The leader of the Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards popularly known as General No Pity  has vowed to continue the fight against Cameroon government army soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons until the international community delivers on promises of self-determination for the Ambazonian people.

The Ambazonian commander made the remarks in an audio message to all Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups on Monday, calling for unity.

“Go tell it to those French Cameroun leaders that there will be neither peace, nor stability, nor a just and lasting solution to the Southern Cameroons conflict unless the UN Security Council assumes its responsibilities in responding frankly and firmly to the aggressive and expansionist practices of the French Cameroun occupying forces,” General No Pity said.

He further called on the UN to pay attention to resolving the long-running dispute between the two Cameroons, warning that the conflict could escalate and destabilize parts of French Cameroun.

“The war is already raging on in Ground Zero. And its dangers and repercussions cannot be avoided if the United Nations continues to ignore the crisis instead of solving it,” the top Amba fighter added.

This came after Ambazonia Interim Government officials told Cameroon Intelligence Report that at least 12 Cameroon government soldiers had died from attacks launched on Cameroon government army convoy along the Bamenda-Wum road.

General No Pity also accused Southern Cameroonians doing business with French Cameroun companies such as Brasseries du Cameroun of supporting an illegal, aggressive and expansionist operation, and the theft and looting of the wealth of an oppressed and defenseless people.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

Dabney Yerima, the Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, has stressed that all British Southern Cameroonians are united to defend their homeland.

Yerima held a phone call with one of the commanders of Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards (ARG) in Manyu Sunday to condemn the kidnapping of two women who were later released.

Vice President Dabney Yerima said kidnapping is not part of the Anglo-Saxon tradition expressing his solidarity with the Manyu Liberation Council and Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups in Akwaya sub constituency.

“The people of Southern Cameroons as a whole stand behind our Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards in defending the homeland and its Anglo-Saxon identity” Yerima said.

The Southern Cameroons exiled leader added that the Interim Government had asked other Ambazonia restoration groups to make Francophone army soldiers their target and not Ambazonian citizens.

By Chi Prudence Asong

There have been fresh calls for the Vatican to mediate the increasingly violent conflict between Cameroon’s Anglophone minority and the central government. Recent events have prompted civil society to appeal for the Church to offer its services as an impartial and respected intermediary.

Past weeks have seen an upsurge in violence between armed separatist groups and the Cameroon military. Anglophone forces fighting for an independent country are using improvised explosive devices against the Cameroon armed forces to devastating effect. Human rights groups have warned that the military is targeting villages in response, with unarmed civilians bearing the brunt of the suffering. International observers, such as the Global Campaign for Peace & Justice in Cameroon, urge that military force will not address grievances and a mediation table is necessary.

In 2019, the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue in Switzerland offered to hold peace talks between the armed sides. Although some pro-independence groups have signed on, the Cameroon government has not attended. More than two years later, Cameroonians and the world are waiting.

Cameroon-watchers suggest the time is now right for another credible institution to bolster efforts to bring all sides, including civil society, to the negotiating table.

Lord Alton commented: “I have followed events in the troubled Anglophone regions of Cameroon since violence broke out, and local contacts believe that circumstances are now changing. This is the moment for the Vatican to once more offer itself as an impartial mediator, trying to get all parties to the conflict to participate in peace talks. There is a military stalemate between separatist forces and the Cameroon government, with unarmed civilians suffering intolerable conditions, caught in the middle. The Church’s renewed participation could be a game changer – bringing about a ceasefire and offering much needed hope to Cameroon’s Anglophone citizens.”

The calls from civil society have been endorsed by Dr Chris Fomunyoh from the National Democratic Institute in Washington DC. “The Vatican has moral authority worldwide, including with government leaders in Cameroon. How can it afford not to leverage those relationships to bring peace and social justice to a bleeding nation where 20 percent of its population constituted of the minority Anglophones face an existential threat now and for future generations?”

Dr Fomunyoh continued, “I think of the very instrumental role played by the Rome-based and Vatican-connected Community of Saint Edigio in bringing peace to then war-torn Mozambique in the early 1990s, and wonder why such an effort cannot be undertaken for Cameroon where thousands have been killed, close to 400 villages burnt, and over one million dislocated either as internally displaced persons of refugees.”

Background to the Anglophone Crisis

What began in 2016 as peaceful protests against the imposition of the French language and institutions on the minority Anglophone population, degenerated into a violent struggle between separatist fighters calling for an independent country called ‘Ambazonia’ and the Cameroon government and military of President Paul Biya, in power since 1982. Thousands of civilians have been killed, hundreds of villages have been burned, the majority of schools have been closed for four years, and nearly one million people (out of a population of six million) are or were internally displaced, with seventy thousand more thought to be in exile in neighbouring Nigeria while others are scattered as refugees elsewhere.

