Nothing has changed ever since the awful death of a third year law student in the University of Yaoundé II, Soa last year. So, the men who rape, harm and kill women are multiplying and consolidating their gains all over the national territory.

President Biya, his government, the police force, the gendarmerie and the judiciary are maintaining their observer status as seven women were recently abducted, raped, murdered and in the words of their beloved mothers, “bodies disposed of as if they were rubbish”.

In all the seven killings, Cameroon Concord News Group is aware that the suspects are all men. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group know this but not the Biya government and not the Delegate General for National Security. To be sure, the seven women will have died in terror and pain, just like the third year law student in Soa. All of them leave behind grieving families and friends for whom their loss will last a lifetime.

Cameroonian men’s violence against women is growing at catastrophic rapidity throughout the national territory and cuts across all sections of society, Francophone, Anglophone, across ages, class and ethnicity. But like with the media in Cameroon, it is almost always the young, conventionally attractive, middle-class Francophone girl killed by a stranger that makes headline news in Yaoundé. We of the Concord Group want every woman’s death to be a reason for soul-searching and a very productive national discourse.

Southern Cameroons women are disproportionately victimised, yet more likely to receive a sub-standard response from the security apparatus of the state dominated in all towns and cities in Southern Cameroons by Francophones.

Nothing indeed has changed ever since the third year law student in Soa was abducted, raped and murdered.  There is completely nothing on the government table on how to tackle violence against women in Cameroon. The women are partly to blame for Biya’s regime’s deliberate silence!!

We of the Concord Group think it is time to set an ambitious program to end men’s violence against women.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Prominent businessman Amougou Belinga was charged on Saturday with complicity in the torture of a journalist who was murdered in a high-profile case that has rocked the country, his lawyer told AFP.

Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, reputedly close to ministers and senior officials, was arrested on February 6 and brought before a military court in the capital Yaounde on Friday before being remanded, his lawyer said.

A source at the court confirmed the report to AFP on condition of anonymity. The authorities did not respond to requests for comment on the charges Amougou Belinga faces.

Radio journalist Martinez Zogo, who was kidnapped and brutally murdered in January, was outspoken against graft and financial sleaze and had often faced threats over his work.

Amougou Belinga, owner of L’Anecdote media group, “was arrested… at dawn” last month, the company said.

The tycoon has holdings in banking, finance, insurance and property, as well as L’Anecdote, which owns a daily newspaper of that name and several pro-government TV and radio stations.

Belinga’s lawyer said his client was “not charged with the murder of Martinez Zogo”, adding: “It is only an indictment, the judicial investigation has only just begun”.

Belinga “was placed under a detention order… at the main prison in Kondengi” after being “presented before an investigating judge at the military court,” a media group he owns said in a statement.

– Suspects –

Several people suspected of involvement in the case were also brought before the military court on Friday evening, according to an AFP reporter on the scene.

Leopold Maxime Eko Eko, head of the General Directorate for External Investigations (DGRE) and its director of operations, Justin Danwe, are among those suspected, a communication ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity, alongside other official sources who also requested confidentiality.

Denis Omgba Bomba, head of the National Media Observatory, a unit attached to the communications ministry, previously confirmed the arrest and said the tycoon had been “named a suspect in the killing of Martinez Zogo”.

Zogo, 50, was the manager of the privately-owned radio station Amplitude FM and host of a daily show called Embouteillage (Traffic Jam).

He had frequently named Amougou Belinga in his corruption accusations.

Zogo was abducted on January 17 outside a police station in the suburbs of the capital Yaounde, and his mutilated corpse was found five days later.

Just days before he was killed, he had told listeners about threats he faced.

The murder sparked outcry, including a protest by 20 leading Cameroonians over the government’s “long tradition of trivialising impunity and accepting atrocities.”

RSF’s Press Freedom Index ranks Cameroon a lowly 118th out of 180 countries.

The government has insisted Cameroon is “a state of law, where liberty is guaranteed, including the freedom of the press”.

Reported by AFP

Brought before the military court in Yaoundé on 14 February, Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga was not formally charged and prosecuted, with the court requesting an additional investigation into the matter of journalist Martinez Zogo’s kidnapping and assassination.

Is Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga going to be officially charged by the Yaoundé military court? The answer, long-awaited by those following the case, has finally come: the government commissioner has chosen to wait and request an additional investigation to better establish responsibilities relating to the assassination of journalist Martinez Zogo on 22 January.

Belinga and the other suspects had been removed from their cells at the secrétariat d’État à la défense (SED, in charge of the investigation) and brought before the military court at the end of the morning, where they waited all day, accompanied by legal representation as they speculated about their fate.

After hesitating for a long time, the government commissioner decided on the immediate imposition of charges, opting instead for the time being to request the SED to look into certain elements of the case. The accused were then returned to SED custody in the evening.

The boss of the L’Anecdote group was arrested on 6 February, when he was directly implicated by Lieutenant-Colonel Justin Danwe. This executive of the Direction générale de la recherche extérieure (DGRE), who admitted to the investigators about having carried out the operation targeting Zogo, claimed to have acted on Belinga’s behalf.

According to Danwe, the latter was even present during the kidnapping and when the Amplitude FM journalist was tortured.

If Belinga denied these allegations during his police custody, several elements of the investigation, in particular wiretaps and data from the analysis of the telephones of the protagonists, would come to corroborate this version of the facts.

Several relatives also suspected

Several of Belinga’s relatives were also presented before the military court. Etoundi Nsoe, his father-in-law and head of security, former commander of the presidential guard, is suspected of having contributed to the establishment of Danwe’s commando, as is Bruno Bidjang, the man’s right-hand man.

The two men are said to have been responsible for the money transfers that made it possible to recruit the lieutenant colonel of the DGRE and his men.

Three other individuals caught the SED’s attention and were therefore also brought to justice: Jean-Claude Fouda Abega, a close associate of Belinga’s, Yannick Nkili, the latter’s aide-de-camp, and a man known simply as  “Jacob”, an aide-de-camp of the tycoon’s wife, Melissa.

On the side of the DGRE, Justin Danwe was also brought before the same military tribunal, as was the director of external research, Léopold Maxime Eko Eko, placed in police custody at the same time as his subordinate. If the latter denies having been aware of the operation, he is suspected of having, at the very least, given his approval.

A turning point for the Zogo case?

Will this request for further investigation allow the case to take on a new dimension, almost a month after Zogo kidnapping and murder? Already closely followed in Yaoundé, especially in Etoudi by the secretary general of the presidency Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh, it could take an even more political turn. While in police custody, Danwe reportedly cited the name of the Minister of Justice, Laurent Esso.

As a heavyweight of the government and former secretary general of the presidency, he would have been in communication with Belinga on the night of January 17 and 18, when Danwe’s team had just carried out the journalist’s kidnapping. Neither the Keeper of the Seals nor the government spokesman René-Emmanuel Sadi has spoken on the case.

Culled from Africa Report

After celebrating 40 years at the helm of Cameroon, the patriarch Paul Biya is celebrating his 90th birthday with only a few discordant voices.

Celebrations follow on from one another within the Cameroonian presidency’s entourage.

On 6 November, several thousand of Paul Biya’s supporters celebrated his 40 years as head of the country. Biya is Africa’s second longest reigning monarch, just behind the 43 years that Equatorial Guinea’s head of state has spent on the throne. However, the clan is hosting a more private affair this 13 February to celebrate the 90th birthday of the self-proclaimed “Lion Man”.

Apart from crowned heads who do not have to go back to the drawing board 100 times, nonagenarians are rarely found at the top of leadership institutions, like Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, who resigned at the age of 93, and Tunisia’s Béji Caïd Essebi, who died in office at 92. Biya is currently the oldest sitting head of state.

Is Biya’s birthday “private”? The event is making headlines in Cameroon, newspapers and social media echo the lavish festivities in Mvomeka’a, the patriarch’s birthplace, some 250km from Yaounde. After the festivities, it will be interesting to note which privileged person has been invited around the cake to be included in the photo. Beyond blood ties, the political family is having a field day. A member of the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement (CPDM), Justine Diffo salutes the birthday of the man who mentored her with his ‘institutional aura’ and ‘spiritual halo’.

Even beyond the labelled “biyaists”, each one has his own zeal, more or less constrained by the weight of the presidential institution. On 7 February, the University of Yaounde 1’s rector sent a letter to the heads of departments inviting them to “make arrangements in advance (…) to mobilise students” to the ceremony scheduled for this Monday at the Yaounde Sports Palace.

