French Cameroun is a sinking ship that will never submerge unless some very young and intelligent military officers decide to take some bold actions.  With Southern Cameroons already gone out of the one and indivisible unitary state, French Cameroun appears now like a ship that is sinking faster than many political commentators had envisaged.

There is evidence that French Cameroun is sinking entirely. Mr. Biya was caught shuffling along in France like a stalling car clearly showing signs of senile decay. For many decades, the country has been caught up in a downward political and economic spiral.

The country’s unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high and crippling taxes have taken the wind out of the sails of many small businesses. The situation in French Cameroun has been likened to that of passengers on the Titanic, the cruise ship that sank in 1912 and corruption and mismanagement is escalating ever since Prime Minister Dion Ngute took over office as the so-called head of government.

French Camerounians have been scared of pouring into the streets to confront a government that has made corruption and nepotism its hallmarks. Investors in the world have very low appetite for country’s debt. The corruption for which the Biya CPDM regime is known is making it hard for foreign money to make its way into the country’s economy.

Many EU countries are insisting on Yaoundé calling for an inclusive dialogue with the Ambazonia Interim Government that will help normalize things in both Cameroons. But Yaoundé has been indifferent to those calls. President Donald Trump’s determination and his ability to mobilize other countries, including some of Cameroons neighbors have rattled the Biya Francophone regime and its supporters.

French Cameroun regime supporters, including the Speaker of the House and the Senate President have been shouting from rooftops that there is a global conspiracy to destabilize the country. They blame this on Southern Cameroonians.

To be sure, no political understandings will ever take place under the current leadership involving French Cameroun political parties and even the Ambazonia Interim Government. Biya and his gang have no agenda to help to calm down the streets.

Since the last counterfeit presidential election, pro Maurice Kamto supporters have held nationwide rallies, expressing discontent with what they view as the government’s failure to find solutions for the country’s economic and political woes.

The Ministry of Finance is hiding figures related to French Cameroun’s national debt with more than 85% of the French Camerounians living in poverty.

In the meantime, the United States government has ended Cameroon’s preferential trade benefits citing what the Trump administration called the country’s “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”

By Kingsley Betek in Yaounde

Three years ago, Cardinal Christian Tumi revealed how a French diplomat unknowingly hinted him in Rome Italy that France was championing the process of assimilation of British Southern Cameroonians by the French speaking majority in Cameroon.

The French diplomat thought wrongfully that the only Cameroonian Roman Catholic cardinal hailed from French Cameroun. The Cardinal was addressing a small forum summoned by the French embassy in Rome using the French language when the French diplomat added that the skillful change of name from the Federal Republic of Cameroon to Republic of Cameroon is one of the hallmarks of the process of assimilation teleguided from Paris.

Many Southern Cameroons media organizations published their first bombshell story based on Cardinal Tumi’s leaked top-secret showing that the French government was directly behind the evil perpetuated on Southern Cameroonians by French Cameroun political elites including the current genocidal campaign against the Ambazonia people.

Many pro French Cameroun and CPDM Southern Cameroons comedians such as Ministers Paul Atanga Nji, Victor Mengot, Paul Tasong and Paul Elung Che dismissed the Cardinal Tumi’s revelation as fake news.  Then recently in Paris, the truth surprisingly came out from a celebrated French surrogate: His name Paul Biya.

In one of the most outrageous and dangerous statements ever from a leader sitting in a peace conference that held from the 11-13 November 2019 in Paris, French Cameroun head of state Paul Biya claimed that German Kamerun was his country that was divided into the British and French trusteeships. The 86 year old leader noted that he has tried to assimilate and dissolve the English 20% into the French 80% but failed and wants to give a special status to the English 20%, but keep them within one country. It is based on this claim to German Kamerun being his country, which the French government of President Emmanuel Macron think, that Paul Biya and French Cameroun have the duty to kill Ambazonians to force them to belong.

When asked if more revelations were in the pipeline, the Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima said on Sunday that “Even the late President Ahmadou Ahidjo will be telling these truths, with shame and regrets in his grave. Many more were coming including from the double player and tribal thug Fru Ndi and his SDF party, who not long ago dissociated from and smeared Hon Wirba for telling those truths in their terrorist chamber called national assembly.”

So the greatest story in the British Southern Cameroons political story from Cardinal Tumi revealed that France had been providing French Cameroun with virtually all political, financial and military apparatus and engineering to assimilate and marginalize the people of Southern Cameroons.

The Cardinal Tumi revelation remains the most insightful, frank and thoughtful key to understanding why France has kept the AU, EU and the UN away from the killings going on in Southern Cameroons.

The uproar caused by the Tumi story led President Biya of French Cameroun to embark on his first international journey of many dangers which saw him humiliated by business tycoon Mo Ibrahim. Nobody in Paris or Yaounde has attempted to deny any knowledge of what Cardinal Tumi said after Biya’s poor outing in Paris.

By Asu Isong in London

The report documents gross human rights abuses that have been committed during the conflict in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon since 2016. These regions are predominantly English-speaking, in a country that has a majority French-speaking population. The North West and South West regions, known as the anglophone regions, were formerly the colonial territory of Britain from the end of the First World War to the attainment of independence by Cameroon in 1960/61. The conflict involves tensions between the minority anglophone populations of Cameroon and the majority francophone populations, and has thus been termed the ‘Anglophone Crisis’. Crucially, the Report situates the recent crimes in the sociolegal and historical context of the longstanding ‘Anglophone Problem’ in Cameroon.

The recent violence in anglophone Cameroon began with strikes by anglophone lawyers and teachers in protest to perceived government-backed attempts to marginalise traditional practices within anglophone courts and schools. In response to the unrest, the Cameroonian Government was recorded to use coercion and force, which led to an escalation of tensions and demands. Since the 2016 protests, the conflict has become increasingly violent, and crimes have been committed by multiple parties. The Report provides a comprehensive analysis of alleged human rights abuses committed to date and recommends actions.

The current violence in Cameroon cannot be properly comprehended outside of the historical context in which it has arisen. The report accordingly begins with a historical overview of the Anglophone Problem, which is rooted in a land boundary implemented by British and French colonial forces. The analysis then moves on to show how the border complexities have carried over into independence from colonial rule, which is examined through the anglophone independence plebiscite. Various issues of contention have arisen in relation to this vote because the option of secession, for which many anglophone stakeholders campaigned, was denied to the people. Consequently, the reunification of the anglophone regions to Cameroon has never been fully accepted by all. Despite vociferous frustrations expressed by anglophone stakeholders since this time, these grievances have yet to be addressed by the Cameroon State and the international community.

The Report then moves on to consider evidence of human rights abuses that have been committed by the Cameroonian State forces and by separatist groups in the anglophone regions. Suspected human rights violations include extra-judicial killings, torture, destruction of property, fair trial violations, and inhumane and degrading conditions of detention. These violations breach both Cameroonian national laws and international human rights laws that bind Cameroon.

The Report also documents and analyses photographic and video-graphic media material received via the messaging service WhatsApp between August 2018 and up to October 2019, material which is logged in Appendix A. The Report further reviews reporting on the human rights abuses by international organisations, non-governmental organisations and reports by mainstream news media.

Analysis of primary and secondary human rights data leads to the research team to identify a range of pressing concerns, which include: the continued escalation of the conflict; the complexity of issues fueling the conflict, which stretch beyond a simple francophone/anglophone divide; the inadequacy of the Cameroonian government organised dialogue of September 2019; the lack of accountability for human rights abuses; the absence of remedies of human rights violations; and the wider implications of the conflict on peace in the broader Sahel Region.

The Report draws attention to the distinctive moral responsibility of the British government to respond to these concerns, which arises on at least three grounds: 1) Cameroon as a former colony of the British state; 2) The role of the British government in the creation of the Anglophone Problem; and 3) The prolonged and substantial presence of the British state in Cameroon through its developmental organisation, Voluntary Services Overseas, from pre-independence in 1958 until withdrawal in 2014.

In light of the evidence considered, the Report makes the following specific recommendations to the British government:

Support efforts to stop the violence

Support conflict resolution

Support the initiatives of peacebuilders

Ensure a return to the rule of law

Monitor detention conditions.

Precise ways that these recommendations might be achieved are suggested.

Culled from Oxford Human Rights Hub

A majority of Southern Cameroonians living abroad including those in Ground Zero are of the opinion that the Ambazonia Interim Government (IG) post the disgraced Dr Ikome Sako and Chris Anu era still has a lot of work to do in the territory now occupied by French Cameroun troops and Biya-backed armed militia. They are right.

From London to Atlanta, from Berlin to Oslo and from Pretoria to Paris, the story is the same! Ambazonians are disappointed with the management of the funds that was raised for My Trip To Buea and French Cameroun is reportedly gaining from the fabricated divisions in the Interim Government and the failure of other sub groups to join the majority following of the IG.

With the dust now settled, Southern Cameroonians can see clearly and of course the Southern Cameroons elites have themselves to blame for shying away from leadership and allowing cash strapped men and women to take over control of leadership.

Vice President Dabney Yerima and his war cabinet still have a lot of work to do if the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is to become a reality, as there is a large number of Southern Cameroons successful elites in the West, who are willing to donate money for the struggle but need to start seeing some properly coordinated actions in Ground Zero.

We of the Cameroon Concord News Group are hoping that the Vice President’s announced tour for the struggle would be successful. We understand that many objectives have been reached and the French Cameroun leader Paul Biya and his ruling CPDM crime syndicate are crumbling at catastrophic rapidity.  But not every objective!

We expect right thinking Southern Cameroonians to ignore the negative distractions coming from the disgraced Sako Ikome and Chris Anu and help Vice President Dabney Yerima and his team to manage to mitigate the situation in Ground Zero, establish good ties between the Ambazonia Interim Government and other sub groups, and reach decisive general solutions which would appease donors in Europe, the US and South Africa for Southern Cameroonians to completely regain their territorial integrity.

Our chief intelligence officers in Ground Zero are reporting that things are moving back to normal and French Cameroun agents are planning to stage elections next year in the territory. This is happening because it has been extremely difficult for Southern Cameroonians to switch off tribal loyalty and pursue the bigger picture.

Day-by-day, Sako Ikome and his acolyte Chris Anu are sending conflicting signals to the international community and Southern Cameroonians in Ground Zero all in a bid to give the impression that it is either them at the head or no one else. This is now their trade mark.

However, many successful Ambazonian elites in the diaspora are aware that Sako and Chris Anu can no longer be one entity with the Southern Cameroons quest and struggle for independence and are running away from them.

French Cameroun head of state, Paul Biya has now made it crystal clear that there was a policy put in place to assimilate the people of Southern Cameroons which have failed. Not donating to the Ambazonian struggle, not investing in the Amba Bonds Project is tantamount to accepting the so-called Special Status that will continue to keep Southern Cameroonians as slaves and second class citizens of the One and Indivisible Cameroon.

The world needs to see Ambazonians waging a war of liberation void of any distraction from failed and corrupt leaders.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

For 37 years, the French Cameroun head of state Paul Biya has demonstrated that his CPDM regime has a long-term plan for the ethnic cleansing of the people of Southern Cameroonians.

A Southern Cameroonian commenting on Mr Biya’s recent outing in France opined that during the Conference, Biya said German Kamerun was his country that was divided into the British and French trusteeships.

The 86 year old dictator furthered that he has tried to assimilate and dissolve the English 20% into the French 80% but failed and wants to give a special status to the English 20%, but keep them within one country.

It is based on this claim to German Kamerun being Biya’s country, that Southern Cameroonians think, the French Cameroun leader believes he has a duty to kill Ambazonians to force them to belong to his vision of a one and indivisible Cameroun.

Southern Cameroons political analyst Denis Atemnkeng observed that Biya’s take on the crisis in Ambazonia is the most outrageous and dangerous statement from a man sitting in a peace conference.

A cream of Ambazonia political elites in the United Kingdom observed on Wednesday in London that the French Cameroun regime backed by France is moving toward a greater plan which is a kind of scorch-the-earth policy.

Troops loyal to the Biya regime in Yaoundé have burnt down more than 280 Southern Cameroons villages with Biya claiming that the soldiers were fighting Ambazonia separatists operating in those areas.

An estimated 20,000 Southern Cameroonians have been killed, over 120,000 are seeking refuge in Nigeria and, over 1million people are internally displaced or living in bushes and over 3,000 persons incarcerated in prisons and detention facilities. It is also reported that over 4.5. Million people are at risk of famine. This is indeed a recipe for endless war and the ethnic cleansing of Southern Cameroons.

Biya’s special status plan for Ambazonians is pushing the two Cameroons towards endless crisis; and if true, the least the international community can do is to respond to this by saying no and support the Ambazonia nation.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The Second Paris Peace Forum, 11-13 November 2019, has enabled us to begin to understand Paul Biya’s reasons for his genocidal war against the people of Ambazonia. During the Conference, he claimed that German Kamerun was his country that was divided into the British and French trusteeships! He has tried to assimilate and dissolve the English 20% into the French 80% but failed and wants to give a special status to the English 20%, but keep them within one country. It is based on this claim to German Kamerun being his country, we think, that he believes that he has a duty to kill Ambazonians to force them to belong!

This is the most outrageous and dangerous statement from a man sitting in a peace conference. We now partially know the absurd reasons for his genocide, from his own mouth. Biya’s idea is a rejection of the fundamental principle of the intangibility of frontiers inherited at independence, a principle which underlies the stability of all boundaries in the world. Here is Paul Biya rejecting international law while sitting in a peace conference! These statements go against Cameroun’s voluntary treaty commitments in international law, the UN Charter and the African Union Constitutive Act.

The world now has an obligation to stop this monster; a monster preaching the absurdity that countries need not respect the boundaries they inherited but cross them to occupy weaker neigbhours! These are ideas that are capable of destabilizing the whole world, because every country inherited its boundaries and rejecting those boundaries would create havoc. The OAU and the African Union have repeatedly stressed the importance for all African countries to conform strictly to their inherited boundaries.

Biya’s idea is the same idea that Nazi German pursued! This is a man trying to revive the Roman Empire under one nation; to revive the Ottoman Empire under one nation or German Kamerun under one nation! This monstrous idea goes against the very principles that define the territory over which each country can exercise jurisdiction. It is nothing short of the revival of imperialism in all its forms. It is a return to the dark ages of unilateral boundary assertions!
German Kamerun did not belong to La Republique du Cameroun (LRC); it belonged to the Germans. International title to that territory belonged to the Germans by treaty!

La Republique du Cameroun did not exist during the period of German Kamerun! La Republique du Cameroun did not inherit the territory of German Kamerun; it inherited the territory of French Cameroons. The boundaries of German Kamerun were carved out by the same powers that carved out the boundaries of La Republiqaue du Cameroun and those of the British Southern Cameroons.

Biya cannot pretend to recognise the boundaries of German Kamerun and reject those of La Republique du Cameroun. German Kamerun was not limited to British Southern Cameroons and La Republique du Cameroun. Why is Biya not also laying claim to those parts of German Kamerun that are now in Nigeria, Central African Republic, Chad and so on? He clings convulsively only to the British Southern Cameroons! If Biya were not merely faking reason, he would claim Northern Cameroons that is now in Nigeria, would lay claim to parts of Chad and Central African Republique! But he is fully conscious of his deceit and fraud.

La Republique du Cameroun has a date of birth or date of independence, which is 1 January 1960. Cameroun’s treaty obligations confine Cameroun’s sovereignty to the territory she inherited at her independence. Cameroun cannot lay claim to any territory outside of the territory she inherited on her date of birth. Before La Republique du Cameroun was born on 1 January 1960, German Kamerun had died and been dismembered 48 years back, in the Versailles Treaty! La Republique du Cameroun was one of the products of the dismemberment of German Kamerun, and so too was British Southern Cameroons.