In January 2021, the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, visited Cameroon, urging President Biya to enter peace talks to no avail. However, with changing circumstances on the ground, the moment is ripe for the Vatican’s reengagement. Catholic priests and other religious figures have been targeted during the conflict. As a key moral authority, the Church should be central to efforts to find a peaceful way forward using the negotiating table.

Source: Independent Catholic News

Troops loyal to the Biya Francophone regime in Yaounde and Ambazonia Restoration Forces exchanged gunfire on Sunday in the Manyu Divisional capital Mamfe, a spokesman for the Francophone Divisional Officer said.

The situation remained confused later Sunday with sporadic gunfire heard and Ambazonia Restoration Forces blocking all major roads from the Mamfe Cathedral  Roundabout to  the junction around the late George Leke Fonge’s residence toward government primary school Egbekaw.

Several army soldiers deployed to Mamfe rushed back into their barracks justifying claims that President Biya’s legal authority is in doubt in Southern Cameroons.

Later Sunday, gunfire was also heard in the Satom area although the source was unclear. A source at the SDO’s office contacted by Cameroon Concord News said he was deeply saddened by the tragedy that has disrupted security in Mamfe.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files

At least two militants of the terror group Boko Haram and a civilian have been killed in raids in Cameroon’s Far North region, according to local and security sources.

Government forces ambushed and killed two militants of the group on Saturday in Mozogo, a locality of the region, a military official who opted for anonymity told Xinhua.

The militants had earlier raided the locality Friday night killing a civilian and destroying property, according to witnesses.

The raids came barely three days after the militants attacked Assighassia village of the region killing seven civilians.

Local media reported that the militants launched the attacks after troops targeted their strategic positions in a coordinated offensive killing several terrorists.

Source: Xinhuanet

The Chairman and Editor-In-Chief of the Cameroon Concord News Group says Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Ground Zero now headed by General No Pity reserve the right to explore all  means to protect the people of Southern Cameroons and the Ambazonian homeland, and to counter the so-called Cameroon government army that Biya and his gang have deployed to Southern Cameroons.

“General No Pity and all Self Defense Forces have the right to use all means that would yield positive results as Southern Cameroonians strive for freedom, independence and liberation. Our people should not accept diktats that advance French Cameroun and by extrapolation France’s economic and political interest in Southern Cameroons and undermines British Southern Cameroons independence and freedom and the struggle against occupation,” Cameroon Concord News Group Chairman Soter Agbaw-Ebai said at a gathering of Southern Cameroonians in London on Wednesday.

He added, “Southern Cameroonians should also not allow any French Cameroun hostilities against our people directed by the Beti and Ewondo ethnic groups to go unpunished. Southern Cameroonians: man and woman, boy and girl, old and young must be strong and prepared to take on challenges at self defense levels.”

The Concord Group Chairman hailed the performance of Vice President Dabney Yerima of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government and the emergence of General No Pity as a blessing for both the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and the resistance front.

“Thanks to the firm and courageous position of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, its supporters and advocates of Southern Cameroons independence and dignity, the Francophone arrogance and military expedition in now crumbling” our senior political man said.

Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai went on to say that the actions of the Biya Francophone Beti Ewondo regime do not correlate at all with morality and humanity, and that Yaoundé does not work for justice as it has been evident in Southern Cameroons.

By Isong Asu in London

For the past five years there has been conflict in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon, with no solution or end in sight. There have been political, social and cultural differences and antagonisms for several decades. But the current conflict began in 2016 when lawyers and teachers started protesting over the increasing use of French in the legal and educational systems in these regions, known as Anglophone Cameroon.

The government of Cameroon’s poor handling of the crisis contributed to its escalation into an armed conflict. Thousands have been killed, are living in the bush, or have fled to other parts of the country (becoming internally displaced persons) or in neighbouring countries as refugees. The warring parties did not heed the UN secretary general’s call for a global ceasefire to focus on ending the conflict in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a result, the conflict continues to have a negative impact on all aspects of life, particularly the livelihoods and health of citizens in the battleground regions of the north-west and south-west. Access to already inadequate health services has been reduced. More insights about how the conflict is affecting the health of citizens are needed to understand the situation and propose solutions.

We set out to understand how the conflict was affecting the key determinants of health. These include poverty, particularly in contexts where there is no universal healthcare and where the cost of living continues to rise.

We believe in experts. We believe knowledge must inform decisions

As is the case in other conflict and war situations, it was difficult to collect public data. So we examined tweets to understand what topics were being discussed.

In 2019, the number of mobile phone subscriptions in the country was 21.4 million out of a population of around 27 million people. Data for phone usage is expensive, and internet access is not reliable. Hootsuite, a social media management platform, reported that approximately 23% of the population – 6.21 million people – were internet users. And of these, 4.3 million were active on social media platforms.