In Cameroon, where life expectancy at birth is around 59 years, old age is an indisputable reason for respect. Although Biya’s birthday should be the occasion for a 24-hour political truce, the impressive number of years he has lived inevitably gives rise to debates on the succession.

Will the 64-year-old Finance Minister Louis-Paul Motaze win the jackpot when the time comes, or will Biya’s fading from the political scene trigger a clan war? As usual, the current head of state wants to weigh all possible options. Last July, during a press conference with France’s President Emmanuel Macron, “Popaul” reminded everyone that his term ends in 2025, adding: “When this mandate expires, you will be informed of whether I have decided to stay or go to the village.” This seems to suggest that he has not ruled out formally running for president in 2025.

Culled from The Africa Report by Nelly Epupa (Cameroon Intelligence Report)

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) can reveal that the contents of mobile phones and interrogations have yielded new, very incriminating evidence in the investigation into journalist Martinez Zogo’s murder in Cameroon. Businessman Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga is more deeply implicated than ever and the net is closing on justice minister Laurent Esso, one of the pillars of the Cameroonian government.

The joint gendarmerie-police investigation is moving ahead quickly and, at this rate, is liable to eclipse President Paul Biya’s 90th birthday on 13 February. It is Biya, Cameroon’s president since 1982, who ordered the investigation into Martinez Zogo’s abduction, beating and murder by intelligence officers on the evening of 17 January. But he must surely realize to what extent the case is liable to cast a heavy shadow over the final period of his presidency and perhaps remove one of its most loyal allies.

As RSF already revealed, the initial arrests of around 20 members of Cameroon’s General Directorate for External Investigations (DGRE), including its boss, the feared Maxime Eko Eko, and its special operations director, Justin Danwe, led to the arrest on 6 February of Belinga, a prominent businessman, who owns the newspaper L’Anecdote and the TV channel Vision 4.

RSF has been told in confidence that evidence of Belinga’s role as the leading instigator of Zogo’s murder has continued to grow. The statements provided by the six members of the unit who abducted and killed Radio Amplitude FM’s director – and who were mainly recruited from outside Yaoundé, the capital, as RSF has now learned – have corroborated the staggering statement made by Danwe, which RSF already reported.

Their statements and other evidence have also confirmed Belinga’s presence at the scene of the murder. And examination of the phones of the suspects has confirmed that calls were made between Belinga and Danwe, and between Belinga and justice minister Laurent Esso, on the evening of the murder. In view of the growing volume of evidence, a reconstruction of the murder – envisaged in recent days – no longer seems to be a priority for the investigators, RSF has learned.

He “wanted to finish with him”

Sources very close to the investigation report the discovery of damning new evidence of a payment of 35 million CFA francs (about 53,000 euros) from Belinga to Danwe. This money allegedly passed through the account of Retired Colonel Etoundi Nsoé, the former presidential guard commander who is Belinga’s father-in-law and unofficial head of his security. Nsoé was arrested on 6 February, as was Bruno Bidjang, the head of the Belinga’s media group, who is reportedly cooperating with the investigators. A face-to-face confrontation between these two men was scheduled to take place today.

Finally, RSF has interviewed two people in the past two days who say Zogo had been threatened by Belinga or people close to him. And RSF has heard a recording in which Zogo voiced concern on 9 January – eight days before his murder – about the fact that he had been contacted by a man “very close to [Belinga].” This man had told Zogo that Belinga “wanted to finish with him” and with at least eight other Cameroonian journalists.

When contacted by RSF, Belinga’s lawyer, former bar association president Charles Tchoungang, claimed that no legal procedure had been respected since the start of what he called a “unilateral investigation.” He insisted that “warrantless searches” had been carried out, that the prosecution case was “empty,” and that it had the subject of a “manipulation unacceptable to public opinion.”

Sights now turned on Laurent Esso

The investigators are now focusing on the role that Esso, the justice minister, may have played. “We have proof that he was deeply involved,” said one of the investigators, refusing to elaborate. A government minister in six successive administrations since 1996 and one of President Biya’s oldest political allies, Esso has been under close surveillance in the past few days. Gendarmes were posted close to his home although there was no question of any threat to his security.