Under the League of Nations and the United Nations, British Southern Cameroons was treated as a separate and distinct territory from French Cameroon. It had its own government; international boundaries; was offered the choice to achieve independence in association with either Nigeria or La Republique du Cameroun. How could what LRC claims to be a part of its country have such a choice; that is, the option not even to associate with LRC?

The boundaries of LRC were inherited, not created! The country from which Cameroun inherited those boundaries, France, never contested the boundaries of neighbouring British Southern Cameroons. Just as La Republique du Cameroun inherited its own boundaries from a dismembered German Kamerun, so too were British Southern Cameroons boundaries inherited from the dismembered German Kamerun.

The Roman Empire is today scores of countries! The boundaries of German Kamerun were not more genuine or authentic than the boundaries of British Southern Cameroons or those of La Republique du Cameroun. They are all based on international treaties! The only thing that is not based on any treaty, any agreement or any notion of law, is Biya’s claim to the Southern Cameroons’ territory!

If LRC claims to have inherited German Kamerun, what are the instruments of that inheritance? Under what law did that inheritance take place? And when did that inheritance begin?

Was there a German title to any territory called “German Kamerun” on the date of LRC’s independence? German Kamerun ceased to exist and was completely dismembered through the Versailles Treaty, more than 48 years before LRC was born. How could LRC inherit a title that did not exist at the time it came into being?

When LRC joined the United Nations on 20 Sept. 1960, did it not bind itself by the rules governing territoriality? Is LRC bound by the principle of intangibility of frontiers inherited from colonisation? Is LRC bound by the African Union Constitutive Act which she has voluntarily ratified, in particular, Article 4(b) which confines LRC’s sovereignty to the territory she inherited at independence? Under what law would LRC defend its boundaries if encroached upon by a neighbouring country?

It is time for the international community to face these monstrosities! This is not simply a Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia problem, but a great threat to the stability of the world. If countries reject the boundaries they inherited, there is no other principle to safeguard peace in the world! Here is a President who, before the world, rejects the very rules that they themselves have ratified in various treaties and re-affirmed over and over again. He is blinded by his imperialism and self-aggrandizement to stir up conflicts, kill, commit atrocities and yet can put the word “peace” in his mouth. He is counting only on the silence and indifference of the on-looking world. The world can no longer be silent and indifferent to Biya. We call on the world to unite against these evils and put an end to Biya’s war and atrocities in the British Southern Cameroons.

By Denis Atemnkeng

On a plantation in Tiko, in south-west Cameroon, Adeline rubs the gap in her right hand where her index finger used to be. She arrived in the town in July 2018, having fled Ekona, 15 miles away. In that village soldiers terrified civilians by burning houses and shooting indiscriminately as part of a crackdown on militias that want the primarily English-speaking areas of Cameroon to secede from the predominantly Francophone country. Adeline hoped Tiko would prove a sanctuary.

It was anything but. A year ago Adeline was tending to an oil palm in the plantation when about 20 members of a separatist militia grabbed her, stuffed leaves in her mouth and tied her to the tree. They whipped her and cut off her finger. Her apparent crime: working for the Cameroon Development Corporation (cdc), a state-run company. “As I close my eyes I see the boys coming to get me,” says Adeline. “The trauma is still there.”

Cameroon was until recently a stable country in a fragile region. Today it is battling the jihadists of Boko Haram in the north, dealing with an influx of refugees from the Central African Republic in the east—and, most devastatingly, the “Anglophone crisis” in the west. Adeline’s is one of hundreds of thousands of lives ravaged by this conflict over the past three years. Paul Biya, the authoritarian who has ruled Cameroon for 37 years, had hoped that the crisis would prove short-lived. So did foreign powers, which have been largely quiet. Yet the conflict shows no sign of ending.

The origins of the turmoil began a century ago. After the first world war Britain and France took over different parts of the German colony of Cameroon. Upon independence in 1960 and 1961 the larger French territory joined the southern part of the British one to make modern Cameroon.

It quickly became one of the most centralised countries in Africa. Today just 1% of public spending is devolved to local governments, versus more than 50% in Nigeria. The country is officially bilingual, but the roughly 20% of people (4-5m in a country of 24m) who mainly speak English claim decades of marginalisation. Promises of devolution have been broken.

In late 2016 frustrations boiled over. First lawyers went on strike against the erosion of the English-style common-law system. Teachers soon joined the protests, citing, among other things, the appointment of French-only speakers in classrooms. Protest groups organised “ghost towns”: weekly shutdowns of towns such as Buea, the capital of the south-west region, that continue to this day.

The government hit back hard. The internet was shut off for four months. Groups organising the protests were banned and their leaders arrested. In October 2017 separatists responded by proclaiming the independent state of “Ambazonia”, named after Ambas bay in the south-west.

This led to a massive, violent escalation. International ngos estimate that 3,000 people have been killed during the crisis. But aid workers think the true figure is several times higher. Both separatist militias and security forces have committed atrocities, but the Cameroonian army is believed to be behind most of the bloodshed.

Security forces have burned more than 220 villages in the Anglophone region, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (chrda) in Buea. One was Ekona. Formerly the site of a bustling market, today it is an eerie place, where the walls of charred houses are pockmarked with bullets.

“It’s like ‘Full Metal Jacket’,” says one aid worker, in reference to trigger-happy soldiers in a film about the Vietnam war. Ayuk, who lived in Ekona for four years before fleeing in April, says he can recall hundreds of incidents where soldiers fired at villagers. In one case his neighbour and two others were shot in their car on their way back from sowing plantain. “We had to bury him quickly,” Ayuk recalls, in case the army shot them as well.

