Cameroon President Paul Biya announced the National Dialogue earlier in September when he also called on all the Separatists in the South West and North West English-speaking regions to surrender and be forgiven. Nearly 3 000 people have died since 2017 in regions. This number includes 300 defence and security personnel. The violence has forced more than 500 000 people to flee their homes.

Separatists want international mediation

The National Dialogue being led by Cameroon’s Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute extends through Friday in the capital, Yaounde. Prime Minister Ngute asked the more than 1 000 delgates at the Yaounde conference centre Monday if they would want to make history by bringing peace or war.

The Separatists have refused to attend the talks, demanding that the government release their leader Julius Ayuk Tabe, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in August by a military tribunal that found him guilty of crimes including secession and hostilities against the state.

The rebel groups also say they would only agree to such negotiations if they take place in a foreign country with UN mediators and in the presence of world powers such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

In his national address at the beginning of September, President Biya denied any marginalisation of English-speaking regions, saying he has always appointed Cabinet ministers from the troubled areas.

English-speaking regions feel marginalised

On Monday, the prime minister said by solving issues of marginalisation, even without the presence of the separatists, many fighters would give up their struggle.

The violence first erupted in 2016 when teachers and lawyers protested against alleged discrimination at the hands of Cameroon’s French-speaking majority. English speakers make up 20 per cent of the country’s 24 million people and have long complained of being marginalised by the French-speaking majority.

The government responded with a crackdown that sparked an armed movement for an independent, English-speaking state called Ambazonia.

Source: Vatican News

Talks convened by President Paul Biya to solve the Anglophone crisis have begun in Yaounde without separatist leader Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe. DW’s Fred Muvunyi says the peace dialogue is likely to fail.

Cameroon has kicked off a national dialogue to discuss how to put an end to a crisis that started three years ago in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions. A fifth of the country’s population of 24 million has had no peace for that period of time.

The International Crisis Group estimates that at least 3,000 people have been killed and 530,000 were displaced or forced by the conflict to flee to neighboring Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. Many villages are completely deserted and countless houses have been set ablaze.

Reacting to international pressure, President Paul Biya — in power since 1982 — finally accepted to call for a dialogue. The president, seen by many Anglophones as the real catalyst of the crisis, charged his Prime Minister Dion Ngute with overseeing the talks.

Yaounde doesn’t seem to be serious about this dialogue. Otherwise, why would it arrogate to itself the right to set the terms of the mediation and lead the process, after inflicting so much pain on the Anglophone population?

This dialogue looks like a farce and is likely to do more harm than good. The entire nation was mobilized to suggest solutions to problems that a majority is not even aware of.

Paul Biya, 86, refused the international mediation offered by the Swiss government. He went for a format that many Anglophone Cameroonians are calling a monologue, because they do not feel represented. The Anglophones’ delegations are led by Northwest and Southwest governors – officials appointed by the Yaounde government.

Biya’s failure to release the separatists’ leaders shows clearly how little he cares for the lives of the minority Cameroonians, who are fighting for their right to be and to self-govern. Let’s not forget that hundreds of pro-independence Cameroonians are languishing in jails and children in the region have not gone to school for three years.

Women run the risk of being sexually abused by armed men when they venture out into the forests where the guerilla is hiding. Those who survive the gun are dying of diseases.

Anglophone Cameroonians are being exterminated in slow motion. Any selfless leader should not allow this to happen, and the world should not look away.

In conversations I often have with English-speaking Cameroonians and after time spent in the region, I can see that these people are serious about their demands.

They are determined to fight for their freedom. No matter the cost. Otherwise they would have given up in spring of 2018 when armed separatists mounted attacks against the military, and Cameroonian troops retaliated, leaving civilians caught in the crossfire. But they kept up their demands nonetheless. 

The Yaoundé forces have not been able to regain full control over rural areas nor prevent repeated separatist attacks in towns. Independence fighters show their muscle by imposing a general strike on Anglophone regions every Monday.

As a first step to end the crisis, Biya should release all Anglophone activists, including their leader Ayuk Sisiku Tabe.

Then he should call for an end to hostilities before starting deliberations. All government forces must leave the conflict-torn regions.

It’s time for both sides to make concessions, lose their egos and start an honest dialogue. Once trust and confidence have been built, Cameroonians will discuss a form of state that suits over five million people.

The resolve and determination of the people of Northwest and Southwest regions to choose a leadership that understands and feels their pain will not fade away.

Biya does not have much time left in office. It is high time he started to think about whether he wants to go down in history as a man who brutally murdered the people of his own country, or go to his grave as a man who committed horrible crimes – but redeemed himself by returning to peaceful ways.

Culled from Deutschewelle

The United States of America says it has offered to play a role in identifying an eventual solution to the crisis in Anglophone regions of Cameroon that has left more than 3,000 dead since 2017.

The US embassy in Yaounde said in a statement it would need to be asked by President Paul Biya’s government and Anglophone leaders to take on such a responsibility and asked the parties to engage in dialogue without any preconditions.

A major national dialogue that President Biya hopes will resolve the future of the secession-leaning english-speaking Northwest and Southwest Cameroon started on Monday.

Hopes for a breakthrough were however dashed by the absence of hardline separatist leaders and opposition politicians as moderates called for the talks to be given a chance.

“The US urges all those involved in the conflict in the Northwest and Southwest to abjure further violence and enter into an open-ended dialogue without precondition,” the statement said.

The advisory itself was an attempt at damage control after separatist leaders in the diaspora announced on Monday that US diplomat Herman Jay Cohen had agreed to represent them in the talks.

Source:The East African

Two years ago secessionists earmarked Cameroon’s English-speaking regions for a new African nation, they named Ambazonia. But their pursuit for self-rule has led to death and destruction of civilians in the crosshairs.

October 1 this year will mark the second anniversary since separatists in Cameroon’s northwest and southwest regions proclaimed a so-called independent state “Ambazonia.” It is a symbolic date: on the very same day in 1961, the East, which was then administered by the French, and the West, administered by the British, were united to form Cameroon. Something, the “Ambazonians” want to reverse. This year, the day will be under close watch: Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has announced plans to hold a “national dialogue” with the aim of ending the conflict.

It is a conflict which is scarred by violence and severe human rights violations from both security forces and armed groups, Amnesty International reported. 3,000 people have died and close to half a million have been displaced. Multiple separatists groups have formed in the southwest and northwest of the country.

Who are the ‘Amba-boys’?

Agbor Balla, an Anglophone human rights lawyer, tells DW: ” I think each county or each community is coming up with its own groups. There are about 10 groups, including the Ambazonia Defense Forces, the Tigers, and groups working for the interim government of Ambazonia.” All of these groups serve one purpose: the fight for independence. It is a struggle that has a long history.

The conflict is scarred by violence between seperatists and security forces

In the run-up to their independence, residents of British-administered Southern Cameroon, which included the northwest and southwest regions, held a referendum on 30 September 1961 under the auspices of the United Nation. The question was whether they wanted to belong to the newly Independent Federal Republic of Nigeria or to French-administered Cameroon. Under promises of a federal state and English as the official language, English-speaking Southern Cameroon joined the majority French-speaking East. Despite the agreement, Cameroon became a unitary state in 1972. “Many think that if we had remained faithful to the Federal Republic of Cameroon we would not have had the problems we have now,” Cardinal Christian Tumi tells DW.

Marginalizing Cameroon’s Anglophone regions

In the 1990s, Anglophone parties issued threats of declaring independence unless the old constitution was re-instated. They felt marginalized by the majority francophone government. Joseph Wirba, self-exiled Cameroonian MP, told DW: “We joined a nation that did not want our freedom and they presumed that they had to eliminate our culture gradually, to reduce us to second class citizens. That neglect pushed people gradually over the years to that extreme to say: no, we can not continue to be treated that way.”

On 12 October 2016, lawyers and teachers started demonstrating peacefully. Schools were closed and the ‘ghost town’ strikes started – for several days each week, shops and institutions closed their doors. The government responded by shutting down the internet, arresting and intimidating protestors.

Independence of ‘Ambazonia’

On 1 October 2017, separatists declared an independent state, which they named Ambazonia. The government sent in forces, and large-scale fighting broke out. Bullets and tear gas were unleashed onto civilian population the cross-hairs. According to Amnesty International, 17 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded.

The southwest has been torn by two years of clashes

Reverend Thomas Mokoko Mbue, from the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, says in a DW interview: “It was the beginning of a radical movement towards armed struggle. The argument was that the government had attacked their people who were unarmed and that they needed to defend them, so armed groups were formed.”

No chain of command

Freedom fighters, radicals, or Amba-boys – nowadays, the separatists have many names. Mark Bareta, a Cameroonian activist in the diaspora fighting for Ambazonia, explains: “At the moment we have different groups, different structures: Those who decided to pick up arms and are fighting the republic, those doing diplomacy and those providing support to those in the bushes.”

The groups don’t have a chain of command. “You cannot really identify how they operate,” Balla says. People like Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, one of the imprisoned Cameroon Anglophone separatist leaders, would not be controlling the movement. Tabe and nine of his followers were convicted of charges including terrorism and secession. However, “the ones acting on behalf of Sisiku are very important, some take orders from them,” Balla says. “Some leaders of the groups are in contact, they make joint statements.”

The lines between good and evil

Some of the armed groups are led and funded by Cameroonians living in the diaspora, Balla says. “The diaspora, these are Cameroonians. Some want to see things changed, some of them want to have an independent state, some of them might have had their issues with the government. Some of them might have been blacklisted and they cannot come back to the country. So some hope to come back to an independent state.” However, most groups survive through kidnappings and ransom.

Many separatist leaders and followers have been imprisoned

The fights have become increasingly brutal, schools, hospitals and whole villages are burned down, people murdered and intimidated. “At the beginning, abuses were mostly and largely committed by government forces. Now the line between the bad and the good is really blurred and we see these separatist groups attacking and targeting civilians,” explains Ilaria Allegrozzi from Human Rights Watch. “Civilians are really being caught in the middle of this crisis and paying the highest price.”

A lost generation

Another worrying phenomenon stresses the severity of the conflict. “Armed robbers have re-branded themselves, calling themselves Amba-Groups,” Mbue says. They recruit young men and profit out of the situation: “Kidnappings, ransom taking, breaking into homes. They loot whatever they want to loot.”

Mbue is worried: If the conflict continues, the young generation of “Ambazonia” will be lost. “There are kids of eight years who have never seen a school. Young men dropped out of secondary school and have become barbarians of their community, they lost their basic sense of civilization and only see the option of carrying guns. A whole generation is going down.” Some of the fighters are as young as 15 years, Mbue says. “It is heartbreaking to see those who are to build our community dying because of a senseless war.”

Culled from Deutschwelle

As the major national dialogue known by many Southern Cameroonians as “national badluck” wraps up its second day of deliberations, many non-government participants are already cutting and running, as government-appointed chairs of the various committees are working hard to frustrate efforts by Southern Cameroonians to have the form of the state and constitution changed.

Prominent lawyer, Akere Muna, and opposition leader, Jean Jacques Ekindi, have already quit, calling the dialogue a charade designed to deceive the international community.

Barrister Akere Muna left yesterday while Jean Jacques Ekindi left today for his native Douala.

It is being reported that prominent human rights lawyer, Barrister Felix Nkongho Agbor Balla, is also thinking of leaving as government agents are ramping decentralization down the throats of those who are hoping to obtain at least federalism out of this charade.

Renowned historian and author, Prof. Victor Julius Ngoh reporting on the disagreements in the decentralization commission wrote that:

“It is hot in the Decentralization Committee. The chair of the Commission has been trying to restrict on discussion of decentralization. It got to a point where some Anglophones especially Agbor Balla threatened to walk out and Minister Garga met me outside and we talked to him and we came back and zeroed in on federalism. Several members are on federalism and dont want the Chair to derail the point”.

But cutting and running will only help the corrupt and dishonest government of Mr. Biya to manufacture resolutions and recommendations that they will present to the international community.

The Biya regime is cash-strapped and any hopes of it getting loans and grants from bilateral and multilateral donors depend on proof that it did actually organize the much- talked about inclusive dialogue and that all parties were represented.

The Southern Cameroons crises that has brought about the dialogue is being upstaged by insignificant themes like multiculturalism, bilingualism, living together and decentralization.

The atmosphere at the conference center is tense as some members of the Southern Cameroonian Diaspora are willing to demonstrate and even cause chaos if the real issues are not discussed.

The Southern Cameroons crisis has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons and the country’s economy has taken many blows to the liver.

Major state corporations such as CDC, PAMOL and SONARA have been ruined as a result of the crisis.

Many kids in rural Southern Cameroons have been out of school for three years and their fate rides on a successful dialogue that should bring the government and all the warring factions to the negotiating table with a neutral third party facilitating the discussions.

A Swiss initiative backed by Canada and the USA has been rejected by the Yaounde government which has decided to organize a charade.

Many observers say the government has already manufactured the recommendations and will, at the right time, release a document which will point out that many Cameroonians are in support of decentralization that has generated much corruption in the country and left the country’s economy on its knees.

Some analysts argue that a Canadian-style federal system will be ideal for Cameroon; a country of 256 tribes and two major linguistic blocs.

Many observers fear that if the dialogue is not properly managed, it could result in renewed hostilities in the two English-speaking regions of the country where some 3,000 civilians and soldiers have lost their lives.

By Dr Joachim Arrey