Belinga, who is being held in a cell at the defence ministry, has asked several times to call Esso, but his request has not been granted. RSF has meanwhile learned from a very reliable source that Belinga spent more than an hour in Esso’s office on 3 February, several days after first falling under heaving suspicions.

Despite several attempts, RSF has not been able to reach Esso.

 Purveyors of disinformation identified

The evidence against Eko, the DGRE’s boss – who is being held in a cell near Belinga’s – also seems to be damning. He is the owner of the Prado SUV used to abduct Zogo. “It’s hard to imagine his men borrowing it without telling him,” one of RSF’s sources said. He also “had his share,” the source added, alluding to the sums of money paid to the participants in the operation.

The military justice system and the Government Commissioner are now in charge of the case. The 31 suspects already in provisional custody should be charged and placed in pre-trial detention, probably in Yaoundé’s main prison, by the end of the week. Who will join them? How high does the level of complicity go? The investigation is continuing and around 100 people are now regarded as “persons of interest” in the case.

Those who have been taking turns to spread disinformation since the start of the case – and who have targeted RSF, among others – could also be questioned. The investigators say they have found evidence of payments – ranging from a few hundred to several thousand euros –made by Belinga associates with the aim of discrediting reports unfavourable to him, rehabilitating him or creating diversions in order to influence the investigation or public opinion. At least 18 persons had been identified by yesterday evening.

Culled from RSF

The murder of two journalists Martinez Zogo and Jean Jacques Ola Bébé in Yaoundé is not a new development in Cameroon but it is also one that should prompt prosecutors to bring the death penalty on the table for men like Amougou Belinga found to be killing media men and women and looting the state.

President Biya as always is facing international condemnation for his brutal crackdown on opposition figures to his rule, age is telling on him, the Southern Cameroons uprising has become increasingly hydra-headed, Boko Haram is now in control of certain areas in the Far North region as CPDM defectors are joining forces with anything antagonistic with his regime.

It is now time for the judiciary in Cameroon to do something to cleanse Biya’s nasty legacy and that is imposing the death penalty on Belinga Amougou.

This tougher measure should come immediately including the implementation of the Canada peace plan aimed at halting the violence that has killed thousands of Southern Cameroonians according to United Nations estimates.

On Monday, security agents arrested business tycoon Amougou Belinga and a young journalist he recently promoted to the post of General Manager of his privately-owned television channel, Vision 4 for planning and teleguiding the barbaric murder of journalist and whistleblower Martinez Zogo and his close associate Jean Jacques Ola Bébé.

The late radio host of the program “Embouteillages” had been very critical against alleged corruptors and embezzlers of public funds. It is said that more than 22 people have been arrested in Yaoundé and are currently being interrogated at the Secretariat for Defense (SED).

Earlier today, forensic searches were conducted in the building hosting the head office of the French Cameroun mafia boss. The search was conducted by Colonel Mbarga, accompanied by two divisional commissioners and officers. Amougou Belinga was present as well as his lawyer, Charles Tchoungang. The building was searched from top to bottom. AMOUGOU BELINGA only refused to open a finger print lock safe where he said some of his blood money was.

Investigators also auditioned his wife, Sarah Amougou Belinga, a senior magistrate. The operation targeting his wife was led by Colonel Abena Ayissi Parfait. Justice Sarah Amougou Belinga refused to grant access to some rooms that were later on forcefully opened.

Biya reluctantly agreed to allow an investigation into the Zogo affair after pressure from Paris, Yaounde’s close ally, and the European Union, which threatened to refer Yaoundé to the UN Security Council, a serious diplomatic escalation that could have led to the collapse of the 40-year-old regime.

In a divided nation where atrocities are being recorded on a daily basis – common sense demands state prosecutors to seek a death penalty for Jean Pierre Amougou Belinga-to use his four names, stop the bloodshed in Southern Cameroons, withdraw Francophone civil administrators from English speaking Cameroon, release all Southern Cameroons detainees including Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides and start talks with the jailed Southern Cameroons leaders.

We of the Cameroon Concord News and the Cameroon Intelligence Report are calling on state prosecutors in Yaoundé to halt the killing machine against journalists in Cameroon and the Biya regime’s tactics to buy time and avert a showdown with the international community by sentencing Jean Pierre Amougou to death by hanging.

To this I put my name

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

In power since 1982, Cameroon President Paul Biya has ruled autocratically for more than four decades. While Cameroon is officially bilingual, one manifestation of such authoritarian governance is the persistent marginalization of the minority English-speaking population in the Northwest and Southwest regions, the former British Southern Cameroons.

Since 2016, in the face of state violence, peaceful protests by Anglophone groups have morphed into armed conflict in which separatist groups are fighting for an independent Republic of Ambazonia. In its sixth year, this hidden and neglected war has killed thousands and forcibly displaced more than  one million people.

 Biya’s autocratic regime remains intent on a military solution to a political problem, uninterested in peace negotiations, and with little or no external pressure. The colonial and post-colonial roots of this contemporary conflict are well-known to English-speaking Cameroonians. Originally a German colony (1884-1916) called Kamerun, after World War I, it was divided between France (80 percent) and Britain (20 percent), under League of Nations and then United Nations mandates. Britain subdivided its territory into Northern and Southern Cameroons and governed them as part of Nigeria. A botched reunification process occurred at independence in 1960 and 1961. French Cameroun and Nigeria gained their independence in January and October 1960 respectively.

 In February 1961, an UN-organized plebiscite was held to decide the future of Northern and Southern Cameroons, with the choice of joining either independent French Cameroun or Nigeria, but not independence as a separate state. Northern Cameroons voted to join Nigeria, while Southern Cameroons voted to join Cameroon. The terms of reunification between Southern Cameroons and French Cameroun were then agreed upon at the Foumban constitutional conference in July 1961, resulting in the Federal Republic of Cameroon, consisting of two federated states: West Cameroon (former Southern Cameroons) and East Cameroon (former French Cameroun).

 The Federal Constitution came into effect in October 1961, with the federal system perceived to uphold the bi-cultural and bi-lingual nature of Cameroon within which the state of West Cameroon retained some autonomy, inclusive of separate governance structures and distinctive legal and educational institutions. However, federalism was short-lived, despite article 47 of the Constitution stating it to be “indissoluble.” In May 1972, President Ahmadou Ahidjo held a controversial national referendum that led to the abolition of the federal constitution and the creation of a unitary state called the United Republic of Cameroon.

 The 1972 referendum removed West Cameroon’s autonomous governance structures, most notably the West Cameroon House of Assembly. In 1984 President Biya re-named the country, in French, as La Republique du Cameroun, returning to the name before reunification with Southern Cameroons. Writing in 1985, the barrister Fon Gorji Dinka described the 1972 referendum as a “constitutional coup” and the 1984 decree as an “act of secession” of La Republique du Cameroun from the 1961 union with Southern Cameroons. Current Anglophone separatist groups call themselves “restorationists,” fighting for the “restoration” of the state of Southern Cameroons or Ambazonia, and perceive this as an anti-colonial struggle given that British colonization was replaced by colonization by La Republique du Cameroun in 1961. Although the current violence in Southern Cameroons is unprecedented, today’s conflict is a consequence of longstanding Anglophone grievances coupled with a strategy of “denial and repression” by the Francophone-dominated state towards Cameroon’s so-called Anglophone problem. Being Anglophone in Cameroon goes beyond language to encompass a cultural identity that has a history linked to Britain and a set of distinctive institutions.

For decades, many Anglophones have felt that the Francophone-dominated state’s policy of assimilation has attempted to erode that identity, and feel treated as second-class citizens within Cameroon, with marginalization experienced in the socio-cultural, political, economic, and linguistic fields. Anglophone opposition has risen at different times. In the early 1990s, political liberalization enabled Anglophone-specific trade unions, interest groups as well as political groups to emerge, advocating for Southern Cameroonian interests, notably the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC).

Of particular note were the All-Anglophone Conferences (AACI and AACII) held in 1993 and 1994 and attended by more than 5,000 delegates from Anglophone organizations and associations.  AACI’s Buea Declaration I called for a return to two-state federalism, but total disregard of such demands by Biya’s regime led to secession being placed on the agenda in the declaration from AACII. The aim was stated as “the restoration of the autonomy of the former Southern Cameroons which has been annexed by La République du Cameroun.” SCNC in particular advocated for secession, but notably by non-violent means through the “force of argument rather than the argument of force.” These long-standing grievances re-emerged in late 2016 with peaceful protests by lawyers and teachers against the francophonization of the legal and educational systems in the English-speaking regions. Lawyers were unhappy about the appointment of French-speaking magistrates educated in civil law and unfamiliar with common law, as practiced in the Anglophone regions, while teachers were concerned about the influx of French-speaking teachers. Separately, they undertook strike action and demonstrated in October and November 2016 respectively. These peaceful protests were violently dispersed by the security forces using tear gas and bullets, with some fatalities and many arrests.