Tah Mai, a journalist, lost two brothers in separate incidents involving the army. In November last year his brother and his wife were shot outside their house in Buea. A few months later his other brother was shot in the back in his home village in the north-west. “Mine is just like the many stories that you haven’t heard,” says Mr Tah.

No refuge

At least 500,000 people have been forced to leave their homes. Tens of thousands have fled to Nigeria, but most are in the bush, making it hard to count them. Even in the forests displaced people can be found by the army. Frida, who was also forced to flee Ekona, describes how she watched soldiers enter her bush camp. They shot two women accused of cooking for separatist fighters. Then they killed the informer who brought them.

Mass displacement is having grave effects on public health. There are outbreaks of monkey pox and measles, partly because of plummeting vaccination rates. Before the crisis about 70% of women gave birth with medical help in the north-west region. Today 3% do so. The result is more women and babies dying in the course of childbirth. Cecilia Mah, the matron at Mount Mary Hospital in Buea, says that it is hard to run a hospital when soldiers threaten ambulance drivers and seize suspected separatists convalescing in the wards.

The state is, however, not solely responsible for the chaos; separatists share some of the blame. Most of the separatist political groups, such as the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, and the Ambazonia Governing Council, are based abroad. Their leaders and donors are in America, Germany, Norway and other rich countries. In Cameroon their armed wings control swathes of rural territory. This can lead to surreal moments for aid workers. They may, for example, have to negotiate access to villages not with commanders on the ground but with middle-aged men sitting in living rooms in Washington, Oslo or Dortmund.

Many separatist attacks are aimed at the security forces. But some target Anglophone civilians. “If you disagree with them, they kill you,” says Cardinal Christian Tumi, the archbishop of Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital. He says that a traditional chief from his home village was “slaughtered like a goat” for allegedly collaborating with the authorities. Like Adeline, many people employed by cdc have been maimed.

Brutality by separatists is likely to increase as armed groups in the country seek their own sources of funding to break away from the patronage of leaders in the diaspora. So-called Amba boys are turning to kidnapping and extortion for funds; other groups are increasingly criminal entities, not political ones. In March the football team of the University of Buea was taken hostage; many parents paid ransoms. Most of the aid groups working on the ground have had workers kidnapped. “I fear we are creating a generation of warlords,” says Felix Agbor Balla, the president of chrda.

While bandits raise cash by extorting, the economy is collapsing. The Anglophone regions contribute about 20% of the country’s gdp. cdc was the second-largest employer in Cameroon, after the state. But most of its rubber and palm-oil plantations, and all of its banana ones, have shut because of attacks. Most workers have lost their jobs. Revenue is 90% lower than before the crisis; cdc has not sold a banana since August 2018. Its leaders get death threats from separatists. Asked how he copes, Franklin Ngoni Njie, cdc’s general manager, says he follows a simple rule: “I pray more. I go out less.”

And yet an even bigger social and economic crisis is looming. Almost 90% of children in the Anglophone regions have not gone to school for three years, a result of forced displacements and the enforcement of a boycott called by separatists who see schools as arms of the state. (According to this twisted logic a six-year-old keen to learn subtraction is a collaborator.) At home-schools set up by brave educators children arrive with homework hidden in their trouser legs, in case they are spotted by Amba boys.

The sabotage of education is one reason why many Anglophones are growing angry at the separatists. Ernest Molua notes that people used to refer to them as “our boys”; now they say “those boys”. The professor at the University of Buea believes that most Anglophones want more autonomy, ideally within a federal Cameroon, not independence. “There remains a strong sense of ‘Cameroonianess’,” he says, emphasising that Anglophones’ grievances are with the government, not their French-speaking compatriots. But Mr Molua worries that “the space for moderates is shrinking”.

Loaded language

Signs of compromise are scant. Separatist groups do not even have a common position among themselves, despite efforts by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue, a Swiss ngo, to help them find one. For his part, President Biya in September raised hopes by announcing a “National Dialogue”. Yet it was a sham. The meeting was not just about the crisis; it gave Cameroonian leaders from all regions a chance to air complaints (and collect per-diems). Many important Anglophones were either not invited or left in prison. “It was not a sincere effort,” says Alice Nkom, a lawyer.

Mr Biya has been aided by a muted international response. Donors have provided just 18% of the funding requested by the un for humanitarian operations in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions for 2019. (The only countries for which the un receives lower shares of support are Venezuela and North Korea.) Diplomatic pressure has been meagre, too. Nigeria wants Mr Biya’s help with Boko Haram and does not want to encourage the hopes of Biafran separatists in its own south-east. China is focused on its economic interests. British diplomats have offered gentle criticism in private but do not want to slam Mr Biya in public. Most importantly of all, France has done little but urge cosmetic concessions.

The only influential country willing to speak out is America. On October 31st it removed Cameroon from a list of African countries that get preferential trade terms, citing “gross violations” of human rights by the government. American diplomats hope the move will send a signal to Mr Biya that he needs to find a political solution.

For now there is only a bloody equilibrium. Separatist militias cannot take the towns; the army cannot take the bush. In the middle are people like Adeline. She says that she feels trapped between the two warring parties. And without a job any more she has no means to escape. So she waits, too weary to talk much about politics. “I just need my peace,” she says. 

Culled from The Economist

For 37 years one man has ruled Cameroon, a staggeringly corrupt, oil-rich state in central Africa. President Paul Biya is an old-fashioned autocrat. When democracy swept across Africa after the cold war ended, he called it a “distasteful passing fetish”. Then he realised he would attract less foreign criticism if he quietly intimidated opponents and rigged elections instead of banning them. He has done so ever since, and kept on good terms with Western powers by posing as a champion of stability in a fissile region. His troops, trained and equipped by France, Israel and America, battle the jihadists of Boko Haram and Islamic State around Lake Chad. They also regularly don blue helmets to keep peace in countries such as the Central African Republic. Yet Mr Biya cannot keep the peace at home.

Instead, a country that was once seen as an exporter of security is now being wrenched apart. A secession struggle rages in its English-speaking regions. Government forces are burning villages, shooting young men and raping women. The conflict has killed thousands and forced more than 500,000 people from their homes.

The strife began as a series of peaceful protests in 2016. Anglophones were aggrieved at their marginalisation in a country dominated by French-speakers. Cameroon is too rigidly centralised to satisfy minorities: only 1% of government spending is locally controlled, compared with more than 50% in neighbouring Nigeria. Strikes and demonstrations over the erosion of English-style common law and the dominance of Francophone officials have since mutated into what looks like a civil war. It could get much worse, as chaos grows, armed separatists kill and soldiers inflict horrors on civilians.

The outside world has barely noticed this disaster unfolding. Appeals for emergency assistance have attracted less than one-fifth of their target: less than half the people who have lost their homes have been given the two pieces of plastic and rope that make up the un’s shelter kit. Cameroon’s main backers have looked away, hoping Mr Biya’s government would quell the rebellion and get back to fighting jihadists in the Sahel. Instead of corralling the warring parties, the African Union and un Security Council have stood aside, rousing themselves only to “welcome” and “praise” Mr Biya’s “national dialogue”, a sham to which key separatist leaders were not invited.

This is a disgrace. The conflict, although bloody, is not intractable. Most people in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions are probably moderate and would be happy with some more autonomy and an end to the fighting. They could find common ground with those on the government side who might be willing to give a bit more power to the regions.

The longer the fighting persists, the harder it will be to resolve. With the army and separatists in stalemate on the battlefield, peace can come only through talks. For those to happen, both sides need to build trust. The separatists should start by lifting the ruinous ban they enforce on children going to government schools in the areas they control, which threatens to create a lost generation of illiterates. Rebel leaders abroad should tone down their inflammatory talk of secession. The government should release political prisoners and prosecute soldiers responsible for abuses.

Outsiders should press Mr Biya to make peace. President Donald Trump has rightly scaled back military assistance because of atrocities committed by the army. He has also kicked Cameroon out of a programme which grants duty-free access to the us market to African countries that respect human rights. European governments should also turn the screws, especially France, Mr Biya’s closest ally. The ageing strongman once said that only one-party rule could hold Cameroon together. In fact, his overcentralised autocracy has created pressures that could blow it apart. Only dialogue and devolution can save it.

Culled from The Economist

Symbolic half-measures like revoking preferential trade status are not enough to force the repressive regime of Paul Biya to change. Canceling IMF loans and military aid would show that the White House is serious.

On Oct. 31, the Trump administration notified Congress that Cameroon would lose its eligibility status under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2020. “Cameroon has failed to address concerns regarding persistent human rights violations being committed by Cameroonian security forces,” the White House statement explained, in what is the toughest executive branch language issued about escalating crises in Cameroon, building on a congressional resolution agreed to in July.

The announcement quickly caught fire on social media, a sign of hope for Cameroonians and others who have long called for more external pressure on the country’s octogenarian president, Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982.

But taking away Cameroon’s AGOA privileges—primarily duty-free access for designated products exported from eligible African countries to the United States, including textiles—will not cause much pain. It will not compel Biya to undertake much-needed political and economic reforms to solve the crisis in the country’s Anglophone region and the related violence driving a humanitarian catastrophe, the deep-rooted governance crisis that includes mass arrests of political opponents and journalists, and an economic meltdown that has been partly concealed by oil-related revenue and ongoing bailouts by international lenders.

The humanitarian crisis gets worse by the month: The Norwegian Refugee Council calls Cameroon the world’s most neglected displacement crisis, while UNICEF reports there has been a “15-fold increase” in the humanitarian emergency there since 2017. The real test of the Trump administration’s resolve on Cameroon will be whether it acts to curtail all military assistance, imposes targeted travel and economic sanctions on individuals, and uses its considerable leverage to punish the Biya regime through international financial institutions and at the United Nations.

Members of the Biya government know that removal from AGOA won’t do much damage. Indeed, CNN recently interviewed an official at Cameroon’s Ministry of External Relations, who pointed out that the country barely benefits from AGOA and that the Trump administration is only trying to punish Cameroon because of its growing ties to China. Indeed, Washington’s move could push Cameroon and other African states further into the waiting arms of China and Russia—countries that do not ask questions about human rights.

This raises the question of why the Trump administration, which is preoccupied with much bigger domestic and foreign-policy challenges, decided to take a high-profile but symbolic stance now and if it is truly seeking to take a tougher line against Biya.

Unlike most reciprocal trade agreements or international financial institution regulations, AGOA includes economic, political, and human rights criteria that make it easier for the U.S. government to find justifications for change in status. These criteria include progress toward establishing “the rule of law, political pluralism, and the right to due process, a fair trial, and equal protection under the law” and that a country “does not engage in gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.” Other countries whose beneficiary status has been withdrawn include Burundi (since 2016), Mauritania (since 2019), and South Sudan (since 2014).

Unlike many other African countries, Cameroon never cultivated the AGOA preferences to drive private sector development, investment, employment, and exports. Today, the United States just squeaks into the list of its top 10 trading partners. Total AGOA-eligible exports reached $63 million in 2018, mostly crude oil, and had already dropped to just $8 million in the first six months of 2019.

Shortly after AGOA was signed into law in 2000, construction started on the Chad-Cameroon pipeline, part of a massive project spearheaded by ExxonMobil to export crude oil from southern Chad. Today, Cameroon’s government receives a $1.32 transit fee for every barrel that flows from Chad through to the export port of Kribi. It also benefits directly from its own modest offshore oil and natural gas production, and further reserves await development.

The nature of governance in Cameroon has always relied on rentier (or gatekeeper) state opportunities—including tropical agriculture, timber, oil, and, more recently, soccer stadiums— over establishing the complex foundations for internationally competitive, value-added industry. There is no desire by the regime to break from its resource curse. It is not a surprise, then, that Cameroon sits near the bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index or the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings, and it does not come close to passing the governance thresholds of the Millennium Challenge Corporation.

Culled from Foreign Policy

For almost four decades, members of Cameroon’s ruling CPDM party also known as the crime syndicate, have always used November 6, the day the country’s president, Paul Biya, also known as the monarch, came to power to celebrate.  This was the day many Cameroonians thought their destiny would change for the better.

As the country’s first president, Amadou Ahidjo, announced that he was leaving power, many Cameroonians thought that the young, handsome and self-effacing Biya would steer the country to the land of promise. He had studied in France on taxpayers’ money and having worked with Mr. Ahidjo for a long time, Cameroonians thought he would blend his Western education, experience with the huge financial reserves the country had at the time he came to power to launch Cameroon into a new political and economic era.

The goodwill towards Mr. Biya was unimaginable. Cameroonians could only swear to him. Ahidjo had not had a good education, but he had laid down a solid foundation for Cameroon’s economic and social prosperity. Under Ahidjo, the country was known for its five-year development plans which brought about fast and harmonized development in the country.

Cameroon was, indeed, a development model for many French-speaking African countries and Biya’s accession to power in 1982 triggered a wave of optimism in the country. Young Cameroonians were hopeful, especially as the country and the economy bequeathed to Mr. Biya were enjoying a boom. Unemployment was low, university graduates could easily find work and the private sector was delivering on its promise. It was, indeed, the pillar of the country’s rapidly-evolving economy.

But it did not take long for the country’s economic and political fortunes to start changing, unfortunately for the worse. Biya had taken over power promising to collaborate with his predecessor, but a few months from the day he took over, he started backpedaling from his promise. Amadou Ahidjo, the country’s pioneer president and the man who whole-heartedly delivered a beautiful gift to Mr. Biya on November 6, 1982, was slowly being transformed into a devil incarnate by Mr. Biya’s closest collaborators. The county’s first president quickly realized that he had manufactured his own “Frankenstein monster” who will later send him into exile to Senegal where he lived for the rest of his life.

The disagreement between the two men resulted in several coup attempts, and this led to the killing of many of the first president’s collaborators. The unity for which Cameroon was known got shattered when the two men started drifting apart. Cameroon, the once beacon of peace, had just started its journey to the world of tribal politics.

From 1984, when Biya survived the April 6 coup, he clearly demonstrated that he would transform governance in Cameroon from a regional representative system into a tribe-based system wherein only people from his ethnic group would be appointed to key positions.

The implementation of that decision started when key positions such as the ministries of finance, armed forces, territorial administration and gendarmerie were given to key Biya allies and proteges, most of whom were from his ethic group. Most Cameroonians who had sympathized with Mr. Biya thought the decision was only a temporary measure to clean up the mess left behind by the failed coup. Little did they know they would have to put up with such a corrupt system for decades.

Even the military had to undergo a rapid transformation. Key positions in the military were granted to the Betis, people from Biya’s ethnic group that constitutes less than 10% of Cameroon’s population. Today, the Center and South regions which are predominantly Beti, account for more than 70% of the generals in the country’s military.

Regarding, state-owned corporations, there are more Betis as head of corporations. Of the 34 state-owned corporations in Cameroon, 18 are headed by Betis. Some of these corporations are headed by people who are either related to the president or his wife and many of them do not have the right experience to run such corporations. Many state-owned corporations have been run aground due to corruption and incompetence, leaving thousands of Cameroonians jobless and homeless. Many have died as a result of the hardship that follows the collapse of those corporations.

Many years after having run the country as a single party state, Mr. Biya in 1991 finally yielded to pressure from the population for multiparty politics in Cameroon. However, this did not come without bloodshed. Thousands of Cameroonians clamoring for multiparty politics in the early 1990s were slaughtered by Mr. Biya’s forces. University students in the country’s lone university at the time were killed and others arrested and sent to the Yaounde maximum security prison.

Despite the brutality, the people stood their ground and in 1992, the country’s first presidential elections were held with the opposition leader, John Fru Ndi, defeating Mr. Biya. However, Mr. Biya refused to leave office. He ordered a state of emergency in the entire northwest region, Mr. Fru Ndi’s stronghold. The impact of the crimes of this period are still lingering, as many young Cameroonians still bear the scars. Their amputated arms speak to the brutality with which Mr. Biya’s forces dealt with those they suspected of challenging his authority and victory.

Since 1992, Mr. Biya has won every election, using the same tactic. In 2018, he used the same tactic on Professor Maurice Kamto who was the clear winner of the presidential election. On October 22, 2018, Cameroon’s Constitutional Council validated Paul Biya’s re-election, with 71.28 percent of the votes. The Council’s decision was immediately contested by one of Mr. Biya’s rivals, Professor Maurice Kamto, who claimed the results had been altered.

In early November, dozens of pro-Kamto protesters were arrested in Bafoussam, Western region. Biya was sworn-in for a seventh term as president on November 6. He immediately imprisoned Professor Kamto and his aides for eight months, a strategy Biya’s government has used over the decades to break down his opponents mentally and psychologically.

 Today, in Cameroon, it is normal for people to disappear, especially those who are very critical of the government’s high-handedness. The country’s maximum-security prison is full of opponents of the regime and this is giving the country a very bad name. These violations have been condemned by Human Rights Watch in its latest report on the country.  The report points to massive and brutal human rights abuses by the country’s security forces.

 “Cameroon, a country previously known for its stability, faced violence and serious human rights abuses in 2018. The country endured abusive military operations against a secessionist insurgency in two Anglophone regions, attacks by the Islamic militant group, Boko Haram, in the Far North, and a worsening humanitarian crisis. President Paul Biya, 85, won a seventh seven-year term on October 7,” the report says.

‘In the South West and North West, government security forces have committed extrajudicial executions, burned property, carried out arbitrary arrests, and tortured detainees. A Human Rights Watch report documented a range of abuses by both sides in the Anglophone regions, including arson attacks on homes and schools. According to the International Crisis Group, government forces and armed separatists killed over 420 civilians in the regions since the crisis escalated in 2017,” report underscores.

“The humanitarian consequences of the Boko Haram attacks and separatist insurgency are of growing concern. As of November, the United Nations estimated that more than 244,000 civilians were displaced in the Far North and 437,500 in the Anglophone North West and South West regions. About 32,600 Cameroonians found refuge in Nigeria. Also, Cameroon has continued to forcibly return Nigerian asylum seekers, fleeing Boko Haram attacks in northeastern Nigeria,” the reports adds.   

But Mr. Biya’s worst legacy is the war in the two English-speaking regions of the country. The war which started as a protest by teachers and lawyers against marginalization quickly developed into a full-blown conflict when government forces acted in their usual and traditional manner by cracking down on lawyers, teachers and students of the University of Buea.

For three years now, Cameroon has been the theater of a huge armed conflict that has resulted in the death of some 3,000 civilians, with more than a million Cameroonians escaping to neighboring countries, the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom while some 450,000 have been internally displaced. More than 200 villages have been torched by government troops and the fighting is still playing out in a manner that is far from being fair.   

Government forces have always responded to the growing separatist insurgency in the English-speaking regions by carrying out abusive security operations against communities suspected of supporting secessionist groups. Security forces have committed extra-judicial executions, used excessive force against civilians, tortured and abused suspected separatists and other detainees, and burned homes and other property in scores of villages.

Government atrocities have been documented by many human rights groups. Some will never be reported as the dead are quickly buried in locations that will be hard to find. Attacks documented by Human Rights Watch indicate that security forces have shot and killed many civilians, including at least seven people whom witnesses said had intellectual, psychosocial or physical disabilities who did not flee because they were unable or refused to. At least four older have been burned alive, after security forces set their homes on fire.

Human Rights Watch also documented three cases where security forces detained people suspected of supporting the secessionist cause, and then tortured and killed them in detention. In a fourth case, Human Rights Watch analyzed evidence of torture filmed by perpetrators, who appear to be gendarmes. On September 24 and 27, a total of nine men were allegedly executed by security forces in the town of Buea, according to videos reviewed by Human Rights Watch and a report by the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, a local non-governmental organization (NGO).

As Biya celebrates his 37^th year in power today, millions of Cameroonians are mourning and cursing the hour to which they were born to such a destiny. Unemployment, diseases and corruption have blighted many lives in Cameroon. The country’s hospitals have been reduced to consultation clinics and the total lack of infrastructure in the country has made life very challenging for Cameroonians. Death and destruction seem to be constants in Cameroon.

While Cameroonians languish in poverty, Mr. Biya and his children have simply transformed the state treasury into their personal ATM. Mr. Biya has the nasty habit of spending more time in Switzerland where he always seeks quality healthcare, a service he cannot provide to all Cameroonians and these services are costing the poor country a pretty penny.

While he is wasting taxpayers’ money in Switzerland, his daughter, Brenda Biya Eyenga, is squandering what little money her father leaves in state coffers when he is heading to Switzerland. Last week she was spotted in an expensive hotel in Dubai where she was spending her holidays. Experts put her vacation expenses at USD 75,000 for less than two weeks.

Mr. Biya’s scorecard for the 37 years he has been in power speaks to a dismal economic and political performance. A country that was designed to serve as a model to others has today become a symbol of mockery because of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and tribalism. It is common for Mr. Biya to use ex-convicts as ministers just to prove that he can do and undo. Any opposition to his rule always meets with an iron fist and this has caused many talented Cameroonians to leave the country.

By Kingsley Betek in Yaounde