28, September 2019
Can national dialogue bring peace to Southern Cameroons? 0
The recent sentencing of separatists is likely to fuel more anger and resentment among the Anglophone population and alienate them from the Francophone-dominated government, but the dialogue can reverse hard feelings.
It was a long court session.
A military tribunal in Yaoundé, the capital city of Cameroon, had convened some hours after noon on August 19 to pass verdicts on a case involving a group of ‘Ambazonia’ separatist leaders. But the sitting did not end until around 5:30am local time the next day.
The charges against them were, like the proceedings, long: secession, complicity in acts of terrorism, insurrection, hostility against the state, financing acts of terrorism, and spreading fake news, among others.
In its final verdict, the tribunal sentenced the 10 separatist leaders to life in prison and asked them to pay a civil award of 250 billion CFA francs ($419 million USD) to the government and civil claimants. If they fail to pay the fine as and when due, they will have to pay an additional cost of 12 billion francs ($20 million USD).
Among the leaders convicted was Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, the self-declared president of the breakaway ‘Federal Republic of Ambazonia’. The state was declared in October 2017 to spite the government’s heavy-handedness in response to peaceful demonstrations across the English-speaking South-West and North-West regions.
Cameroon, a central African country, is made up of 10, semi-autonomous regions. Eight are Francophone and two Anglophone.
The French-dominated government in Yaoundé is led by 86-year-old Paul Biya, the current head of state who has been in office since 1982.
Frustrations over lack of equal representation have roiled the Anglophones since the 1990s, sometimes culminating in demands for a referendum or a return to a federation.
Similar worries forced lawyers and teachers to organise strikes over the use of French in their courts and the dominance of French language in their schools in late 2016.
The government’s response, including transferring French-speaking teachers, establishing Common Law Sections at the Supreme Court and the National School of Administration and Magistracy, as well as creating a national Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism did little to address the grievances.
Gradually the anger spread across the South-West and North-West regions. Residents organised peaceful demonstrations over the perceived marginalisation of the Anglophone minority, which makes up 20 percent of Cameroon’s 24 million people.
But the government responded with extreme force, arresting demonstrators, firing live rounds at protestors and jailing a few people. In response, an alphabet soup of separatist groups sprang up to fight for the independence of Ambazonia.
“We feel like second-class citizens because Biya’s government has never for once accepted that there is a problem in the Anglophone regions,” a Cameroonian refugee in Nigeria told TRT World.
“Our complaints about a failed system have only brought us imprisonment, destruction, death, displacement and difficulties.”
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have accused government forces of indiscriminate killings, arrests, torture and destruction of villages during operations.
Armed groups, the watchdogs say, have also burnt down schools, attacked students and teachers and killed security officers.
The simmering conflict has displaced some 530,806 Cameroonians within the country and forced about 42,887 to cross the border to Nigeria, according to UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Some 1,850 have been killed so far.
In January 2018, some 47 Anglophone separatists, including Julius Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, were arrested in Nigeria by security agents. They were detained and later deported to Cameroon that same month. Most of them had filed asylum claims. A Nigerian court sitting in the capital Abuja in March ruled that the extradition of 12 asylum claimants was “illegal” and awarded them compensation.
Upon his extradition, Ayuk Tabe was, alongside his fellow comrades, incarcerated in a well-secured facility in Yaoundé and later charged with “terrorism” in December last year at a military court.
It was this same court that would, after an all-night sitting on August 20, give him a life sentence.
In the immediate aftermath of the ruling, angry separatist fighters announced a three-week lockdown in the Anglophone regions, forcing thousands of residents to leave their homes to avoid the curfew and any follow-on confrontations.
Local media reported that shops, offices, markets, and bus stations closed following the order.
This is a usual tactic for the fighters who have periodically enforced curfews — or “ghost towns”. This often happens on a Monday.
Ayuk Tabe and some of his fellow leaders are seen to be more open to dialogue. The recent sentencing, analysts argue, would only exacerbate the ongoing conflict.
“Some of the approaches adopted by the Cameroonian government has more or less tended towards inflaming tensions,” Dr Emeka Okereke, an expert in African affairs, remarked.
In May, local newspaper Journal du Cameroun reported that 54-year-old Ayuk Tabe had written a five-page letter presenting conditions for dialogue, including releasing prisoners arrested during the crisis, removing government security forces from the Anglophone regions, holding peace talks outside the country and involving foreign observers in the process.
“The arrests and sentencing indicate an attempt on the part of the Biya government to take a harder line and apply the principle of striking the shepherd in order to disperse the sheep,” said Cheta Nwanze, Head of Research at SBM Intelligence, a Lagos-based political and economic consultancy.
With this approach, Nwanze argued: “[The government is] probably making the fundamental mistake of removing those who have something to lose and are, as a result, more open to negotiations.
“They may thus be left with more hardliners who will make things more difficult for them.”
Amid tensions resulting from the lockdown imposed by separatists, the presidency announced that Biya would address the nation on September 10. This is a shift from the traditional times the head of state addresses the nation: on New Year and the National Youth Day on February 11.
In the rare national address broadcast on TV and radio at 8pm local time, Biya admitted that there was, indeed, a “crisis” with “far-reaching consequences” for the entire country.
He recalled that he had ordered the release of 289 persons arrested in connection with the crisis and outlined other measures taken to address grievances.
To address the conflict, the government would convene a national dialogue, he announced. Parties would include government officials, opinion leaders, leaders of government security forces, armed groups and victims, he added.
A delegation would be sent to the diaspora to allow Cameroonians there to make their input.
“How can there be dialogue when some of the key actors you are supposed to dialogue with have just been sentenced to life in prison?” asked Okereke, who argues that granting amnesty to all political prisoners should be part of the solution.
Nwanze, of SMB Intelligence, also thinks the proposed national dialogue is not a solution.
“Biya was offering more of a stick than carrot, and like many autocrats before him, seemed not to understand, nor care, about the complaints of those who have stood against him,” he explained.
As the impasse drags on, students continue to be kept out of their classrooms.
Around 80 percent of schools in the North-West and South-West region have been closed due to the crisis, UN Children’s Fund, Unicef, reported in June. This has affected more than 600,000 children and left at least 74 schools in ruins, Unicef said.
When schools tried to re-open on September 2 this year, suspected separatist fighters opened gunfire to scare students and teachers away, local media reported.
Businesses and livelihoods, too, have been jeopardised due to the ongoing crisis.
For instance, the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDD), the state-owned agro-industrial company in the South-West region, had to shut down most of its factories, estates and oil mills.
The country’s second largest employer after the government, the CDD, has a workforce of about 22,000 employees and has operations in banana, palm oil, semi-finished rubber, and palm kernel oil. Thousands of workers have lost their jobs, as the company’s financial struggles linger.
Nwaze calls for better representation.
“Give the Anglophones a sense of belonging by ensuring that their communities are run in English, and creating a path to top positions within the government for people from the area,” he said.
Okereke believes the government alone cannot singlehandedly address the problem.
“There needs to be a frank, all-inclusive dialogue that requires granting amnesty to political prisoners, active international participation, and the parties to the conflict putting aside their political interests to find a common ground.”
Source: TRT World
2, October 2019
Invincible People of Ambazonia 0
French Cameroun colonial occupation and brutal oppression of Ambazonia is now close to sixty long years. That country is daily plundering and looting the resources of Ambazonia, violently imposing on the people, humiliating them, and terrorizing them.
The die was cast three years ago. We took one giant step to end our shameful status of a colonised people. Like all slaves, we revolted. The colonial oppressor then demonstrated its determination to exterminate us and steal our Homeland. It unleashed an unjust war on us. Since then we have been in the throes of an existential armed threat.
We are fighting for survival as a people. We are literally fighting with bear hands, apparently with no expertise in the art of war. But against all odds, we continue to resist the mighty onslaught of a well-resourced French Cameroun army backed by mercenaries and well-known foreign governments.
But we remain defiant and undaunted. We shall fight on for 100 years, if need be. We shall fight on until our Homeland is totally liberated. We shall fight on until we are free. We shall fight on until we unfetter the shameful shackles around our necks and feet, like those of slaves of old. We shall fight on until we defeat the enemy. We do not doubt success and final victory.
Let the world know and bear witness that we are fighting for the decolonisation of Ambazonia. That territory is historically and legally our Homeland. It has been oursfrom time immemorial. It belongs to us and to none other. Sovereignty over it lies with us, the people of Ambazonia. No other people can possibly assert a superior title to that land.
It is our right and duty to institute a government on that territory, laying itsfoundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to us seems most likely to secure our national interest, our safety, our welfare, and our happiness.No one, no country and no organisation should presume to do so for us or to deflect us from doing so.
In the past:
All this nonsense is now over. Never again shall we give ear to and act on anything other than what we, as a sovereign people, have decided. French Cameroun, like an invalid, has used Ambazonia as footstool for decades. It hasgot free lunch fromAmbazonia for over five decades. It must now grow up, get rid of its mentality of an invalid, start living on its own, and begin to cater for itself.The era of Santa Claus is over.
On this auspicious occasion I pay tribute to the memory of our valorous soldiers who have gained honourable death in battle. I pay tribute to all those, including babies and the elderly, who have been cowardly murdered by enemy forces. I commiserate with all those who have been raped or maimed.I salute all our valiant people, our brave refugees and internally displaced persons. I salute our gallant and resourceful freedom fighters. We stand together until the end.
I salute our friends who continue to stand by us in various ways in this our hour of great tribulation, the darkest hour of our history as a people. Our life of sorrow will not last long. May our enemy be put to eternal shame! May our merciful Lord hasten the advent of our redemption!
Darkness tarries only for a while before dawn. The dawn of national liberation, the dawn of a free people, is about to break.
Long live the invincible people of Ambazonia! Long live Ambazonia!
By Prof Carlson Anyangwe