 Following this violence, the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC) was established, advocating a return to pre-1972 two-state federalism. CACSC initiated “Operation Ghost Towns Resistance,” with closures of schools and businesses in the Northwest and Southwest regions on selected days as a tactic of non-violent resistance. The government’s response in January 2017 was to ban the Consortium, along with SCNC, and arrest their leaders on treason and terrorism charges, as well as a three-month internet blackout. Writing in April 2017, sociologist Piet Konings and anthropologist Francis Nyamnjoh likened the Francophone-dominated state’s approach to Anglophone grievances to that “of a workman whose only tool is a hammer and to whom every problem is a nail.”  One consequence was that separatist voices became stronger. State repression of, first, legitimate expression of grievances and, second, peaceful advocacy of federalism, led to increasing calls for secession of Southern Cameroons. Following the banning orders, existing separatist organizations, largely active in the diaspora, came together to form the Southern Cameroons Ambazonia Consortium United Front (SCACUF), with Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, previously involved in CACSC, appointed as chairperson. While advocating secession, his strategy remained non-violent, echoing SCNC’s position in the  1990s. Divisions shortly became apparent, however, with Ayaba Cho Lucas, leader of the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGC), one of SCACUF’s constituent organizations, advocating armed struggle. While SCACUF’s leadership remained largely outside of Cameroon, notably in Nigeria, civil disobedience continued in the Northwest and Southwest during 2017 with widespread support for the weekly “Ghost Town” days. The state’s response was military occupation, with arbitrary arrests and detention of young men on the pretext of supporting secessionism. In response, the AGC announced the deployment of their armed wing, the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF), with the first attack on September 9, 2017 in which three soldiers were killed. On October 1, 2017, the anniversary of Southern Cameroons’ independence from Britain, the independent Republic of Ambazonia was declared by SCACUF, alongside mass demonstrations in which 17 people were killed by state security forces. The SCACUF transformed itself into the Interim Government of Ambazonia (IG) on October 31, with Ayuk Tabe as President. The state intensified its militarization of the Anglophone regions, and on November 30, 2017 President Biya declared war on the secessionists, described as “terrorists.” Armed conflict continues to date. War causes misery.

Over five years later, the impact on the four million population has been severe. While figures are approximate and underestimated, at least 6,000 people have been killed and hundreds of villages razed, with 1.1 million people displaced by 2020, including 70,000 registered refugees in Nigeria, and 2.2 million in need of humanitarian assistance. School closures have caused education disruption to hundreds of thousands of children for years. Gross human rights violations committed by both warring parties have been widely documented, including by the Cameroon-based Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa. The military is accused of extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrests, disappearances, unlawful imprisonment, torture, as well as the burning and destruction of homes, schools, and health centers. Armed separatist groups are accused of kidnappings and extortion of civilians, killings of alleged informants (so-called “blacklegs”), and beatings of teachers and students for non-compliance with the school boycott. Evidence indicates that the security forces are responsible for a greater proportion of the various atrocities, with the World Bank stating that government forces have caused 10 times as many civilian deaths as separatist armed groups. Rape and other forms of sexual violence have increased dramatically, described as “pervasive” and “rampant” in a UN report, and perpetuated with impunity by the military and non-state armed groups.

 As in other conflicts, rape has been used as a weapon of war, terrorizing local communities into submission and grossly violating women and girls. The Cameroon government’s approach to the war was described recently as one of “hammer and lies,” in other words, military force alongside a disinformation campaign. The government continues to fight a counter-insurgency war, while simultaneously denying that a conflict exists, preferring to refer to a “security crisis” in the English-speaking regions, one which is largely resolved with a Presidential Plan of Reconstruction and Development in place from 2020. The lie to this is evident by Biya’s deployment of a new military commander and special elite forces to the two regions in September 2022. Essentially Biya seeks a military victory by crushing the separatists. But how strong is the Ambazonian movement and what threat does it entail to the Cameroonian state? Like similar movements, the Ambazonian movement has political and military wings. Leaders of the political wing are mainly based in the diaspora or imprisoned in Cameroon, with significant divisions between them. The military forces, known locally as the “Amba Boys,” comprise up to 30 armed groups across the two regions. Initially, the main political split was between the Interim Government (IG) led by Ayuk Tabe and the Ambazonia Governing Council (AGC) led by Cho Lucas.

 However, in January 2018 Ayuk Tabe and nine other IG leaders were arrested in Nigeria and extradited to Cameroon. They were detained without trial, then all sentenced to life imprisonment by a military tribunal in August 2019.  With Ayuk Tabe detained, US-based Samuel Ikome Sako was elected as interim IG president. However, infighting ensued with a split in early 2019 between “IG Sisiku” and “IG Sako.” Despite its initial rivalry with the Interim Government, the AGC supported the IG Sisiku faction and formalized cooperation ties in August 2019.  In 2021, the AGC also formed an alliance with Biafran separatists in Nigeria, the Indigenous People of Biafra. Cho Lucas has also encouraged Francophone Cameroonian groups to take up arms against Biya’s regime.

Militarily, while the Ambazonia Defence Forces (ADF) remains the largest group, there is a proliferation of smaller armed groups, for instance, the Southern Cameroons Defence Forces (SOCADEF), Ambazonia Restoration Forces, Red Dragons, Tigers of Ambazonia, and Vipers, comprising around 4,000 fighters in total. Allegiance with the political factions varies, with Red Dragons and SOCADEF believed to be aligned with IG Sako, for instance, while other armed groups operate quite independently. Initially, equipment was rudimentary, including hunting rifles and machetes. But the armed groups’ combat strength has increased through the acquisition of more sophisticated weaponry, including improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and rocket launchers, with a greater intensity of operations. Precise figures are unknown, but both sides have lost considerable numbers of combatants.

The fragmentation of political leadership has led to disagreements and multiple policy directions. In response to the Swiss peace initiative, IG Sako formed the Ambazonia Coalition Team (ACT) in September 2019 to present a joint platform for negotiation. However, IG Sisiku refused to participate. Opposing policies over “lockdowns” (or “Ghost Towns”) and the so-called “liberation war tax” on civilians also indicate a lack of unity. The multiplicity of voices over policy directions is symptomatic of the disconnect between the diasporic leadership and their militias in Cameroon, with the absence of political authority on the ground. While the war is unremitting and the government was forced to deploy special elite forces in September 2022 to bolster its counterinsurgency efforts, fragmentation and division amongst Ambazonian groups have weakened the movement. As recently stated, the international response to the Cameroon Anglophone conflict has been “feeble.” with little or no pressure from Western governments and no political intervention from the AU or UN. Why is this? The Cameroon government’s “lies and disinformation” strategy has been relatively successful in hiding the reality of the war, and Western governments have prioritized economic and geo-strategic interests that require friendly relations with Biya’s regime. For the UK, for example, this included an off-shore natural gas deal in June 2018, and a UK-Cameroon Economic Partnership Agreement in April 2021. For France, its longstanding Françafrique policy prohibited criticism of the Cameroon government, evident in July 2022 when President Emmanuel Macron’s visit made no public reference to the Anglophone conflict. Stronger statements have come from the US Congress. House of Representatives’ Resolution 358 (July 2019) and Senate Resolution 684 (January 2021) which called for both warring parties to end all violence and pursue broad-based dialogue to resolve the conflict. However, neither congressional resolution has led to any significant action by the US government. The African Union’s lack of response contrasts with the AU-led peace process in the Tigray conflict in Ethiopia, for instance. Cameroon’s membership of the AU’s Peace and Security Council has ensured its internal conflict has not been discussed. Similarly, successful lobbying by Cameroon’s diplomats has kept the conflict off the agenda of the UN Security Council. More than forty years of autocratic and centralized rule under Paul Biya means that the Francophone-dominated state is intent on maintaining its control over Southern Cameroons, with little or no concession to Anglophone grievances, and currently unwavering from pursuing a military solution to a political problem, whatever the cost to the English-speaking population. The lack of international pressure has contributed to enabling the regime’s hard-line stance. However, the outlook of the Anglophone population would seem to have changed irrevocably. The unprecedented military occupation, repression, and violence from the Francophone-dominated state have given rise to a shift in consciousness. Although the desire for peace is profound, the political status quo is no longer tolerable. Any peace settlement will necessitate that the Anglophone population determines its future, for instance by means of an internationally-supervised referendum on constitutional arrangements, with options including federalism and independence. If the decolonization process of the Southern Cameroons in 1960 and 1961 was botched and contravened the original UN Trusteeship Agreement, then decision-making on Southern Cameroons constitutional future has to be fully democratic some 60-plus years later. –

Culled from The Elephant

Tension is high in Yaoundé following the murder of Martinez Zogo, a brilliant journalist, who while alive, had made it a duty to tell the truth on how government affairs were being run in a country wherein freedom of speech is still a foreign concept.

 Martinez Zogo might have been killed but his death is clearly that blow to the government’s liver and eye which has left it with a bloodshot eye. Many around the world still had a little faith in the Yaoundé government, but the capturing of a journalist in front of a Gendarmerie Office in Yaoundé and his cold-blood murder have come to expose how cruel and inhuman those ruling the country are.

The world is now seeing the Yaoundé government in a different light as those accused of being responsible for the journalist’s death are members of government and their business partners who pass off for the Lords of the Universe.

Sources in Yaoundé which are very close to Cameroon Intelligence Report and Cameroon Concord News have clearly pointed a finger at Amougou Belinga, the Yaoundé-based media mogul and owner of Vision 4, a TV network which also operates in other Central African countries. Mr. Belinga is very close to the country’s Minister of Justice, Laurent Esso, and the Territorial Administration Minister, Paul Atanga Nji, who do not believe in the tenets of democracy and free speech.

Mr. Zogo has, on many occasions, openly called out Amougou Belinga and his associates about their shady business dealings with the country’s Finance Minister, Louis Paul Motaze.  

On Tuesday, Cameroon’s Communication Minister, Rene Sadi, visited the family of the slain journalist and the radio station for which he was working, but his visits are unfortunately not making sense to the population which already knows how the Yaoundé government operates.

The Yaoundé government is more of a cloak-and-dagger organization whose cardinal objective is to eliminate anybody who reveals the truth about its shady and undemocratic operations or anybody who stands in its way when it comes to oppressing the Cameroonian population.

The Yaoundé government is in the business of killing journalists and members of opposition parties who dare to challenge it or expose its devilish political machinations. Samuel Wazizi, an English-speaking journalist from the Southwest region of Cameroon, was captured and taken to Yaoundé where he was professionally tortured to death. 

He was buried in an undisclosed location by workers of the Yaoundé Maximum Security Prison and the country’s government has yet to say anything meaningful about the death of a young and brilliant journalist whose objective was to help enlighten Cameroonians on the government-organized massacres in the country’s   two English-speaking regions.

Many members of the country’s opposition parties are still in jail in Yaoundé following their contest of the fake election results which gave the country’s ailing and senile president, Paul Biya, another 7-year term after a polling whose result was known even before the election took place.  

Martinez Zogo might be dead, but his death may turn out to be a millstone around the government’s neck. Tensions are high in Yaoundé and the government propaganda machine is in motion trying to diffuse the tensions. It is feared that the murdering of Mr. Zogo might be the last straw which might break the camel’s back as journalists are mobilizing to carry out certain actions which will not only draw the international community’s attention to their sorry plight but will also go a long way in giving the moribund government a very bad name. 

Mr. Zogo is Beti like most senior government officials in Cameroon and his murder is a clear testimony to the dying government’s determination to crush anybody who stands in its way. 

However, the killing of Mr. Zogo is more than just a wake-up call to the people of the South and Centre regions of Cameroon who have, for decades, erroneously thought that the government is theirs. 

They must come out of their sedative and join other Cameroonians to organize a massive revolution which should chase the murderers and rogues running the show in Yaoundé. 

Cameroon has been ruined and every Cameroonian regardless of the region has been affected by the incompetent, corruption and government-related violence which are chasing foreign investors from a country which could be the envy of the continent if well-managed.  

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai