Fellow Ambazonians,

I come to you with revolutionary greetings from your President, Sisiku AyukTabe and his leadership team as they enter the tenth day of their hunger strike. Our prayers and thoughts are with them and all our heroes in illegal detention in French Cameroun at this challenging time.

There is a short video in circulation of our heroes crammed like sardines in a truck. They are on their way to a ‘court’ in La Republique du Cameroun. In the video, our heroes were defying their incarceration by singing liberation songs. From their audaciousness, tears of joy rolled down my eyes. There is a spirit in the young men of this revolution that gives me hope. They remind me of the statement; unjust practices must be broken and challenged before a just society is established.

Since 2017, our young men and young women have defied all odds. The government of French Cameroon declared war on us. We had nothing but primitive weapons to defend ourselves. In their minds, in a few months, we would be cowed and destroyed through their reign of terror. But we have and continue to prove them wrong. The cruelty our heroes endured after the peaceful prison protest of 22nd and 23rd of July 2019 was despicable. But that hasn’t discouraged them. They have returned full of focus, drive and determination to get to the promise land-Buea. They have returned with sharpness in their mind and a direction in their vision.

Day in, day out, by their actions, our heroes in captivity in La Republique du Cameroun continue to defy the enemy. By their actions, they keep letting the oppressor know that one can cage the person but cannot cage the revolutionary. By their actions, they are letting the oppressor know that beatings, tyranny and detention are temporary measures to postpone an inevitable outcome. By their actions, they are letting the oppressor know that the Ambazonian of the twenty-first century fears nothing but fear itself.

My people, as a nation, we have faced inexcusable inhumanness’ but we are still standing. We have faced concentration camps, burned villages, cold blood massacre but we are still standing. We have hope. Hope which cannot be shattered by illegal detention!  Hope which cannot be destroyed by the killing of four months old baby Martha! Hope which cannot be shattered by the burning of two hundred and fifty villages! The French Cameroun government knows only one currency- violence. We have many- hope, fortitude, courage, decency, belief. With these and God willing, we shall prevail against this tyranny.

The despicable brutalities of La Republique du Cameroun will not stop us. The opposition we now face will definitely fail. We will win our freedom because the sacred heritage of our nation and the eternal will of The Almighty are embodied in our just pursuit. In their defiance of the enemy, these heroes of ours give us HOPE. The great Desmond Tutu said ‘Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all the darkness’. Let’s keep our hope as our caged heroes are doing with their singing and hunger strike and our dream will be a reality.

God Bless You,

Dabney Yerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

The Director of Kenya School of Law and the former Director of the Kenya Anti-Corruption Commission, Prof. Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba has promised to help the people of Southern Cameroons. The renowned academic while making a keynote address during a conference in Thuringen in the Federal Republic of Germany, said he will use his contacts to help the people of Ambazonia join Pan African Organizations.

Prof PLO Lumumba praised the leadership of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government for the resistance against the Biya Francophone government in Yaounde pointing out that Africa remained poor despite having the potential for generating enough revenue for sustainable development.

Lumumba reportedly told Vice President Dabney Yerima that Africa’s problems was being worsened by the persistent brain drain of professional trained people travelling to work in the developed world and a total lack of visionary leadership.

The Ambazonian Vice President and Prof Lumumba agreed that many intelligent migrants in the West want to return home but the leaders do not project home for their people. Lumumba said the phenomenon was largely due to the continent’s poor labour policies, low pay and high unemployment levels.

Prof Lumumba advised the Ambazonian leadership to desist from relying on divine intervention to solve the problems in Southern Cameroons.

By Asu Isong

After receiving huge sums of money from the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé, the major media houses are presently spending on average approximately six minutes every single day pushing the narrative of “Back To School” in Southern Cameroons. The media houses involved have the support of so-called Ambazonian moderates headed by Cardinal Tumi and Barrister Agbor Balla.

French Cameroun political elites are certainly not unbiased figures. They have a history of spreading right-wing memes mocking Southern Cameroonians. They have made a plethora of controversial statements against the people of Southern Cameroons, including once comparing Southern Cameroons to two cubes of sugar. However, with the dust now settled Ambazonians can see clearly the sorry state of the Francophone dominated mainstream media, and the massive bias that journalists exude against the sufferings of the people of Southern Cameroons.

An investigation carried out by Cameroon Intelligence Report found out that approximately 95 percent of all successful journalists in Cameroon have strong ties with the Biya regime and they often turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by the Cameroon government army soldiers on innocent Southern Cameroons civilians.

Cameroon Intelligence Report also found that over 90 percent of the total media coverage of the Southern Cameroons war has been extremely hostile. There is not another group of people in African history who have faced such uneven coverage from the media. It is therefore entirely fair for Southern Cameroonians to stop watching Equinox and CRTV and for the Southern Cameroons diaspora to increase funding for the SCBC TV station.

Media bias against Southern Cameroonians does not end at the battle for Ambazonia. This pattern has been extremely pronounced against all Southern Cameroons political leaders including Simon Achidi Achu, Peter Mafany Musonge, Philemon Yang and now Dion Ngute. When it was even rumored that the French were considering replacing Biya with Mafany Musonge, Etoudi sponsored an article in many independent French Cameroun newspapers revealing that Musonge had travelled to Switzerland and opened a bank account.

The so-called independent television stations continue to fawn over and defend both the Biya regime and the French Cameroun military and Equinox and CRTV have aired endless reports fantasizing about the Cameroon army success in the war in Southern Cameroons.  

By some strange happenstance, La Republique du Cameroun under the 86 year old Biya prides itself in protecting the freedom of the press.  Maybe, in order to ensure that anti Biya CPDM officials such Chief Inoni Ephraim, Mebo Ngo, Marafa Hamidou Yaya and Jean-Marie Atangana Mebara are held fully accountable to guarantee Biya’s continued stay in power and  maintain the vibrancy of French Cameroun’s advance democracy.

 Lying and misleading their audience has become the order of the day with Equinox and CRTV and it has greatly damage the reputations of journalists and cheapened political rhetoric and has actually inspired political extremism in Southern Cameroons. Both French and Southern Cameroonians do not have alternative sources to discern reality from fiction. It is a real danger that actually feeds the seeds of Biya’s authoritarianism because one of the most common tactics dictators like Biya uses to maintain power is to discredit and destroy the free press.

Quite frankly, the biggest enemy of the French Cameroun dominated media isn’t Mr Paul Biya — it’s themselves. Journalists serving with Equinox and CRTV are the only people capable of rewriting their own reputation. It is ultimately entirely in their hands to change their behavior — otherwise, their credibility in the eyes of Southern Cameroonians will be permanently tarred.

It has often been said that the media is the Fourth Estate. It is important for journalists to remember the heavy responsibility that they carry with them. Media houses published false information that led to the genocide in Rwanda and the same situation is slowly but surely playing out in Southern Cameroons.  To engage in yellow journalism, falsely blaming Ambazonia Self Defense Forces for crimes committed by Cameroon government army soldiers and Minister Paul Atanga Nji gangs will continue to cost thousands of lives on both sides of the Ambazonia conflict.

Let the media men and women in Equinox and CRTV be aware that words have power. Those who speak and write have great responsibility; journalists must also abide by a code of ethics, the most important quality of which is honesty. Until that changes, there isn’t a bright future for the men and women in La Republique du Cameroun media.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai