French Cameroun and Southern Cameroons are moving slowly but surely closer to a full-scale war, with fighting and belligerent rhetoric coming from Francophone political elites in Yaoundé and the Interim Government of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has already crippled the fragile economies in both Cameroons, and it has created new burdens on neighboring Nigeria precisely in the Cross River State and Benue regions.

In a recent audio message, Southern Cameroons Communications Secretary, Chris Anu said that French Cameroun soldiers have killed hundreds of civilians in Lebialem and Belo and were developing plans to bomb Ambazonian settlements.

Southern Cameroons Acting President Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako, speaking on the Southern Cameroons Television, said the French Cameroun attacks deep inside Ambazonia amounted to crimes against humanity. Dr. Sako has also rejected any peace talks with the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo government, saying Francophone leaders only understood the language of the gun.

There has not been any strong condemnation of the atrocities committed by French Cameroun soldiers in Southern Cameroons from the international community. The Southern Cameroons government has stated that it will not agree to any negotiations until the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, HE Sisiku Ayuk Julius Tabe and every Ambazonian arrested as a result of the resistance is release from detention.

President Biya has been addressing his troops via his kinsman Joseph Beti Assomo the Minister for Defense and praising them for the genocide currently going on in Southern Cameroons. The escalating tensions have been ongoing for over two years after Southern Cameroons declared its independence on October 1 two years ago to end decades of marginalization and economic apartheid.

The leadership of the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia pointed out that a lot of the issues were neglected and left unresolved in the 1961 Foumban Conference. Those critical issues include the maintaining of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and its system of education including the Common Law in British Southern Cameroons, a federal system of governance and sharing of the nation’s revenues.

An EU diplomat was heard murmuring privately in Yaoundé that President Biya is doing things that defy rationality.  A senior adviser to the Acting President of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia told Cameroon Intelligence Report that the two Cameroons will always need each other, but right now Biya has made things look like two people with their hands locked around each others’ throats.

French Cameroun military has employed massive firepower in strategic border points in Otu, Eyumojock, Tinta, Dadi and Ekok in the Manyu County. Social media images also shows heavy damage inflicted by troops loyal to the Yaoundé regime on Southern Cameroons villages and towns.

French Cameroun under Biya stand to suffer as the crisis unfolds. The government treasury is nearly depleted and food and fuel are likely to be in short supply. More fighting could precipitate a humanitarian crisis. The Roman Catholic Bishops of Cameroon recently observed that if the conflict goes on there will be a lot of people killed.

The fighting has already displaced refugees to neighboring Nigeria-a nation that is ill-equipped to help them. The Francophone government agents such as governors and SDOs including DOs have also made it difficult and dangerous for aid organizations to provide help for internally displaced Ambazonians.

A full-scale war between the Cameroons would pose serious problems for the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Francophone countries in the CEMAC region. It’s time for intensifying crisis diplomacy but the two countries with the most influence in the Sub Sahara region France and the Federal Republic of Nigeria are maintaining a kind of deliberate silence.

France has invested heavily in Cameroon’s oil industry, but without a proper end to this conflict between the Cameroons, that oil will soon stop flowing. France is also a longtime ally of French Cameroun’s Biya but has never worked to develop ties with Southern Cameroons leaders. There is indeed no military solution to the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

source:www.cameroonintelligencereport.com

John McCain, the seasoned senator of Arizona, says he regrets choosing former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate during the country’s 2008 presidential race, and instead he should have chosen Joe Lieberman, a Democrat-turned-independent politician.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that McCain, while still defending Palin’s performance, said in his upcoming book, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights, and other Appreciations,” that although his advisers had warned him that picking a vice-presidential candidate who caucused with Democrats and supported abortion rights would divide Republicans and doom his chances, he should still have proceeded and chosen Lieberman as is his vice-presidential nominee.

“It was sound advice that I could reason for myself,” he writes. “But my gut told me to ignore it and I wish I had.”

Many in McCain’s own party believe that, by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate in 2008, he bears at least a small measure of blame for unleashing the forces of grievance politics and nativism within the Republican Party.

In addition to the book, the senator has also participated in a nearly two-hour HBO documentary, both of which are set to be released this month. In the HBO documentary McCain strikingly expresses sorrow for not choosing Lieberman calling it “another mistake that I made.”

Lieberman later said he did not know McCain felt that regret until he watched the film. “It touched me greatly,” he said.

The Times reported that Lieberman recently visited McCain, 81, at his ranch in Arizona where the senator is recovering from his brain cancer treatment and surgery for an infection.

New memoir

In excerpts of his book, The Restless Wave that will be published by Simon & Schuster on May 22, the senior senator from the state of Arizona says his battle with brain cancer has given him a sense of liberation to freely speak his mind.

“I’m freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry.”

“I don’t think I’m free to disregard my constituents’ wishes, far from it. I don’t feel excused from keeping pledges I made. Nor do I wish to harm my party’s prospects. But I do feel a pressing responsibility to give Americans my best judgment,” McCain says in the excerpts released Monday by Apple News.

McCain, a Vietnam War prisoner, says he is bothered by the “scarcity of humility” in the current political climate in America.

Criticism of Trump

McCain openly criticizes US President Donald Trump in the book saying he seems to care more about “the appearance of toughness” than so-called American values.

“The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values,” he says in the memoir referring to Trump.

“He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones,” McCain writes in the book of Trump.

Source: Presstv

US President Donald Trump said Friday that he is willing to be interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia meddling probe, but only if he gets fair treatment.

“I would love to speak, but I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly,” Trump told reporters.

“I would love to speak because we’ve done nothing wrong,” he said.

Trump said Mueller’s team of veteran investigators were Democrats, suggesting he could not get a fair shake in the probe into whether his election campaign colluded with Russia in the 2016 election, and whether he had illegally tried to obstruct the Mueller investigation.

“The problem we have is that you have 13 people that are all Democrats and they’re real Democrats. They’re angry Democrats. And that’s not a fair situation,” Trump said as he left the White House for a trip to Texas.

“I have to find that we’re going to be treated fairly. Because everybody sees it now and it’s a pure witch hunt.”

“There was no collusion with the Russians, there was nothing, there was no obstruction,” he added.

Trump also brushed off revelations by his newly recruited attorney, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, that he was aware of and approved reimbursements to his personal lawyer Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Cohen made the payment just before the 2016 election to prevent her from going public with claims of an affair with Trump.

After repeatedly denying knowledge of the payment, Trump tweeted on Thursday following the revelations by Giuliani that Cohen had undertaken the payout separately from the campaign “to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair.”

Trump referred to the payments story as “that kind of crap” and said Giuliani was still getting up to speed on his legal position.

“Rudy’s great, but Rudy had just started and he wasn’t totally familiar with everything,” Trump said.

(Source: AFP)

US President Donald Trump is dialing up efforts to avoid impeachment, GOP sources as the 2018 midterms approach, giving Democrats the chance to win the majority in the US House of Representatives.

If democrats take control of the chamber, they could initiate an impeachment debate and congressional investigation.

“It is super important to the White House, and really the whole White House is very focused on it,” a source told The Hill. “The president is expected to dial up efforts in this regard during and after the August recess.”

According to Maxine Waters, Democratic representative from California, 70 percent of Democrats want to impeach the president, an idea strongly supported within the party’s liberal base.

Such comments have made the president understand the significance of protecting his party’s majority, particularly in the House.

 

“We have to keep the House because if we listen to Maxine Waters, she’s going around saying ‘We will impeach him,’” Trump told a rally of supporters in Michigan on Saturday.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) announced recently that protecting the House rather than the Senate is its top priority.

“Our No. 1 priority is keeping the House. We have to win the House,” RNC political director Juston Johnson told The Associated Press.

The president has also ordered the RNC to prioritize the House.

“It’s clear the message has been, ‘We don’t want to want to have to fool with impeachment proceedings with the final two years of his first term, you better do something,’” a party strategist was quoted as saying.

Source: Presstv

For almost two years, Southern Cameroons has been reduced to an abattoir with government troops killing innocent citizens as if they are not nationals of Cameroon. In many parts of Southern Cameroons, young men, many of whom are innocent and have nothing to do with the ugly fighting that is playing out over there, have been arrested and taken to unknown destinations. Many have been buried alive, while others have been used by the country’s sex-starved and alcohol-inflamed soldiers as shooting targets. The rule of law that is supposed to be upheld by the government is gradually becoming the rule of weapons where those with weapons dictate the rule and the country’s government is doing its best to encourage this form of lawlessness that is breeding hatred and feeding the circle of violence that is claiming many lives in Southern Cameroons.

A crisis that started as simple protests by lawyers, teachers and students in Buea and Bamenda has been allowed to metamorphose into a full blown armed conflict due to the government’s firm belief in tough and violent means to address issues. The government’s decision to slaughter hundreds of Southern Cameroonians on October 1, 2017, has turned out to be an unfortunate error of judgment. Many people around the world who have been watching Cameroon descend into chaos thought the country’s government would actually embrace peace. Many have been waiting for the government to lay the ground work for the much-touted inclusive dialogue that the country’s president, Paul Biya, has been talking about.

But time, a key factor in life, has revealed that Mr. Biya, who had declared at the United Nations in 2017 that “we all are hankering after peace”, has, all through, been paying lip-service to the notion of inclusive and sincere dialogue. Mr. Biya and his government see governance as a do or die affair and any dialogue that might minimize their power will never be their cup of tea.  They have opted for self-destruction. They seem to be admiring the killings in their own country. Cameroon’s leaders are unfortunately encouraging a bloodbath in their own country.

To them, the atrocities being committed by government troops are simply war games worthy of their admiration.  They seem to be deflecting public opinion from the fact that Southern Cameroonians, who have been victims of the government’s marginalization, simply want to be heard. They want years of injustice and disrespect to be addressed. But wont to violence and dictatorial ways of doing business, the government is unrelentingly pursuing its legendary policy of violence which has transformed an entire region into a massive killing field.

After October 1, 2017, a date many Southern Cameroonians consider as their independence day, the country has been pushed into an unprecedented spiral of violence. Government troops seem to be on a killing spree that is drawing a lot of admiration among government officials of Beti extraction. Mr. Joseph Beti Assomo, the country’s defense minister, is alleged to have boasted that by the time the conflict ends, there will be no Southern Cameroonians in the English-speaking regions. This testifies to the many claims of a government-sponsored genocide that are on social media.

Given such an attitude and the way many English-speaking Cameroonians have been rushed to an early grave by army soldiers, Southern Cameroonians hold that it behooves them to protect themselves as the government has decided to mow them down like unwanted ragweed. The government’s approach is creating more animosity and radicalizing even the most moderate, as Southern Cameroonians see their brothers being shot point blank by soldiers who are supposed to protect them.

Today, the radicalization has given birth to many armed groups in the two English-speaking regions of the country. The government too has stepped up its killing spree to prove that it is in control of the territory. Over the last four months, many innocent civilians have met their death as the government pursues its policy of collective punishment. Many civilians have seen their homes burnt down by government forces which have opted for a “scorch-earth” policy that is hurting many vulnerable people who have nothing to do with the conflict.

Schools and courts have remained closed in many parts of Southern Cameroons, though ghost town operations organized by angry English-speaking Cameroonians with the objective of bringing the government to the negotiating table are gradually fizzling out. The sticking point has been the government’s refusal to discuss the form of the state and this is causing the conflict to drag on and, in the process, it is taking forms that are too complicated even for the government to handle. The daily killings are resulting in moderate English-speaking Cameroonians seeing secession as the ultimate answer.

Today, the extrajudicial killings have become a daily affair and ordinary citizens are also killing and maiming soldiers in retaliation for the killing of many civilians. The arrest of secessionist leaders in Nigeria on January 5, 2018, and their illegal extradition to Yaoundé in late January have not helped matters. These leaders have been held incommunicado for almost two months and this is a concern to rights groups which hold that they deserve a fair trial and access to lawyers.

The abuses are ongoing and getting serious by the day. The international community is concerned about the government’s refusal to call for genuine and inclusive dialogue. And its approach to the resolution of this conflict has been criticized by the International Crisis Group (ICG), a rights group that has representatives on the ground who are collecting information and evidence of abuses. Though the ICG has been critical of the government, it still holds that dialogue is the ultimate answer to a crisis that is jeopardizing the country’s development prospects.

It should be recalled that dialogue is medication that soothes even the most violent mind. It sows peace and guarantees security for many generations. It is an effective political tool that has kept internal strife at bay in many countries such as Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland and Norway. If Canada, in particular, is today a huge attraction, it is because the country’s political leaders have embraced this philosophy and they sincerely think that the people’s wellbeing should be at the center of every political action and policy discourse. Cameroon stands to gain if it takes a long and an objective look at how the Canadian system functions.

It is a bilingual system that has stood the test of time. The country’s efforts are geared toward sustaining its bilingual and bi-jural system. While some issues linger, the federal and provincial governments are permanently locked in talks on how to keep the union going. This is how to deal with cultural differences and this is, without a doubt, the way forward for a country like Cameroon that currently has a huge crisis on its hands, as Southern Cameroonians pick up arms to rid themselves of a Francophone majority that has been indifferent to the injustice and centralization that have made life a living hell for many Cameroonians.

Southern Cameroonians are sick and tired of the referendum that was negotiated by John Ngu Foncha and his self-centered followers who were simply blinded by their own parochial interests. Southern Cameroonians have clearly demonstrated their disgust and frustration with a union that has robbed them of their dignity and happiness. They claim the government has been very indifferent to their plight. Years of marginalization have sent more than three million Southern Cameroonians abroad where they are today making the government to feel their ire. The Southern Cameroonian Diaspora is hell-bent on destabilizing the country if the government does not introduce meaningful reforms, especially those that border on federalism as a system of governance that has spread wealth and prosperity in other parts of the world.

The Southern Cameroons crisis is clearly an outcome of the pent-up anger and frustration that have been ignored by the country’s government. Southern Cameroonians have a genuine problem. Their marginalization is not a myth. It is a reality that has been noticed by the international community and even the government can no longer deny it. The scars of marginalization are all over the place. The country’s English-speaking minority has been frustrated for decades and the current armed conflict only speaks to the pain Southern Cameroonians have endured for years.

Most of these fighters are simply calling for the world to listen to them. They want a righting of the wrongs of the past. The lawyers who started the demonstrations never talked about secession or independence. But the government’s high-handedness and its determination to play the ostrich have pushed the country to the brink of a bloody civil war. Southern Cameroonians have, over time, migrated from redress to federalism and as government officials like Fame Ndongo, Issa Tchiroma and Laurent Esso insist that there is no Anglophone problem in Cameroon, many Southern Cameroonians have simply felt that it is time to look at other options – those which will extricate them from the burden of over-centralization.

But the government has proven that it is not going to let its game plan be changed by external actors. In January 2017, it promptly arrested Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba and Mancho Bibixy and sent them to Yaoundé where they were kept in jail for more than seven months. Out of jail, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla felt the population was still on the federalist train that had been stalled for more than seven months. He did not notice that the passengers on the train had all jumped onto the secessionist train while he was in jail. The arrest and detention of Southern Cameroonian leaders did not only change the trajectory of the struggle, it also changed the rhetoric and this has transformed the country into a fireball whose explosion might turn the entire sub-region into an inferno.

Today, as the country slides into one of the continent’s genocides, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor-Balla has decided to use his knowledge of legal justice and politics to address human rights issues across the country. He has used many of such occasions to call for dialogue and the granting of amnesty to all those who have been arrested within the framework of the Southern Cameroons crisis. But the government is not listening to him. He seems to be walking a lonely path. His appears to be a voice in the wilderness, as many Southern Cameroonians are still on board the secessionist train.

This government’s decision to walk away from any inclusive dialogue initiative spells doom for a country that is already in the throes of a severe economic crisis. For some time now, the government has decided not to make any statements regarding the violent conflict in Southern Cameroons. This has been interpreted by many as a refusal by the country’s leaders to embrace dialogue that could spare the country lots of lives and money. Instead of providing real solutions to the issues that have been stalking Southern Cameroonians like stubborn shadows, the government is, as usual, proposing some Band-Aid solutions.

It has recently organized cosmetic senatorial elections in the country and many municipal councilors from the South West region were airlifted to other parts of the country for them to cast their votes. This is costly and proof that security, a sine qua non for sustainable development, is not available in that part of the country. Even the senators appointed by the government are people who have been rejected by the population. Another proof that the government is not willing to smoke the pipe of peace.

The government is unfortunately skirting around the issues. Instead of being realistic and taking the bull by the horn, it has decided to let the country bleed to death. Cameroon is suffering. Its leaders are failing the people. Their inefficiency and arrogance are killing Cameroonians. Instead of thinking that time will solve the problem; the country’s leaders must take the bull by the horn. The government’s old tactics will not yield the desired fruits. The problems are real and the solutions must be real and sustainable.

Despite the blood that has been shed, there is still room for dialogue. Dialogue is, undoubtedly, the road to that paradise all Cameroonians want. Southern Cameroonians simply need a new dispensation that will breed efficiency, confidence and peace.  The unitary system has only succeeded to spread pain and suffering among the population. Even the much promised decentralization that has been put on hold for twenty-two years holds out no hope for a country wherein the laws are never very clear. It is time the government noticed that a return to the status quo ante is not possible.

Nobody will come out of this mess victorious. Times have changed and Southern Cameroonians have understood that they must get something out of this war that has been imposed on them. With support from the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora, the pool of willing fighters in the region is giving the government a run for its money. But the beauty is not in who kills the other. The noble thing will be who lays the groundwork for that dialogue that will pull Cameroon from the mess it has pushed itself into. It takes courage and wisdom to reach such a decision. It could sometimes be hard due to arrogance. But why are some people called leaders? They should be leaders because they have what others don’t have. The courage, humility and wisdom that can bring peace and prosperity to a people. Those are things that make great leaders. Cameroonian leaders should therefore be seeking these qualities so that their country can become a beacon of peace in the region.

It should be recalled that the victor in all of this will be a strong, united and federal Cameroon. Dialogue is an idea whose time has come. Let Cameroonians embrace it as other people in other parts of the world have; an action that has made their countries great and attractive. With dialogue, Cameroonians can conveniently retire their differences and live in a better Cameroon. It should also be recalled that no conflict has ended without sincere dialogue. Even the second world war that consumed many lives only ended with a series of conferences and meetings. Yalta and Potsdam are popular today because those where the locations for the peace talks that helped to put an end to the destructive Second World War that left Europe a poorer continent. It is time for the government of Cameroon to learn. If it looks into the mirror of history, it will find out that history is replete with stories of dialogue as a way out of conflicts. It stands to gain if it learns from the mistakes of other people. There is always room for inclusive and sincere dialogue. Let history be the teacher!

 By Kingsley Betek and Ebot Etchi 

Cameroon Concord News Group 

Yaounde

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has cut short his visit to Britain by a day to return home to deal with protests in the country’s North West Province, his office said on Thursday.

Protesters seeking jobs, better housing, roads, and hospitals frequently clash with police in a country faced with weak economic growth and near-record unemployment — but these are the first big demonstrations since Ramaphosa took power in February.

The unrest, dubbed “service delivery protests,” has mounted over the years.

The latest protests erupted on Wednesday, with residents demanding that the province’s Premier Supra Mahumapelo, a member of Ramaphosa’s ruling African National Congress Party, step down.

Ramaphosa called for calm, ordered police to exercise maximum restraint, and urged the aggrieved parties to express their grievances without resorting to violence.

He was due to return to South Africa on Friday from London, where he is leading a delegation to a Commonwealth summit.

“The president will return to Pretoria today, Thursday,” the president’s office said in a statement.

South African media reported that a bus was set alight, vehicles stoned, and roads blockaded by protesters calling for Mahumapelo to quit because of a failure to adequately deliver services.

Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds.

Botswana’s government said on Thursday it had closed exit points to South Africa’s North West Province, where the two countries share a border. The troubled province lies 300 km west of South Africa’s commercial hub Johannesburg.

(Source: Reuters)

US President Donald Trump has denied firing FBI director James Comey last year over the agency’s investigation of Russia’s alleged collusion with Trump’s election campaign before the 2016 US presidential election, contradicting the explanation he offered in the days after Comey’s firing was first announced.

“Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI Director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!” Trump said via Twitter early Wednesday.

Trump’s comments follow a new book by Comey which intensifies the allegations that Trump may have engaged in criminal obstruction of justice when Comey was fired in May 2017.

In an interview with NBC News two days after the firing, Trump suggested that the Russia probe was behind the firing.

“Regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey,” he said then.

“In fact, when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, you know, this thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.”

In his interview with ABC News that aired Sunday night, Comey suggested Russians have information they could use to blackmail Trump and said there is evidence the president obstructed justice in the ongoing Russia investigation.

Comey’s memoir released on Tuesday, “A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership,” includes conversations he had with Trump before he was fired in which he implies the president pressured him over the Russia investigation.

When Comey was fired last year, the former FBI chief quickly became the chief prosecution witness for Special Counsel Robert Mueller investigating the Russian meddling in the 2016 US election.

In an interview with National Public Radio on Tuesday, Comey said that he did not have the full picture of Mueller’s probe to be able to make that judgement.

Comey’s written records of several troubling encounters with the president are at the heart of Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump sought to obstruct justice in his attempts to shut down the inquiry.

Source: Presstv

Why are we asking this question now? Because Southern Cameroons declared itself to be the world’s newest country under the leadership of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe some two decades after President Biya’s dissolution of the United Republic of Cameroon – and after a ghastly cavalcade of gruesome atrocities, forced expulsions and a genocide that has killed some 1000 with no international intervention – the people of Southern Cameroons have declared themselves independent and are now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

For 57 years Southern Cameroonians have lived as a French Cameroun protectorate while its citizens rely on remittance from the Diaspora. When talks broke down between the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium and the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime, the Southern Cameroons Interim government unilaterally declared independence as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Now the creators of the world’s newest independent country were abducted by the Buhari administration in the Federal Republic of Nigeria and extradited to Yaounde. Before this dubious process the Ambazonian Interim Government had sent hundreds of letters to governments around the world seeking formal recognition of their independence.

What do the Francophones think?

They are very unhappy. They regard Southern Cameroons as the heart of their state since the early 60s, even though both territories have two different political settings and history. French Cameroun political elites have described Ambazonia as a “fake country”.

So who’s on what side?

The Nigerian regions harboring Southern Cameroonian refugees fleeing the conflict have in a way recognized Southern Cameroons as an independent state and the much anticipated departure of President Buhari in 2019 will make matters even clearer.  So will most of the big African nations – Ghana, Kenya, South Africa and Morocco  – and the Ecowas countries are moving toward recognising Southern Cameroons, pronouncing developments in line with President Biya’s continued stay in power, the on-going genocide and the Southern Cameroons refugees crisis in Nigeria.

The CEMAC members – Gabon, Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Congo Brazzaville and the Central African Republic have said they will not. Other countries opposed to an independent Southern Cameroons include France and the Ivory Coast. European states are also divided. Germany and the UK are maintaining a kind of deliberate silence including Belguim and Italy. Other EU states, like Holland and Norway, want Southern Cameroon’s future be decided at the UN.

Where is the international community?

For almost two years, Southern Cameroons has been reduced into a slaughter house with government troops killing innocent citizens as if they were not human beings. In many parts of Southern Cameroons, many young men, many of whom are innocent and have nothing to do with the ugly fighting that is playing out over there, have been arrested and taking to unknown destinations. Many have been buried alive, while others have been used by the country’s trigger-happy soldiers as shooting targets.

A recent video that has gone viral online speaks to the accusation that the Yaounde government is committing gross human rights violations in the country’s English-speaking regions. The video, which has shocked many across the globe, is being documented as evidence of human rights abuse by many rights groups which have been seeking to draw the world’s attention to the genocide that is unfolding in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

A crisis that started as protests by lawyers, teachers and students in Buea and Bamenda was allowed to spiral out of control due to the government’s firm belief in tough and violent means to address issues. The government’s decision to slaughter hundreds of Southern Cameroonians on October 1, 2017, has turned out to be a very bad mistake. Many Southern Cameroonians who have been victims of the government’s marginalization program simply wanted to express their grievances and frustration. But wont to violence and dictatorial ways of doing things, the government resorted to its legendary violence which has transformed an entire region into a huge killing field.

After October 1, 2017, a date many Southern Cameroonians consider as their independence day, the country has been pushed into a spiral of violence. Southern Cameroonians hold that it behooves them to protect themselves as their protector- the government – has decided to mow them down. Many Southern Cameroonians have unfortunately been sent to an early grave and this is what is making any dialogue or reconciliation impossible.

Today, there are many armed groups in the two English-speaking regions of the country. Over the last four months, many innocent civilians have met their death as the government pursues its policy of collective punishment. Many civilians have seen their homes burnt down by government forces which have opted for a “scotch-earth” policy that is hurting many vulnerable people who have nothing to do with the conflict.

What are the arguments?

The European Union, the African Union and the Commonwealth of Nations believe that genuine dialogue by the French Cameroun political leadership is essential for Cameroon to become stable.  In reality, a negotiated solution will not be possible if Mr. Paul Biya stays on as Head of State.

The French for their own selfish interest have blocked every Southern Cameroons action deep within the African Union and the United Nations and have countered with high-minded arguments about the inviolability of national sovereignty.  The French diplomatic missions in both Nigeria and Cameroon have been quoted as saying that France will not recognize Southern Cameroons because this does not respect international law.

But it is perhaps significant that those countries including Spain, France and Nigeria opposing recognition of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia mostly have problems with their own separatist or secessionist movements. Lawmakers on the tiny French overseas territory of New Caledonia voted recently to hold an independence referendum on November 4 to break from France. Spain is presently in chaos over the crisis in Catalonia and mighty Nigeria is bracing with the Biafra uprising.

There is fear that after South Sudan, Southern Cameroons independence could create an unmanageable precedent in the conduct of international relations and the established global order of sovereign states. But Southern Cameroons is however a unique African situation which deserves a unique response from both the United Nations and the European Union.

What is likely to happen?

There will of course be political upheavals in Nigeria in 2019 and the PDP dominated states and governors will openly support the Ambazonia Interim Government and by extrapolation back Southern Cameroons’s independence. But France and the Fulanis in the APC Buhari administration will not. The CEMAC countries will block all Southern Cameroons moves in the African Union. Chad’s chief diplomat heading the African Union will use all diplomatic means at his disposal to block Southern Cameroon’s recognition – and will probably block Southern Cameroon’s access to the UN and the EU.

The real questions are less glamorous and more profound. Unemployment in Southern Cameroons has reached crisis level, corruption and organized crime orchestrated by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate is bad, and more than 40,000 have fled to Nigeria. The troubles are far from over yet.

Is independence for Southern Cameroons a good thing?

Yes...

* 99 per cent of its people are Anglo-Saxon and democratic in nature and should be allowed to determine their own fate

* French Cameroun has effectively lost Southern Cameroons through its own actions in the atrocities and massive killings going on now for two years

* Southern Cameroons independence is the logical working out of the collapse of a failed French policy in Africa

No…

* Southern Cameroons has formed the heart of the state of French Cameroun since independence in 1961

* It sets a dangerous precedent for other parts of Africa such as the Congo and Uganda where rebels want to break away

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Chairman, Editor-in-Chief

Cameroon Concord News Group

The recent unrest in the English-speaking region of Western Cameroon caught the attention of the world media as well as that of the UN, EU and other international agencies. It is threatening to become part of what Wole Soyinka famously termed “the open wound of a continent”. Cameroon is a low-income country with a population of 23.4 million people. It has a GDP of US$30 million and per capita income of US$1,217. It belongs to the Central African Economic Community, one of the weakest in the continent, alongside shambolic countries such as DRC, Central Africa and Chad.

I am often grateful to the ancestors that we were colonised by the British rather than by the French or Portuguese. While they were all bastards, the British were more enlightened bastards. They were more interested in stealing our natural resources while leaving us to our devices; the French, by contrast, were not content to steal our patrimony but also to rob us of our very humanity.

Cameroon was first colonised by the Germans, who ruled from 1884 to 1916. Their historic defeat in what Lenin termed the First Imperialist War forced them to hand-over their colony to the French and the British. The French took the lion-share in the East while the British had a third of the territory in the West. The approaches to colonial administration in both territories sowed the seeds of some of the problems of nationhood that have afflicted modern Cameroon.

The French ruled through the policies of direct rule and assimilation. They introduced a system of forced labour. They also gave preference to catholic missionaries who established schools and clinics. The colonial legal system was anchored on the civil law tradition which limits the prerogatives of judges to what is codified, with more investigative and prosecutorial powers given to the magistracy. Everything was geared to glorify France as the acme of human civilisation. Both the elites and the masses have remained the mental slaves of their French masters. By contrast, the British introduced the indirect rule system in their territory. Protestant missionaries predominated. They also built schools and clinics. British colonial law accorded respect and dignity to the Africans. Forced labour was abolished in preference for wage labour.

Many Africans sought colonial jobs in the plantations and colonial infrastructures as an opportunity for higher income and greater upward mobility. When Cameroon became nominally independent from France on 1st January 1960, a plebiscite was carried out to determine if the Westerners wanted to be in Nigeria or in Cameroon. The north opted to join Nigeria, thanks to the indefatigable campaigns waged by Sir Ahmadu Bello, late premier of the Northern Nigeria. The south, on the other hand, opted to rejoin Cameroon. My Cameroonian friends have told me that their parents recounted to them tales of humiliation and arrogance by the Igbo of Eastern Nigeria. They did not need to be persuaded to rejoin Cameroon. Following the plebiscite Cameroon under its first president Ahmadou Ahidjo adopted a federal constitution in 1972. The new constitutional arrangement accorded a special autonomous status to the English-speaking region. When Paul Biya succeeded Ahidjo in November 1982, he abolished the federal constitution and replaced it with a unitary system; centralising power and revoking the regional autonomy arrangement that the English-speaking region had enjoyed.

The current crisis in Cameroon should not be reduced to an “Anglophone-Francophone” problem. It is far deeper than that. It touches on the anatomy of dictatorship in a corrupt, rapacious, incompetent, extractive neo-colonial apparatus that has treated its citizens with such contumely. The grievances of the English-speaking Cameroonians centre on the fact that they have been deprived of opportunities for advancement while infrastructures and public goods are largely concentrated on the French-speaking East. The two largest cities in Cameroon are Yaoundé, the political capital, and Douala, the commercial capital, in the coast. The main national rail line links Douala and Yaoundé, while the seaports are in Douala, Kribi and Limbé. The bulk of administrative and economic power is thus concentrated on the French-speaking side. While Cameroon is constitutionally a bilingual country, the government has barely tolerated the use of English in preference for French in all matters of public administration.

I recently watched a news clip of English-speaking barristers demonstrating against imposition of French language in the courts. The westerners are gradually being reduced to the status of servitude as “drawers of water and hewers of wood”. I have visited Cameroon several times. I love the country and its people. On the surface, it appears to be a tranquil place. Beneath, there is a seething volcano. Ask the Bamileke who have been hounded and persecuted for decades — ask the intellectuals and professionals who have fled abroad in droves. It is, in reality, a wretched country under the stranglehold of Paul Biya and his French Masonic brethren who have ruled with an iron hand for 35 years.

We are told that the man lives mostly in Switzerland and hardly ever convenes cabinet meetings; an absentee-landlord whose misrule has crippled this great country and its wonderful people. Not too long ago he was alleged to have taken 43 rooms for himself and his entourage at the five-star L’Hérmittage Barrière resort at La Baule in southern France. It was rumoured to cost US$35,000 per night. Recently, English-speaking dissidents unilaterally declared an independent “Ambazonian Republic”. The state responded with such violence that the EU was compelled to plead with the authorities to apply only “proportionate force” as a rule of engagement.

The government also blocked internet accessibility for several months, crippling business and communications. More than 50,000 Cameroonian refugees are in our country. The federal government has been careful not to rock the boat. Cameroon under Ahidjo staunchly stood with the Gowon administration, refusing to aid secessionist Biafra. They helped us win the war. But there has also always been the sticky issue of Bakassi; an international complot to cede off a huge chunk of our coastal territory to sinister French oil and commercial interests. Cameroon, like many so-called “Francophone” countries, is a satellite of a Leviathan that calls itself France-Afrique. France controls their money, their economies, their banking system and their infrastructures and public administration.

When the Bakassi case came up for hearing at the international Court of Justice in The Hague, the fact that the presiding judge was a Frenchman meant we had lost the case ab initio. Under the Green Tree Agreement, the indigenes of Bakassi are supposed to be free to live and pursue their livelihoods as they have done since time immemorial. Alas, the regime in Yaoundé has observed the agreement more in the breach than anything else. The gendarmes have moved in, killing people, pillaging, capsizing boats and extorting humongous amounts for fishing rights. They have shown that it was never theirs in the first place. In a judgement that is unenforceable and whose terms have been violated, we have a duty to revisit it. Winston Churchill warned that borders are never negotiated – they are only defended. It would be rather premature to accord recognition to the soi-disant Republic of Ambazonia, but we should provide humanitarian succour to the people of west Cameroon. Enough is enough. Silence at this stage amounts to complicity in genocide.

We should engage with the regime in Yaoundé and compel them to restore the federal constitution and the autonomy that the westerners had enjoyed hitherto. We should also push for a consociational arrangement that ensures that western Cameroonians are represented at all echelons of leadership, government and the administration. Cameroon is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. If the regime continues to violate the rights of its citizens in such a callous and flagrant manner, we must take steps to ensure that they are expelled from the Commonwealth.

Source: www.vanguardngr.com