the Anglophone regions is hardly surprising, coming as it were amidst the grotesque campaign of human savagery and barbarism by murderous nihilistic soldiers, responsible for the brutal killing of hundreds of innocent Anglophones and burning down over 100 villages till date. In its latest report, the London-based human rights group said “security forces have tortured people, fired on crowds and destroyed villages, in a spiral of violence that keeps getting more deadly.” Amnesty said security forces have tortured at least 23 people, including minors to extract confessions, while Ambazonia fighters have killed at least 44 security forces and targeted suspected Anglophone sympathizers of the Biya regime. The report is bound to cause consternation within and outside Cameroon with adverse consequences for the army chain of command, including President Biya as commander-in-chief, who risks potential criminal liability for individual or command responsibility for war crimes of murder, torture, extra-judicial executions and enforced disappearances. It is certainly impossible to live down the damning report, but the combative government riposte of dismissing the report as biased;accusing AI of hostility is an unacceptable impudent display of statecraft. Any effort to discredit AI will instead attract global opprobrium against Cameroon, which might inevitably lead to the nation’s military and political leaders being dragged to the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague for prosecution.

Titled: “A turn for the worse: Violence and human rights violations in Anglophone Cameroon,” the report which is based on in-depth interviews with victims and eye-witnesses, and material evidence including satellite images, documents how Anglophones are paying the highest price as violence escalates in the North West and South West regions. The report details a range of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity committed by security forces deployed to counter the Anglophone insurgency. Amnesty particularly noted that: “People in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are in the grip of a deadly cycle of violence. Security forces have indiscriminately killed, arrested and tortured people during military operations which have also displaced thousands of civilians.”

According to the report, victims described being blindfolded and severely beaten with sticks, ropes, wires and guns, as well as being electrocuted and burnt with hot water. Some were beaten until they lost consciousness, and Amnesty documented that at least one person died in custody. One man who was arrested on December 13, 2017 in Dadi gave a harrowing account of the torture he suffered: “… They tied our hands behind our backs, gagged us and tied our faces with our towels and shorts, which they tore. They then made us lie in the water, face down for about 45 minutes… During three days, they beat us with shovels, hammers, planks, and cables, kicked us with their boots and poured hot water on us… when I tried to move and shouted, one of them used the cigarette he was smoking to burn me.”

AI said satellite images and photographic evidence show the complete destruction of Anglophone villages, burned to the ground by soldiers in response to the killing of security officers by Ambazonia forces. “In some cases, following these security operations, people were arbitrarily arrested and tortured while detained in illegal detention facilities and in secret. For instance, at least 23 people, including minors, arrested in Dadi village in Akwaya by security forces, spent three days incommunicado during which, they were tortured to extract confessions of supporting the separatists. “In another instance, the bodies of four men, arrested in Belo by the security forces the day before, were found bloodied; with signs of torture at the Bamenda regional hospital mortuary,” AI noted.

The Amnesty report epitomizes, in a dramatic fashion, the rampaging culture of impunity in the army. It is indeed a tragedy that the nation’s military would be accused of such egregious human rights violations that cast the country negatively in terms of moral accountability and respect for the rule of law. That the army could be accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, hints of an imprudent display of lawlessness.That security forces, whose prime responsibility is the protection of lives and property should be accused of having the blood of many civilians on their hands, is neither edifying to the military, nor the nation. It is one more embarrassment that Cameroon can do without.

The report also reflected the heightened state of impunity and indecorous professional conduct in military circles.The images of torture and systemic abuse of Anglophones in secret detention centers, which have gone viral on social media, advertised a certain violation of even the basic rules of war, which exposed a breakdown in the leadership command chain. Notwithstanding the situation, as the ethos of modern democracies demand, the military cannot operate outside the law. This is what makes the excesses documented in the report, all the more puzzling!

Be that as it may, the Amnesty report was also an unwholesome expression of the helplessness of the commander-in-chief. All in all, the impression created is that President Biya, as commander-in-chief has been taken hostage by the army chiefs and their cohorts who are profiteering from the crisis. This being the case, the import of the report is for Biya now to take effective action to protect the Anglophone population against the army’s campaign of terror within the boundaries of the rule of law; to change the scorched-earth strategy for handling the Anglophone crisis by discarding the indiscriminate use of brutal force that inevitably creates a vicious cycle of violence.

Rather than dismiss the Amnesty report as a grossly impaired document that is baseless and not grounded in facts, President Biya should take the opportunity to restore the rule of law and engage in genuine dialogue with the Ambazonia leadership. Peace will not be achieved unless the culture of impunity among the security forces is broken and Cameroon outlaws torture. The military high command must be investigated for sanctioning or failing to prevent the torture and deaths of people in their custody, arrested in the counter-insurgency operations. The soldiers certainly have no reason to raze villages and kill innocent civilians, including a 96-year-old bed-ridden woman, burnt to death by soldiers in Kwa kwa. If things went wrong in the past, this is the time to correct them.

Mr. President may find it necessary, as an image boosting measure, to commit his government’s willingness to conduct a thorough investigation into all the allegations with a view to determining the truth, sanctioning those culpable, and preventing a recurrence. The government must, as a matter of urgency, set the record straight with verifiable data of the number of detainees in various detention cells, the charges preferred against them, the status of their prosecution and the number of those that have died in custody. The government can continue to wallow in self-delusion, but the obstinate refusal to dialogue with the Ambazonia leadership, and the misguided demonization of Ambazonia forces as terrorists will neither end the insurgency nor repair Cameroon’s battered international image.Despite all the rampage, the army has been struggling to counter the Ambazonia fighters. The soldiers remain on the defensive.

Amnesty is however unequivocal that these breaches including torture, extrajudicial executions and detention without trial, including the trail of blood and death wherever the army appears, can only make an already desperate situation worse. In AI’s view, “the government’s heavy-handed response will do nothing to calm the violence – in fact it is likely to further alienate Anglophone communities and fuel further unrest,” noted Samira Daoud, Amnesty Deputy Director for West and Central Africa. Amnesty concluded by saying: “Authorities must ensure accountability for crimes committed by the security forces as well as by the armed separatists. They must immediately end the use of unlawful, unnecessary and excessive force and ensure that people are protected.” Mr. President should create a commission of inquiry with parliamentary oversight to undertake an independent investigation not just of the Amnesty report; but the entire anti-Anglophone counter-insurgency operation to ensure security forces operate within the rule of law and with respect for the rights of citizens. The report of such an enquiry should be made public and those found to have compromised service integrity made to face the full wrath of the law. That is what is expected of any responsible government confronted with such grievous allegations.Trying to kill the messenger because the government hates the message is a self-defeating strategy.

By Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai