After four years of silence on the government’s part over the Southern Cameroons Crisis, some major cracks are gradually appearing on the government’s wall with the Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, turning on English-speaking ministers, accusing them of being hypocrites and liars.

For four good years, Anglophone ministers have toed the party line, even ensuring that they did not criticize the government or the military for its dismal handling of the crisis that has hit the country’s two English-speaking regions, even when some of their family members get killed in massive and reckless raids organized by a trigger-happy military.

Most Anglophone ministers know what fate awaits them if they show any sympathy towards the English-speaking minority or if they disagree with the violent military approach adopted by the government against the advice of the international community.

But despite their loyalty to the Yaoundé government and their grave silence about the massacres in their towns and villages, Anglophone ministers and parliamentarians are still being suspected and closely monitored by a government whose stock in trade is corruption.

Anglophone members of government are simply servants who do not have a big say even in the affairs of the ministries they head.

From every indication, they are made to understand that the Head(ache) of State, Paul Biya, is simply doing them a favor and they can be fired at anytime and could be hauled to jail like a piece of junk if they get suspected of anything that runs counter to the policies dictated by the president.

On mere suspicion, an Anglophone minister could be threatened or humiliated even in public and Elung Paul Che, the Deputy Secretary General at the Presidency, was last week made to understand that despite his loyalty, he was in the crosshairs of the government.

Elung Paul Che is someone who hardly cries and it is hard to make him cry. But the Secretary General at the Presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, succeeded to make Elung Paul shed tears.

According to a Cameroon Concord News Group’s source at the Presidency familiar with this incident, the pitiful Elung Paul bursts into tears after having been berated and humiliated by Ngoh Ngoh who arrogantly told him that “you Anglophones are traitors” after a meeting with Mr. Biya who is still baffled by the fact that Anglophone separatists have not yet been put out of business in the two English-speaking regions where an insurgency has been playing out for four long years.

Mr. Biya had been confidently advised that the insurgents would be made to bite the dust in just a few weeks but the insurgency has succeeded to rob the government of some of its revenue streams in the two English-speaking regions and the country’s economy has been hugely impacted by a war that might not be ending anytime soon.

Since the incident, Elung Paul Che has been holding a pity party in his house and has been sporting a lonely and miserable figure at work.

Our source at the Presidency added that Elung Paul might be crying because he is scared of ending up at Yaoundé Maximum Security prison where many of his former colleagues have been jailed for decades on charges of corruption by a president who has make corruption his hallmark.

Elung Paul’s humiliation and frustration are simply not part of a game but they constitute the sad reality that truly reflects the atmosphere within the government.

Elung Paul Che’s misery emerged because of a meeting he had with Mr. Paul Biya without the Secretary General being aware and this has transformed Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh into a wild animal, our source said.

Ngoh Ngoh is a control freak and he likes being in the know of everything. Elung Paul Che’s non-disclosure of his meeting with the President to his boss was perceived as a gross betrayal of confidence and this did send Ngoh Ngoh into an emotional frenzy.

“You Anglophones are traitors. You know that I brought you here and I have been doing everything to keep you here. You hold a meeting with the President of the Republic and you don’t even have the courtesy to inform me?”  the infuriated Secretary General quipped.

Elung Paul struggled to explain himself, but Ngoh Ngoh did not have time for his explanation. He lambasted Elung Paul, accusing him of all the crimes and scenes in the world.

“That’s how you are. You are always plotting against others. Did you think I wasn’t going to know? You know I am always aware of all the appointments and your behavior is a clear betrayal of my trust. There will surely be consequences,” the Secretary General said.

The badly humiliated Elung Paul Che was at a loss for words and he could not really figure out why his boss was so irrational and suspicious of him.

In his confusion, he started crying. He has been a loyal collaborator and his meeting with the president was held at the behest of the president who had asked him to keep their discussion confidential.

But Mr. Ngoh Ngoh was not in the mood to make things easy for Elung Paul who felt his tears could help the situation.

Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh simply ordered him out of his office. “You can leave,” he ordered the weeping Elung Paul who is being hated by his fellow Southern Cameroonians for his blind loyalty to the corrupt and dysfunctional government.

While leaving Ngoh Ngoh’s office, the weeping boy did all he could to suppress his tears and sadness, but when he got to his office, he wept like a very hungry baby whose mother had gone to the grocery shop.

Not only is his job on the line, his head is also on the chopping block. There is a lot of competition among Mr. Biya’s collaborators and some of that could be nasty.

Elung Paul knows he has not got a good stomach for such a fight and with Ngoh Ngoh having sweeping powers, he knows his days in government are numbered.

Paul, the weeping boy, wept until his loud cries caught the attention of one of his colleagues who was aware of the tensions between the two men, our source said.

Elung Paul might still be working at the Presidency, but he knows that if he does not play his cards very well, he might end up in jail like others before him. The Biya regime knows how to make people, but it also knows how to undo its appointees.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Though technically the highest-ranked minister, Joseph Dion Ngute is only the head of government in name and it is Paul Biya’s advisors who manage the executive’s day-to-day actions.

It is not strange in the minds of every Southern Cameroonian. For over 57 years after independence and re-unification, there has never been an Southern Cameroons President or a Southern Cameroons Secretary General or Director of Civil Cabinet at the Presidency of the Republic. Nor has any British Southern Cameroonian ever held the strategic ministerial portfolio of Defense, Finance, Communication, and External Relations or even in charge of the Police, Gendarmerie, the Army and Intelligence services; not even ambassadors to English-speaking countries like the USA and Nigeria. For a region that represents about 20% of the population, accounting for over 60% of GDP, the fact that the lone oil refinery named in French (SONARA) is in Southern Cameroon, yet has been run by Francophone general managers with a predominantly Francophone workforce since its creation is unacceptable. It just cannot be that there are no competent Southern Cameroonians to occupy these positions.

Higher institutions like the National Polytechnic, ENAM, IRIC, ESSTIC, INJS, IFORD, CUSS, Public Works, ENSPT, IRAD, are heavily laden with French courses; another way of saying, British Southern Cameroonians need not apply.

Although La Republique du Cameroun passes officially for a bilingual country where both English and French are equal, the head of state has never ever made an official address to the nation in English! All official correspondences are in French, even when directed to British Southern Cameroonians. French is the language used in the administration, police, gendarmerie, army and the courts. Southern Cameroonians have to seek translators at their own expense. All road signs are in French and there is not a single word in English on the FCFA currency in circulation. Chief Dr Dion Ngute understands that this is not constitutional.

French Camerounians occupy all key positions in the Supreme Court – President of the Supreme Court; Attorney General; Head of Judicial Division; Head of Administrative Division; Head of audit Division; Head of Special Criminal Court; Special Attorney Special Criminal Court; Director of Military Justice; Registrar-In-Chief Supreme Court and Secretary General Supreme Court. 58 (39%) of the 148 magistrates in the Southern Zone of Ambazonia are French Camerounians while 54 (61%) of the 89 magistrates in the legal department in the same Southern Zone are French Camerounians. Prime Minister Dion Ngute is aware!

Of the 128 magistrates in the Northern Zone of Ambazonia, there are 67 French Camerounians (52 %). Of the 97 magistrates of the legal departments, 64 of them are French Camerounians, (65.9%); 22 (48.9%) of the 45 magistrates in Bamenda are French Camerounians. There are 27 magistrates in the legal department in Bamenda of which 21, (77.8%) are French Camerounians. Prime Minister Dion Ngute is very much aware!! There is no reference hospital and no functional airport or seaport in the entire Southern Cameroons.

Back by the French government in Paris ever since the so-called reunification, Yaounde has made it a point to assign French Camerounians who neither speak nor understand English to British Southern Cameroons.

French Camerounians disrespect British Southern Cameroonians in positions of authority, even the prime minister, head of government. Francophone ministers either ignore cabinet meetings called by the PM or come late, in breach of standard protocol.

By Chi Prudence Asong with files from Ekinneh Agbaw-Ebai

Over the last several years, since at least 2016, an inconceivably violent conflict has ravaged the Central African nation of Cameroon. The daily barrage of bloody images posted to social media and the accounts of cruelty and likely war crimes have – at least to date – not been enough to galvanize meaningful or concerted action to resolve what has become known as the Anglophone Crisis. After years of wreckage, there is now a domestic stalemate, a paralyzed status quo that has served to radicalize hardliners on both sides of the conflict.

The roots of the Anglophone crisis date back much farther than 2016, of course. Like many long-simmering issues in the region, hostilities can be traced to the maneuvering of former colonial powers who spliced up African territories with little regard for the dignity or preferences of local populations. This fact, however, does not excuse the failed leadership that has more recently been the norm – embodied most profoundly by President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, longer than most Cameroonians have been alive. In October 2018, Biya secured yet another term in office during an electoral exercise that was marred by credible allegations of vote rigging and a clampdown on political adversaries, including opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who had remained under house arrest until last month.

The Anglophone crisis has registered among the world’s most neglected,’ according to assessments by the Norwegian Refugee Council. And according to the International Crisis Group, the fighting has killed well over 3,000 people and displaced an additional 600,000 more. In Anglophone regions, an estimated 850,000 children are currently out of school – likely much higher today in light of the covid-19 pandemic – and one in three of the region’s four million people are in need of humanitarian aid. Cameroon, once a reputed host for refugees is now a major exporter of people who are fleeing violence and government persecution. The number of Cameroonians seeking refuge in neighboring Nigeria, for example, has crossed the 300,000 mark. The instability inside Cameroon has thus produced negative ripple effects on an entire region, including disastrous economic and commercial blowback.

These statistics, as staggering as they are, barely do justice to the overall magnitude of a conflict that has exacted a huge toll on the lives of ordinary Cameroonians – mainly women and children – who have literally been caught in the crossfire between government forces and Anglophone fighters. In the words of local journalist Comfort Mussa, “hardly a day goes by without news of deaths, abductions, arson attacks and other forms of violence that have become a reality for people in [Anglophone] regions.”

As 2021 gets underway, however, there is a small glimmer of hope that momentum has built behind a reform agenda. Rather symbolically, on New Year’s Day, the United States Senate passed a resolution (bit.ly/3rU9lf1) by unanimous bipartisan consent – no small feat in Washington these days – that sent a strong signal to the Biya government and armed groups alike to end the violence and to commit to an inclusive process of international arbitration. The resolution also raised the prospect of punitive sanctions on those individuals responsible for participating in atrocities. (This author has long called for these actions by the U.S. government, a significant donor to and enduring security partner of the Biya government).

As a longtime partner of human rights defenders and pro-democracy leaders in Cameroon, we at Vanguard Africa heartily welcome this development in the halls of the U.S. Senate. We will also advocate that the incoming Biden-Harris Administration make this resolution – and the key principles upon which it is premised – a key priority of its US-Africa policy moving forward.

Put simply, it is time for both sides of the Anglophone crisis to come to terms with the fact that there is no military solution. The guns need to be silenced. The chaos can no longer continue. Importantly, there is some recognition even among the most militant Anglophone leaders, that this is the only feasible way forward. What is needed today is a negotiated settlement that holds human rights violators accountable and paves the way for a new era of leadership that many Cameroonians are demanding.

The violence perpetrated during the Anglophone crisis, and the lack of respect for the sanctity of human life, has taken a massive toll on future generations of Cameroonians. To relieve citizens from this tailspin, both the government and Anglophone leaders need to take a hard look at this freefall and their respective roles in perpetuating it. A genuinely inclusive dialogue must begin, and the U.S. Government – now vitalized by a rare act of bipartisanship – should help to fill Cameroon’s leadership void that has been so readily exploited.

Source:  Vanguard Africa

Despite all the disappointments of the last four years, some Cameroonians were still glued to their TV sets on Thursday, December 31, 2020, hoping that time might have triggered a change of mind in a man who is completely out of touch with his country’s reality. Cameroon’s president, Paul Biya, who is completely out of ideas on how to address some of the major issues facing his country, addressed the country, placing COVID-19 above national issues which have rendered the country ungovernable.

Even with COVID-19 where his government has left Cameroonians to their own devices, the ailing and confused 87-year-old Biya was quick to point out that 2020 would “undoubtedly be remembered as a dark year marked by hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide,” adding that “like almost all countries, Cameroon was affected, perhaps less severely than other States. 

He also wondered that “should man take the blame because of his wanton exploitation of the planet’s natural resources and his constant engagement in conflicts leading to massacres and diseases, as well as experiments to develop new weapons?” By asking this question, Mr. Biya who declared war on Southern Cameroonians some four years ago failed to understand that his own constant engagement in conflicts has led to massacres and diseases in Southern Cameroons. While he points a finger at others, he fails to realize that he is the architect of the disaster that is playing out in Southern Cameroons.

The sick and corrupt octogenarian also pointed out that “I have personally observed that most of our fellow citizens no longer comply with the protective measures prescribed by the Government. At a time when, everywhere else, there is a second wave of the epidemic, coupled with the appearance of a new and more contagious strain of the virus, I urge you once again to put on your face masks, to wash your hands regularly and to consult a physician or any other health personnel if you notice any symptoms. This is the only way to save lives and to curb the spread of the virus.”

He, however, fails to acknowledge that if Cameroonians have walked away from their masks, it is more because his corrupt government lacks the capacity to implement its own policies and decisions. The resources placed at the disposal of the health ministry to fight the highly infectious virus have been embezzled and misappropriated by members of his government and being faithful to his do-nothing attitude, he has been indifferent to all the allegations against the health minister and the thieves in his government are not concerned about any arrests because they know they have not committed the worst crime in Cameroon – eying the presidency. 

Regarding the insecurity in Cameroon brought about by the insurgency in Southern Cameroons and in the country’s northern region, the low-energy president was quick to blame everything on external forces though it is known globally that the unfortunate military drama playing out across the country is born out of the government’s intolerance, arrogance and corruption.

“In recent years, our country has been facing external threats, particularly on our eastern border and in the northern part of our country. In the first case, the threat comes from highway robbers lured by easy prey, namely peaceful stockbreeders and their herds. In the second, the threat now takes the form of isolated raids by Boko Haram or suicide bomb attempts by teenagers. The effective vigilance and action of our Defence and Security Forces have significantly reduced the activities of these criminals,” he said.

But his assessment of the situation is not accurate. If the assessment is not his, then he has been given a sanitized version of the report which clearly underscores that Boko Haram is bombing Cameroonian soldiers out of existence. Thousands have died and many have been maimed by the highly destructive religious sect. 

In Southern Cameroons, the president who has never visited ground zero was quick to present a good picture of a very bad situation in which more than 6,000 Cameroonians have lost their lives. “The situation is different in the North-West and South-West Regions where armed groups maintain an atmosphere of terror and insecurity. They attack isolated communities and educational institutions from time to time to discourage parents from sending their children to school. The list of atrocities and crimes committed by these groups is already long. One of the most heinous of them is that which took place in Kumba recently, resulting in the death of seven school children with several others injured.”

This is really where Mr. Biya has demonstrated that he is good material for psychological and mental analyses. His government has lost credibility and Cameroonians are no longer dupes. The slaughterers of school children across Southern Cameroons are vicious elements unleashed on the population by Atanga Nji, the country’s territorial administration minister, who is an ex-convict. The government has been so desperate to prove to the world that it has a handle on the situation to the point where it has resorted to killing innocent civilians. Ngarbuh, Kwakwa, Muyengue and other towns in the two English-speaking regions are still very fresh in most minds and Cameroonians understand that their government speaks from both sides of its mouth.

“This crime, which is a shock to the human conscience, will not go unpunished. All the perpetrators will be hunted down relentlessly and brought to justice.” Mr. Biya was totally right here, but he was addressing the wrong audience yesterday and he has been doing this for years. He should be telling this to Atanga Nji, Joseph Beti Assomo and the military generals who are the architects of such diabolic and cruel acts in Southern Cameroons. 

“Already, public opinion, particularly in the two regions concerned, can realize, if that is not yet the case, that these so-called “secessionists” are actually nothing more than murderers, and what is more, murderers of innocent children. To say that the Kumba carnage caused widespread outrage is an understatement.” Indeed, it is an understatement. Which government in the world still kills its own citizens like the Biya government has been doing over the last four years? It is not Southern Cameroonians who are secessionists, but a government that is wont to corruption, brutality and injustice. The Yaoundé government has been sowing the seeds of secession for decades and now that it is dealing with a bumper harvest, it is blaming everybody, except itself. 

The purposeless president who now spots a toothless mouth said he would be downloading his responsibilities on other nations. “I would now like to appeal, once more, to the sense of responsibility of the friendly countries hosting the sponsors and of the organizations financing and running the armed gangs in the North-West and South-West Regions, through various channels. All those who would be identified at the end of investigations as initiators or accomplices of these odious crimes will answer for their actions,” he said. But true democracies do not arrest people and send them to their death. The corrupt Yaounde government might have succeeded in Nigeria in its illegal arrest and detention of the Southern Cameroonian President, Julius Ayuk Tabe, and his collaborators because it worked with another corrupt and lawless government, but it will not succeed in countries such as the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany and Australia where some 4 million Southern Cameroonians are residing because in those countries, there is genuine democracy and the rule of law. Mr. Biya must stop dreaming the wrong dreams if he is thinking of genuine peace.   

Despite his manifest failure in the country’s two English-speaking regions, Mr. Biya continues to promote the false idea that his government is pursuing dialogue. “Yet our Government has continued to demonstrate its commitment to openness and dialogue by, for example, releasing many former secessionists and facilitating their reintegration into society.”

Furthermore, after the Major National Dialogue, the Government fast-tracked the implementation of an ambitious decentralization policy which includes a special status for our North-West and South-West Regions, which takes into account their specificities and aspirations.” The comedy he and his government organized in 2018 was nothing more than a monologue that was doomed to failure. His special status to Southern Cameroonians came with massive violence and death to innocent civilians. He should be too old and blind not to understand that Southern Cameroonians simply do not care about his “Special Status of Death.”

He senility does not let him figure out that his collaborators are taking advantage of him. He does not seek to know anything. He depends on false and sanitized reports. In his warped thinking, he holds that he can urge the brave fighters of Southern Cameroons to abandon their noble objectives to submit themselves to the madness he and his collaborators have organized in the name of DDR. “I once more urge the youths who have been enlisted in armed gangs to come out of the bush and sign up with the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) centers in order to return to a normal life, like their other young compatriots,” he said.

“The prevailing insecurity in the North-West and South-West Regions has caused untold damage to our country. Our democracy allows for the peaceful expression of all opinions, in compliance with the laws and regulations in force. Otherwise, peace and stability would be jeopardized,” he said. For once, he acknowledged that the Southern Cameroons crisis had hurt the country in more ways than one. However, if he does not prioritize genuine dialogue over the hypocrisy he and his collaborators have been organizing, the country will continue to go down the drain.

He has a choice – continue to talk tough and let the country continue in its downward spiral or speak the language of peace in order to appease the people of Southern Cameroons. Though there are many Southern Cameroonian factions involved in this struggle, many are of the view that their goals could be achieved through genuine dialogue held in the presence of a neutral third party. President Julius Ayuk Tabe and his team are willing and ready to sit at the negotiating table where they plan to professionally articulate Southern Cameroonian ideas on the way forward. It is up to Biya to come down from his high horse and make things happen sooner rather than later.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Biya and his Francophone Beti Ewondo gangs are already setting out new political terminologies in a bid to steady a failed nation and a diving economy in the president’s 2020 end of year address to the nation. But this time around, those empty speeches will instead sow more anger, confusion and doubts that the 87-year-old dictator is up to handling the fast-worsening political and security situation in the two Cameroons.

The French Cameroun monarch did not speak to the Cameroonian people during that dreadful moment of the coronavirus pandemic when the rhythms of everyday Cameroonian life was shutting down — with schools and businesses closing, local football league suspended, hospitals were being deserted by HIV and cancer patients who feared for their lives.

Cameroon state radio and television (CRTV) instead fed the public with stories that the President unveiled via Prime Minister Dion Ngute several measures to help contain the spread of the coronavirus. In the next 48 hours, Biya’s speech will leave many Cameroonians in Limbo. However, millions of Southern Cameroonians will follow but the 2021 policy speech of the Vice President of the Ambazonia Interim Government, Dabney Yerima.

Millions of Southern Cameroonians cannot put food on the table! Thousands are living in the bushes and thousands are now refugees in neighboring countries. The story is becoming more intractable in La Republique du Cameroun with a majority of French Cameroonians now saying Biya is the worst ever in their nation’s history.

Biya is indeed the worst leader Africa has ever seen and after 38 years as head of state, he is now a good example to illustrate that practice does not make perfect. He is not only proven to be incompetent but he is indeed truly inhumane. With the backing of the French government and French multinationals, he does not give a damn about anything but lying about it all, claiming that he is a wise leader and faking his own greatness through some half-baked French Cameroun political elites. This has been demonstrated by everything French and Southern Cameroonians have seen over the last 38 years and we of the Cameroon Concord News and the Cameroon Intelligence Report are saying that this complete and total mess must be his legacy and those such as Simon Achidi Achu, Chief VE Mukete, Elvis Ngolle Ngolle, Yang Philemon, Itoe Benjamin, Dion Ngute, Paul Tasong, Paul Atanga Nji and a host of other Southern Cameroons stooges and enablers who have ignored and empowered Biya and solicited this brand of his own horrible actions towards citizens of the two Cameroons.  Biya must be remembered as the worst leader ever and many Southern Cameroonians should be ready to spit on the graves of his Southern Cameroons acolytes once their remains are brought home to Ambazonia.

Biya’s ruling CPDM crime syndicate is made up of dangerous white collar criminals, all rotten to the core. Africa has never seen anything like Biya. His kind of insensitivity to humanity, his disregard for justice, the Holy Roman Catholic Church that raised him up and he is literally no friend to Islam and he’s been the President of La Republique du Cameroun for 38 good years?

We of the Concord Group do not care what your religion is? But who governs like this and still receives Holy Communion? Who does this by all accounts and is still being referred to as the Father of the nation? What is this Biya thing really about?

Everyone within the consortium of the ruling CPDM crime syndicate including the army now seems confused. But the good news is, the man Biya is the worst ever. He’s been terrible for his own family because nobody knows what the hell he is about anymore and neither do his blood relations.

After 38 years as head of state, the two Cameroons are now on their knees and the only chance for the citizens to get to a better place is for the army to step in and get rid of this outrageous man.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Cameroon Concord News Group sources at the Cameroon Presidency are reporting that there are major cracks on the ruling crime syndicate’s wall.

The report from inside the collapsing presidency of the declining Republic is  not good Christmas tidings for the ruling CPDM and its supporters who have run the country’s economy aground.

The country’s president, the ailing octogenarian, Paul Biya, who has misled the country for over four decades, is now slowly but surely losing his grip on power.

 Over the past ten months, the French Ambassador to Cameroon, Christophe Guilhou, has met Paul Biya frequently with orders from the Elysée Palace.

France’s overt and heavy involvement in Cameroon’s internal affairs over the last few months has invited accusations of recolonization.

France has made no secret of its longing for political stability in Cameroon despite the current government’s economic incompetence and human rights atrocities.

A source inside Cameroon’s presidency that elected anonymity opined that “France has insisted  Biya opens negotiations with the break-away Federal Republic of Ambazonia leaders in detention, but the progress is painfully slow and embarrassing, and the French are extremely disappointed that Cameroon is sliding into another Sudan”.

France is now losing patience with the intransigence of the old and ailing Yaoundé dictator, especially as Russia has clearly stated its intention to have a foothold in the Central African region and this may occur through a partnership with the insurgents in Southern Cameroons.

The Cameroon Concord News Group’s informant at the Unity Palace in Yaoundé said Mr.Biya had surrounded himself with hawks who were deceiving him that the war in Southern Cameroons could be won on the battlefield.

But France, a major supporter of the moribund Yaounde government clearly disagrees with such baseless assertions as the reality on the ground speaks to an escalating conflict.

The Cameroon Concord News Group’s informant intimated that “those close to the physically and mentally diminshed old man keep lying to him that the war can be won in the battlefield, but France disagrees. The hawks are lying to him to keep the war going as it is a lucrative business for them.”

The fast-moving geopolitical dynamics in neighboring Central African Republic, marked by huge Russian involvement, is a huge concern for France.

 France has maintained a stranglehold in the Gulf of Guinea but Putin is about to put an end to that.

In the Central African Republic, President Faustin Archange Touadéra, has received some 300 military instructors from Russia to counter a surge in French-supported rebel violence ahead of Sunday’s election.

President Archange Touadéra claims that an alleged coup is a sinister plot designed by the US and France to oust him from power.

He also stresses that such a plan will not see the light of day as Russian support to the Central African country’s government has destroyed French plans to bring back François Bozize, a French lackey, to power.

The recent news updates that the US-based Southern Cameroons Interim Government has established diplomatic relations with Moscow is keeping Yaoundé and Paris awake at night.

 Our sources opined that “The Central African Republic seems to be out of France’s grip, but the French are determined to keep Cameroon, prompting a new strategy that underscores the importance of dialogue. If Cameroon moves away from France’s orbit, then the French are out of Africa.”

The pressure from Paris is telling on Mr. Biya who is already dealing with many health issues. Our informant said that the Yaoundé old man is feeling the pressure as Christophe Guilhou is avoiding Paul Biya’s calls.

For now, the most actively important adviser to Mr. Biya is his wife and this is a colossal concern for many with interest in Cameroon’s politics.

Whatever happens over the next few days, 2021 is shaping up to be an interesting year in Etoudi and Ambazonia.

By Isong Asu, Cameroon Concord News Group’s London Bureau Chief

History has it that wicked people know how to bite and blow at the same time, and this is actually playing out in Cameroon where the arrogance and greed of a few have resulted in the displacement of thousands of Southern Cameroonians.

This week, Cameroon’s long-serving and ailing president, Paul Biya, who is the reason why things are falling apart in the country and the architect of the Southern Cameroons crisis, ordered his territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, an ex-convict and con man, to ensure that some CFAF 600 million is spent on internally displaced persons from Southern Cameroons.

For more than three years, Mr. Biya’s sex-starved, alcohol-inflamed and trigger-happy militia has been killing, maiming and exploiting innocent Southern Cameroonians just because they have complained that the current political dispensation has been hurting them and it clearly leaves much to be desired.

Some 6,000 Southern Cameroonians have been mowed down by the country’s military and the crisis that has obliterated the Southern Cameroonian economy has become a money spinner for the army of occupation that is making hay while the sun shines.

For those who have escaped the government-owned killing fields in Southern Cameroons, life has become a nightmare, as everybody is considered a suspect and the territorial administration minister had unleashed a group of youthful criminals on the population with the objective of giving the insurgency a very bad name.

These government-sponsored criminals have been killing and raping women across Southern Cameroons. Some of them have been burnt alive by the population after figuring out that the criminal gang has nothing to do with the brave Southern Cameroonian fighters who have given the unprofessional soldiers a run for their money.

The Biya massacre and slaughtering business is still thriving despite calls by the international community for an end to such ignoble business that is run by Yaounde-based army generals who are shareholders in the Biya killing conglomerate.

Children, pregnant women, old mothers and fathers, as well as armless citizens have all been victims of a government that is clearly on a diet of power.

The Biya killing machines are still at work and many more Southern Cameroonians are leaving the country in droves in fear of the disaster that the Yaounde government has manufactured for them.

While thousands are heading to the Middle East, many of those who do not have passports are simply crossing the border to neighboring Nigeria where they are living rough.

Their homes have been burnt down by army soldiers who have no regard for human life. The memories of Kwakwa where an elderly woman was burned alive by reckless and plundering soldiers, the inhuman killings of pregnant women and children in Ngarbuh and the overt burning of homes in Muyengue, Ikata and Muyuka are still very fresh in many Southern Cameroonian minds.

Killing has become a government unregulated sport in Cameroon because of one ego-driven person who holds that he has been ordained by God to rule the country and maybe get buried with it when he dies.

Southern Cameroonians will never forget. The pain is still unbearable. Their homes have been burnt and their loved ones have been sent to an early grave by a government that is supposed to protect them.

No gifts, no matter how expensive, will erase the negative feelings that are inhabiting the minds of Southern Cameroonians.

Southern Cameroonians have not committed any crime and it is their right to express their frustration with a system of governance that does not place the citizen at the center of things.

While citizen-focused governance is an idea whose time has come in many parts of the world, in Cameroon, Mr. Biya and his crime syndicate hold that the country belongs to them and anybody who holds contrary views does not deserve a place in that country.

Mr. Biya’s ruling CPDM is a carbon copy of the Soviet-era communist party that raised corruption and insensitivity to unimaginable levels.

The CPDM Central Committee can only be compared to the Communist Party’s CCCP (Central Committee of the Communist Party) which brought death and destruction to ordinary citizens. It drove many Russians into alcoholism and that is exactly what the CPDM is doing to Cameroonians.

Drinking has become a sport in Cameroon and it has really distorted the minds of many Cameroonians who unfortunately hold that it is the best enjoyment they can have although it accounts for more than 40% of premature deaths in the country.

For Southern Cameroonians, yours should never be the kingdom of alcohol. Though the Biya killing conglomerate might have pushed you out of your  homeland, you must always ensure that you keep your dignity.

Thou shall not take Mr. Biya’s poisoned gift. He is not sincere about helping you. The best thing he can do for Cameroon is for him to call for a genuine national dialogue that will lead to the resolution of those issues that have sent Southern Cameroonians out of their God-given territories.

 If he is serious, he should meet with your president, Julius Ayuk Tabe, who despite poor prison conditions is holding up properly. He is still in his right frame of mind and, in his view, only genuine and sustain dialogue can determine the country’s future and not the multiple presidential decrees that are not even worth the paper on which they are published.

The crime syndicate cannot be burning down your homes while offering you bread and sardine for Christmas. Bekondo in the Southwest region was burnt down yesterday by those plunderers who call themselves soldiers.

The Southern Cameroonian is a dynamic and hard-working citizen. He needs a conducive environment to operate freely and not bread and sardine from an enemy whose cardinal objective is total dominance.

Dignity is a currency that is not designed for everybody, but the Southern Cameroonian has it. Your suffering is temporary and you must keep on working hard to earn a living instead depending on a government whose hallmark is corruption.

As you spend this festive period out of your territory, always bear in mind that you will one day return to your homeland where your current suffering will be a distant memory. Merry Christmas without the Biya poisoned gift!

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

A Cameroonian official said Friday he had found evidence that, as widely suspected, Boko Haram militants have been establishing close ties in Cameroonian political and business circles. The revelation came after Cameroon’s military arrested a former lawmaker for allegedly supplying cattle to the Nigerian terrorist group.

Midjiyawa Bakari, governor of Cameroon’s Far North region, on Nigeria’s border, says that within the past two months, Boko Haram has been establishing ties with top officials of his region. He spoke via a messaging app from the northern town of Maroua.

He says security reports indicate that Boko Haram has infiltrated some political, business and elite circles along Cameroon’s northern border with Nigeria. He says Boko Haram accomplices in the communities supply food and money for the terrorists to procure weapons. Bakari says the military has been assigned to arrest those who have established ties with Boko Haram.

Bakari did not say how many people have been arrested for establishing ties with the terrorist group, but this week, local media reported the arrest by Cameroon’s military of a former member of parliament, Blama Malla, for alleged ties with the Boko Haram. He has been detained in the northern town of Mora.

The media reports that Malla, a member of President Paul Biya’s ruling Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement party, is accused of supplying cattle and money to Boko Haram.

Malla was arrested after his cousin, a member of a local militia in the border town of Kolofata in the Mayo Sava administrative unit, was seen transporting 10 cattle to a border area where Boko Haram fighters hide. He was arrested by the military. Local media said the cousin confessed that he had received orders from Malla to supply the cattle to Boko Haram.

The government has not issued a statement. VOA could not independently confirm his account.

Retired Colonel Didier Bajeck, a security specialist and former Cameroon defense spokesperson, says while the military is stepping up intelligence to arrest the suspects, civilians should be on the alert.

Bajeck says it is imperative for civilians to inform the military of the presence of strange people in their areas. It is also important, he says, that civilians report their neighbors who invite suspected Boko Haram members. He says civilians may not know of financial transactions between suspects and Boko Haram, but that the population should immediately call the military when they see food and cattle being transported to the bush, where terrorists may be hiding.

Ejani Leonard Kulu, a political analyst at the University of Dschang in Cameroon, says Boko Haram has historically had ties with some top business figures and politicians in Nigeria. He says it is the same situation in Cameroon.

“Nigeria and Cameroon share so much ties together, cultural, religious ties, socio-economic ties,” Kulu said. “Boko Haram in its modus operandi infiltrates the society, touch key persons at different areas. So it is something that has been a routine in Nigeria and in Cameroon when the president of the National Assembly said, “Il y a les Boko Haram parmi nous,” such an information was not supposed to be taken lightly because these are people who are highly informed.”

The “Il y a les Boko Haram parmi nous” that Kulu refers to means there are Boko Haram members in our midst. It is a statement made in 2018 by Cavaye Yegui Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly during a plenary session. At the time, Malla was still a lawmaker from the Mayo Sava administrative unit. Djibrli did not specify names.

Kulu said the government should not have taken such a statement lightly.

Cameroon has also always accused Boko Haram of infiltrating militias created to fight the terrorists.

Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting for 11 years to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The fighting has spread to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin, with regular killings, abductions and burnings of mosques, churches, markets and schools.

The United Nations reports that Boko Haram violence has cost the lives of 30,000 people and displaced about 2 million in Nigeria, Cameroon, Niger and Chad.

Source: VOA

Political rivalry in Cameroon has taken a worrying direction, as supporters of incumbent Paul Biya trade ethnic slurs with backers of his main political rival Maurice Kamto. The situation is threatening national stability by separatist insurgency in the Anglophone regions.

Cameroon’s opposition leader Maurice Kamto continues to dispute the 2018 presidential election results, while his supporters and President Paul Biya’s exchange invective that often descends into ethnic slurs. The dispute uses online trolling campaign that is leading to violence. Maurice Kamto continues to challenge the vote’s outcome, while President Paul Biya shows no sign of wanting to relinquish power after 38 years in office.

Biya is supported by Bulu ethnic group, indigenous to the Francophone South region, and the Beti of the Francophone Centre with whom the Bulu identify. Kamto is supported by Bamileke, indigenous to the Francophone West.

The day after 2voting in 2018, Kamto declared himself winner, pre-empting the official result. Two weeks later, on October 22, 2018, the Constitutional Council, the only body with a legal mandate to announce results, proclaimed Biya winner with an overwhelming 71 per cent of the vote, with Kamto coming in second with only 14 per cent. Kamto himself seemed to reinforce an ethnic interpretation by suggesting he was denied victory in 2018 because of his ethnicity.

Prior to announcing the results, the Constitutional Council heard and dismissed petitions in which two opposition candidates, Kamto and the SDF’s Joshua Osih, pleaded for an annulment on grounds of violence in the Anglophone regions, widespread fraud and incorrect tallies. Most non-partisan observers thought it likely that Biya had won more votes than any of his rivals, even if the president’s numbers were inflated, and foreign governments recognized his victory. However, the head of the country’s Catholic bishops’ conference, Bishop Samuel Kleda, expressed doubt about the president’s wide victory margin. The Catholic Church has five archdioceses in Cameroon— four French and one mostly English-speaking.

Kamto, being a part of Cameroon’s Francophone majority, criticizes the government for holding elections in which few Anglophones could vote due to violence and a separatist-led boycott. He accuses Biya of mishandling the Anglophone crisis by prioritizing force over dialogue.

In 1992, Maurice Kamto supported what was then Cameroon’s leading opposition party, the Social Democratic Front (SDF), when it put forward John Fru Ndi for president. By 2004, he had joined Biya’s government as junior minister of justice. However, he resigned in 2011, complaining of deteriorating rule of law and development failures. In 2012 he founded the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) that has become the government’s leading adversary, at least in Francophone areas.

Before German colonization, Bamileke territory comprised the present-day West and North-West Regions of Cameroon. Under German colonial rule, which lasted until 1916, this part of Cameroon was referred to as the “Grasslands”. When the French and British colonial masters took over the German colonial positions in Cameroon after Germany’s defeat in World War I (1914–1919), they divided the Grasslands into two parts, one of which was under French direct rule, while the other was under British indirect rule. When Cameroon became independent in 1960, the term “Bamileke” gradually came to be applied only to the people of the North-West, whereas people of the South-West (another province under British colonial rule) became known as the “Anglo-phones” because they were colonized by the British and, therefore, adopted the English language. In particular, the native populations have labeled the Bamileke “strangers,” “invaders,” and “land hunters”. Among the various newcomers, the Bamileke have distinguished themselves by virtue of their leading role in economic life, especially in retail trade and in the budding informal sector.

The politicization of ethnicity is driving polarization, with hostility on the rise between, on the one hand, Bulu and Beti, perceived by numerous Cameroonians as close to Biya and prevalent in the South and Centre regions, and on the other, Kamto’s Bamileke, a community indigenous to the Francophone West but also with a heavy presence in cities across the country.

The Beti ethnic group belongs to the Bantu cultural area in Central Africa. The name “Beti” is a generic term referring to people from several tribes including the Ewondo, Mbane (or Bane), Eton, Manguisa, Mvele and Bulu. The Beti people come from the central and southern Regions of Cameroon, which correspond to the equatorial forest areas. Historically, the term “Beti” originated within the Ewondo tribal group. The Beti people define themselves as lords or respectable people, in short, as gentlemen (nti) as opposed to slaves (halo). German colonial administration played an important role in extending and adopting the Ewondo language as a means of communication for all the people of the region. This strategy of rallying a large number of tribal groups around one politico-ethnic pole under the Beti name is definitely inflated today by the political usage of this name and by its imaginary construction as an “ethnic complex” with a mixed sociological composition. Beti name thus serves as an umbrella term for a wide array of ethnic groups from the Southern Forest Area. In the 1970s, the Beti umbrella name came to be applied not only to the Ewondo and the Eton, whose homelands are in the vicinity of Yaounde, but also to groups such as the Bulu, the Manguissa, the Fang and the Mvele.

The present-day situation of conflict between the Bamileke and Beti is not the result of their cultural differences, nor due to any natural predisposition to exclude each other, but because they live within an environment where the resources necessary for survival are scarce. Hence, the competition for resources such as land and control of economic or political power in the city seems to have cleared a path for feelings of hatred and jealousy and, over time, reinforced these attitudes, eventually leading to ethnic exclusion and antagonism. It is this context that has led to the development of discourses and stereotypes that serve the purpose of rationalizing certain socio-political behaviors present in people’s daily scramble for scarce resources.

Ideological stereotypes and discourses accelerating the antagonism between Bamileke and Beti have been constructed and reconstructed by socio-political actors to serve their own political and economic ambitions. Actors who belong to the political, administrative, intellectual, economic and religious elites use elements of the social and cultural repertoires of each of the major ethnic groups to construct stereotypes, which are then used to separate and distinguish the various groups. However, beyond the official ethnic divide depicted by politicians, peaceful indigenous mechanisms for avoiding tensions or reducing their intensity have been developed by members of distinct or officially opposed ethnic groupings. These mechanisms include interethnic marriages and interethnic friendship between members of different groups who interact within a common neighborhood or workplace.

Unable to freely express themselves in media dominated by Biya’s administration and its allies for decades, government opponents, independent journalists and bloggers have leapt into the new social media space to get their messages across to Cameroon’s domestic and diaspora audiences.

Activists of all political camps use it to propagate misinformation, widen ethnic divides and even incite violence. As the result, inflammatory content online pitting Bulu and Beti against Bamileke has stoked tensions. MPs from the South – largely Biya loyalists – accuse emigres from the West, who are generally regarded as Kamto supporters, of tribalism.

In response, the government and its supporters have also upped their presence online. They have also opened it up for bigots and hate-speaking. Thus, both pro-government and anti-government activists now use social media to spread inflammatory discourse, propaganda and misinformation.

So, social media companies, notably Facebook, have a major role in rising tensions, by placing toxic ethnic content and fueling ethnic tensions in Cameroon.

Government supporters, in part using their control of public and some private media, consistently underline the MRC leader’s Bamileke origin, insinuating that his party has an inherent ethnic bias. However, MRC’s leadership does not show that any of ethnic group dominates the party. Many rich Bamileke are a key source of funds and support for the ruling party, likely fearing that doing otherwise might jeopardize their business interests.

In the South, an area long dominated by the ruling party, mounting ethnic tension appears to have contributed to riots in 2019 by groups of indigenous Bulu targeting Bamoun and Bamileke, who originate in the West.

Causes of the conflict

In trying to consolidate post-colonial national unity, Cameroon evolved through a series of revolutionary political stages which spanned across the federal and unitary system. In 1972, a constitutional referendum replaced the federal system with the unitary system. West Cameroon, which had federated in 1961 as an equal state, eventually ceased to exist, thus giving rise to an Anglophone political consciousness – the feeling of being exploited by the Francophone- dominated state. Cameroon also went through several changes under the incumbent president, who came to power in 1982. These included a change of name from the United Republic of Cameroon to the Republic of Cameroon (exact appellation of former French Cameroon when it got its independence), a change of national flag from two-star design (symbol of the coming together of Francophone and Anglophone parts) to a single star, and the adoption of a new constitution in 1996 that transformed Cameroon into a decentralized unitary state. These changes are the reasons why many protesting Anglophones feel that their cultural and historical uniqueness was trounced in the union.

Today there are three main types of movements in modern Cameroon:

• federalists who demanding a return to federalism;
•  separatists who are fighting for secession;
• unionists who are standing against any change to the form of the state.

This continued contestation of state structures threatens peace and stability in Cameroon as evidenced by the ongoing Anglophone crisis and highly polarized political climate.

Overtime, Anglophones in the South West and North West regions, who make up only about 20% of Cameroon’s 25.88 million population, have felt marginalized by the Francophone-dominated government in the political, economic and socio-cultural spheres. Anglophones accuse the government of marginalizing the two English-speaking regions over Cameroon’s other eight administrative regions. Politically, some argue that there is an under-representation of the Anglophone minority in key government positions as well as other government services. Out of the 67 members of government, only 3 Anglophones occupy high-level cabinet positions.

There has also been significant economic disparity when it comes to allocation of investment projects by the State to the two English-speaking regions, compared to the other eight French-speaking regions. The French- speaking South region was allocated far more resources (over 570 projects with over $225 million) than the two English-speaking North West region (more than 500 projects with over $76 million) and South West region (over 500 projects with over $77 million) as in 2017.

Social disparities equally exist due to the centralization of power, with decision making centers in Yaoundé, far from Anglophone regions. Policies in the education and judicial systems also created a fertile ground for the emergence and violent radicalization of those with grievances. There were 1,265 French- speaking magistrates and only 227 English-speaking magistrates in 2016 and out of 514 judicial officers, 499 were Francophone and 15 Anglophone. The current Anglophone crisis is, therefore, a manifestation of frustration arising from both real and perceived discrimination and marginalization of the English-speaking minority.

The escalation of violence in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon brought to light several non-state armed separatist groups. These secessionist groups are determined to see the North West and South West regions of Cameroon completely separated from the rest of the country and form its own state referred to as “Ambazonia.” They have sustained their claims by relying on the logistical and ideological support of Cameroonians from the diaspora who played and continue to play an influential role in the emergence, escalation and maintenance of the current Anglophone crisis.

The Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF) which emerged in 2017, is one of the most prominent and active secessionist militant groups in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon. It is the official military wing of the Ambazonian separatist movement and the military force of the self-declared Ambazonia, with an estimated 200-500 militants under its command.

The Southern Cameroons Defense Forces (SOCADEF) is also one of several militant groups participating in a conflict that has, in the last few years, rapidly grown in intensity. With a presence in the South-West region’s administrative division of Meme, SOCADEF was founded in 2017 to secure secession for the Anglophones and has an estimated 400 members. It is the armed wing of the African People’s Liberation Movement (APLM), an Ambazonian separatist movement, and has carried out several attacks with home-made bombs against security forces.

The Ambazonia Self-Defence Council (ASDC) incorporates smaller militias like the Ambazonia restoration army (few dozen est. members) and other larger ones such as the Manyu Tigers (500 est. members), Red Dragons (400 est. members) and Seven Karta (200 est. members).

Several other separatist groups and recent self-defense groups such as the Vipers (few dozen est. members), the swords of Ambazonia and Ambaland Quifor (200 est. members each) are also engaged in the conflict. Although they operate in different locations across the North West and South West regions, ADF and SOCADEF have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks in the Anglophone regions.

Terrorism factor

The hub of Boko Haram’s terrorist attacks has always been in Nigeria’s Northeastern Borno State. The Islamist group, however, extended its operations into Cameroon since 2013. The spillover has led to multiple displacements, suicide attacks, bombings, kidnappings, targeted killings and village destructions in Cameroon’s Far North region.

The presence of local Fulani civilians alongside with government security forces in conflict areas is particularly worrying. The mainly pastoralist Fulani community – known locally as Mbororos – began arriving from neighbouring Nigeria at least a century ago. The traditionally nomadic community started settling in the highlands of Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions and has since suffered marginalisation and oppression, struggling to obtain citizenship and land ownership rights.

For decades, cattle-grazing Mbororos have clashed with local communities, who are primarily engaged in sedentary agriculture, but tensions have worsened with conflict and reports of rebels seizing Mbororo cattle, demanding political allegiance, and forcing some pastoralists to flee.

The government, which views the farming communities in the region as pro-separarist, has exploited this local conflict, promising the Mbororo land in return for their support, one local opposition politician told TNH, asking for anonymity to speak freely. The Mbororo have a reputation for violent retaliation and community defense.

Conflict Development Scenarios

The Most Likely Scenario

Although international and regional laws, as well as the Cameroon constitution, guarantee the right to self-determination, the prospects of a negotiated secession are slim, given the government’s stance against federalism or secession. The most likely scenario could, therefore, be the violent repression of the separatist groups and the continuation of the unitary system with some level of decentralization. This scenario is likely to occur given that the president signed Decree No 2018/191 of March 2, 2018, creating the Ministry of Decentralization and Local Development.  Important reforms are also underway to accelerate decentralization and implement recommendations from the Major National Dialogue.

A year ago, the parliament of Cameroon adopted Law No. 2019/019 on the Promotion of Official Languages in Cameroon. The law guarantees the equality of English and French in all sectors of administrative, economic, social and political activity and it has been enacted by the Head of State.

It is, therefore, probable that compromises will be reached on the effective implementation of constitutional provisions for decentralization in Cameroon and this would likely preserve national stability by guaranteeing more inclusive decision-making. Similarly, the Cameroon government will continue its campaign against Boko Haram although this may not lead to the total defeat of the Islamist group. The group remains a major threat to security as it continues to demonstrate its ability to carry out significant terrorist attacks in Cameroon’s Far North region and across countries of the Lake Chad basin.

The Best-Case Scenario

The best scenario for the Anglophone crisis will be a return to the original federal system which was abolished during the incumbency of the country’s first president. This will be the best way to express the government’s commitment towards resolving the Anglophone crisis and ensuring sustainable peace. Similarly, the current campaign against Boko Haram may lead to the decimation and total defeat of the terrorist group in Cameroon’s Far North region and other neighboring countries affected by Boko Haram. If this scenario occurs, it will prevent the escalation of Boko Haram’s operations in other regions of the country that are not directly affected by the group’s terrorist attacks.

The Worst-Case Scenario

The worst-case scenario would be for the Anglophone crisis to escalate into a protracted civil war and/or eventually lead to secession of the Anglophone regions from the rest of the country. Although the separatist agenda asserts that secession offers the best solution to the ongoing Anglophone problem, it is an option to be avoided. This scenario, should it occur, could have negative geopolitical implications for the region. It may inspire a renewed Biafra separatist insurgency or lead to further disintegration as the North West and South West regions do not have a cohesive political agenda. It would also lead to the annihilation of the country’s linguistic diversity and national unity. This is not only a major political objective of the Cameroonian government, but also strength and enriching feature of the country’s identity. In the case of Boko Haram, the worst-case scenario would be the extension
of the Islamist group’s operations to other regions of Cameroon. This would further destabilize the country and deepen the on-going humanitarian crisis.

Political strains may be turning ethnic to some degree, as the Kamto-Biya divide sets a pro-Kamto West, inhabited mostly by Bamileke, apart from a pro-Biya Centre-South, dominated by Beti and Bulu. Ethnic discord has even seeped into the Catholic Church, which suffers disputes along these same lines. A new government policy requiring city mayors to be selected from the region’s indigenous population may make things worse. The new policy sowed resentment, especially among Bamileke, many of whom have migrated from the western highlands to major towns and cities in the central, southern and coastal areas. They see the new policy as a ploy to deny them political agency in the cities where they have settled and where migrant ethnic groups would otherwise likely dominate councils.

Culled from Institute For Global Threats and Democracies Studies

When Franklin Agbor, a former Cameroonian gendarme, disobeyed an order to kill civilians, he was labeled a turncoat. Agbor was patrolling in Cameroon’s Southwest region, which Anglophone separatists regard as part of a breakaway state; his decision not to pull the trigger on behalf of the national government carried a death sentence. With his life in imminent danger under President Paul Biya’s authoritarian regime, the soldier had no choice but to flee Cameroon.

Within weeks, Agbor, 33, left behind his wife and two young children and flew to Ecuador via Nigeria. He traveled up through Central America to Mexico, braving mountains and jungles. Finally, in October 2019, he surrendered himself to the United States for asylum at the Laredo border crossing. Agbor fled to “pursue a brighter future,” said his brother-in-law, Nzombella Atemlefack, who lives in the United States.

But that isn’t what he found. Instead, Agbor spent 13 months in detention at Jackson Parish Correctional Center in Louisiana, denied asylum and parole. His treatment there was “without a conscience,” Atemlefack said. In detention amid the coronavirus pandemic, Agbor faced high-risk conditions—minimal access to medical treatment, no social distancing, no personal protective equipment, and no testing—even as his peers contracted COVID-19. And like other Cameroonian asylum-seekers, Agbor was beaten by immigration officers who forced him to sign his own deportation papers.

Since Cameroon descended into civil war in 2016, more than 400,000 people have fled ethnic and political persecution, with thousands seeking asylum in the United States. Many have instead been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), suffering conditions that advocates say flout international norms for the treatment of refugees—and reflect glaring inequities for Black migrants in the immigration system. Despite civil demonstrations led by Cameroonians in ICE facilities across the country this year, the poor conditions have only intensified.

The inhumane treatment comes despite the role of the United States in Cameroon’s civil war. In addition to their colonial legacies, Western countries have fanned the flames of the crisis by indirectly bankrolling the persecution of Anglophones with funds for infrastructure and counterterrorism operations. In 2018, while the White House denounced Biya’s administration, the United States donated military helicopters, turboprop jets, and drones to his arsenal. Cameroonians have fled a crisis shaped in part by the West only to be met with hostility on American shores.

Still, those who remain in the United States could be considered lucky. Since October, ICE has deported dozens of Cameroonians: On Oct. 13, 57 Cameroonians were repatriated and handed over to military custody, and on Nov. 11, 37 more—including Agbor—followed. Placed in maximum-security prisons, none has been heard from since, according to families. Several have gone missing. Advocates say another deportation flight is scheduled for Dec. 15.

After the first deportations, several U.S. lawmakers signed letters expressing “grave concerns” over the situation for Cameroonian detainees and ICE’s conduct. In November, Rep. Karen Bass introduced a House resolution demanding an immediate halt to the expulsions and a Department of Justice investigation into the allegations. But as the abuses and the deportations continue, the fate of Cameroonian asylum-seekers shows how the politicized U.S. immigration system has chosen militarization over mercy.

The furor started in Texas. In February, 140 Cameroonian women protested conditions including medical neglect at T. Don Hutto detention center, which has previously come under FBI scrutiny for sexual abuse allegations. Detainees in other facilities soon joined in, galvanized by the potentially fatal consequences of COVID-19. Between March and August, Cameroonians organized hunger strikes against discriminatory treatment and a lack of pandemic precautions in Pine Prairie, a Louisiana facility. In September, Pauline Binam, a Cameroonian woman, was one of the whistleblowers in allegations of forced hysterectomies and other medical abuse while being held at a Georgia ICE facility.

“It seemed like ICE had enough of us,” said Martha Nfonteh, an advocate with the Cameroon American Council whose brother participated in the Pine Prairie protests.

Since the protests, detainees say that things have only gotten worse. Godlove Nswohnonomi, a welder who fled Cameroon in 2018 after getting caught in the crossfire of the conflict, joined the Pine Prairie protests after more than a year in ICE custody—feeling that the poor conditions in the facility put his life “in clear danger.” But he watched as his comrades were pepper sprayed, beaten, placed in solitary confinement, and threatened with deportation. “The way [the ICE officers] looked at us and talked to us, we felt very threatened,” Nswohnonomi said.

Across the country, detainees have experienced a similar pattern of physical violence, emotional abuse, and medical neglect. Of the 23 detainees interviewed by Foreign Policy over the past two months, almost all had similar stories: punishment by ICE officers, the lack of due process, and the inability to seek justice in a court system that appears to be against them. Twelve have since been deported. (ICE officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment on these and other allegations.)

To accelerate these deportations, ICE has used coercive measures to force detainees to sign their own papers—supposedly accepting their deportation before they are expelled. By September, ICE was separating the Pine Prairie protesters, sending them to facilities in far-flung states. Ivo Fogap, who participated in the protests, found himself on a bus to LaSalle, another Louisiana detention facility for those facing imminent expulsion. The bus was packed, and several detainees had symptoms consistent with COVID-19. That’s when Fogap says he understood ICE’s intent: “to put our lives in danger by staying here.”

ICE has a history of medical mismanagement: In 2017, a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General described problems with medical care that “undermine the protection of detainees’ rights, their humane treatment, and the provision of a safe and healthy environment.” “Before COVID, our immigration system had already been making people sicker,” said Amy Zeidan, a physician and co-founder of the Society of Asylum Medicine, which conducts medical evaluations for detainees. “The virus has only made things worse.”

At LaSalle, several individuals were immediately placed in isolation, and the rest were sent to a 70-person dormitory, where many developed high fevers and coughs. One detainee, Valdano Tebid, said he experienced COVID-19 symptoms, but it took six days for him to receive a diagnosis, during which he likely exposed his dormmates. He was released back into the general population after 10 days in quarantine—less time than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended. Leonard Ataubo, a 23-year-old detainee who was diagnosed with stomach cancer at Pine Prairie, has yet to see a doctor since his diagnosis or begin treatment for the disease, which puts him at high risk of severe illness from COVID-19.

At Prairieland, a Texas facility, detainees report similar conditions. Anonymous callers to a hotline maintained by the advocacy group Freedom for Immigrants have reported that ICE officers have forced them to drink water out of the toilet, punished them in solitary confinement, physically abused them, and denied them adequate treatment for COVID-19. After a transfer to River Correctional Center in Louisiana, Nswohnonomi tested positive for tuberculosis in July, which he believes he contracted while in ICE detention at Pine Prairie. The disease makes him more vulnerable to COVID-19, but he has not received any medicine—a doctor told him he would be deported soon anyway, he said.

The experiences of Cameroonian asylum-seekers reflect broader inequities faced by Black migrants to the United States. Immigration officers have historically used punitive actions, such as solitary confinement, against detained Black migrants at rates up to six times higher than the rest of the population. Likewise, medical mismanagement and neglect may disproportionately affect Black migrants subject to the unconscious biases of medical practitioners.

Despite the extraordinary conditions and health risks, legal recourse has been elusive for Cameroonian detainees. Pandemic-related court closures have delayed and canceled hearings, leaving parole, probation, bond, and humanitarian release out of reach—even for those with conditions that make them more vulnerable to COVID-19 and therefore eligible for release. Officers deemed several detainees simply “ineligible”: Parole was reserved for pregnant women and children or for those with immediate family in the United States, they said—statements that are inconsistent with ICE policy.

Sylvie Bello, the founder of the Cameroon American Council, suspects that there are financial motives for the private corporations that operate the facilities—as well as for the remote regions where the facilities are major local employers and consumers. “Those little itty-bitty Louisiana towns have been profiting off Black bodies from slavery onward,” Bello said. “Immigrant detention is just the latest iteration.”

The detainees’ accounts fit historical patterns. In fiscal 2020, median bond granted to Cameroonians was 25 percent more expensive compared with the broader population facing immigration proceedings. Black migrants are also more likely to face expulsion than other populations in removal proceedings. And in recent months, Cameroonians have increasingly faced other barriers. According to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, the asylum denial rate for Cameroonians has skyrocketed, from around 19 percent in 2019 to around 45 percent in 2020. The deportation rate of Cameroonians has also shot up, from 22 percent in fiscal 2019 to 35 percent in fiscal 2020.

Moreover, advocates fear that ICE has deliberately transferred Cameroonians to antagonistic legal districts. For example, every judge on the immigration court in Jena, Louisiana—with a jurisdiction that stretches across the state—denies asylum at rates of 90 percent or higher. Nathan Bogart, an immigration attorney who frequently works with the court, said that its “harsh” approach symbolizes recent changes that have weaponized Southern courts for deportation. “There have always been questions about whether people of color are treated differently,” Bogart said, citing the court as one reason that Black migrants face an “uphill battle” to asylum.

Calisus Fon, an asylum-seeker detained at the Rio Grande Detention Center in Texas, called the system “pure racism.” His initial credible fear interview—the key step toward asylum—was approved, but over a dozen appeals for his release have been ignored or denied since. Meanwhile, Central American friends in the facility have been granted parole. “All of this effort to send me back home just means they want me to die,” Fon said. “I guess that is why they are treating us how they are here, too.”

On Nov. 11, Fon joined Agbor, Fogap, and dozens of others when he was deported to Cameroon. His pleas to be sent anywhere else were denied. “These people came to America in one piece,” Nfonteh, whose brother remains detained, said. “They are going back broken, body and soul.”

Culled from Foreign Policy