This report estimated that there were fewer than 125,000 Twitter users in the country. Nevertheless, we believe examining the use of Twitter can provide insights about the crisis because social media can provide short descriptions of the issues that people are facing.

Our use of Twitter to gather information isn’t novel. Scholars are increasingly using social media to collect data about conflicts. But we have not found many studies exploring health and the social determinants of health using this approach.

We used the descriptions shared on Twitter to provide a more visible and robust picture of health related issues. This approach can help identify health challenges and how they’re affecting citizens.

How we examined tweets

We collected and analysed 1,868 tweets posted from 1 October 2016, the month when the conflict began, to 1 September 2019 to understand what people were discussing. The tweets were from everyday citizens, the government, news outlets and nongovernmental organisations that were communicating with people in Cameroon and abroad to draw attention to the effects of the crisis on citizens and, in some cases, what actions had been taken by the government.

Our focus was on the social determinants of health, often used to understand public health issues. These are the non-medical factors that influence the health of people. They include:

policies and systems such as social, economic, employment, education and health policies and systems

social attitudes and practices related to inclusion and discrimination

factors influencing daily life in other ways such as housing, food, and cultural policies and practices.

Our findings showed that Twitter was being used to share information and to call for action. Analysis of tweets revealed eight distinct themes:

neglect from government related to health:education, loss of employment, increased poverty, housing and homelessness, social exclusion and oppression, women and gender inequality, health services.

People felt neglected by the government. There were negative tweets and criticisms of the government’s neglect of its citizens and lack of support during the crisis.

Tweets also referred to failures in the education system. Most schools in the north-west and south-west regions have remained closed for years with teachers and students staying at home due to insecurity. Several tweets called for schools to reopen.

Tweets also referred to a deterioration in work opportunities. Some businesses were closed, resulting in job losses for thousands of people. Many who were still employed either went for several months without pay or received salary cuts.

There was also evidence of poverty increasing because of the conflict. Despite these impacts, some tweets reported that the government was discouraging humanitarian support.

Thousands of people lost their homes and were displaced. Several villages were either burned down or seized by the military or non-state armed groups. Hundreds of thousands of people were internally displaced within Cameroon or fled to neighbouring countries as refugees.

People experienced social exclusion and oppression. There were tweets about the lack of human rights and the prevention of freedom of expression. Children’s rights were violated, with references made to child trafficking, slavery and a decrease in basic education.

Women and girls were very vulnerable. Sexual violence and rape increased. Some pregnant women were forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions with minimal supplies.

Health services were difficult to access. The fighting resulted in the destruction of some hospitals and clinics. Some nongovernmental organisations provided services to the vulnerable population.

The way forward

Our findings highlight two important points. The first is the need to develop and implement effective systems to collect data in regions and circumstances where conventional methods of data collection are limited.

The second is the various inequities that are affecting the citizens of Cameroon amid the ongoing political conflict.

Using Twitter to collect data demonstrates the importance of identifying new ways to actively explore the social determinants of health in understudied regions and situations.

In addition, our results have highlighted several disparities that have resulted from, or have been exacerbated by, the consequences of the conflict that continues to negatively impact the citizens of Cameroon.

Culled from The Conversation

The song “Oh Teachers” by Cameroonian singer Aunty Clo blasted through speakers Tuesday at Yaounde’s city council courtyard with about 200 teachers listening.

Aunty Clo’s lyrics are about how teachers should be respected and protected as they are the ones tasked with molding young minds for the future and Cameroon’s development.

Most of the teachers attending the protest, held to mark U.N.-declared World Teachers Day, say they fled the Boko Haram insurgency in the north or fighting between the government and English-speaking separatists in the west.

Fifty-two-year-old Peter Tar, a spokesperson for the teachers, says instructors working in Cameroon’s conflict zones endure a lot of suffering.

“Teachers are being persecuted every day, every hour. Some have been brutally killed. Others, brutally deprived of some parts of their bodies, forced out of their areas to become internally displaced persons. Some are now jobless. My heart bleeds for these teachers. I pray peace should return,” he said.

Tar said he escaped from a government school in the town of Ndop after separatist fighters kidnapped him.

The protest was organized by the Cameroon Association of Teachers in Crisis. Tar said the teachers want the international community to know that they are suffering.

More than 40 teachers have been killed in Cameroon since 2017. At least 300 others were abducted and freed only after their families paid ransom.

Hundreds of schools in the north and west were destroyed or shut down.

Valentine Tameh, president of the Teachers Association of Cameroon, says teachers sometimes have no option but to flee the violence.

“It becomes, really, a sorry spectacle, seeing teachers running with their families, some losing their lives, some fleeing to areas where they cannot do anything to sustain themselves. We are appealing that everyone who is engaged in a kind of war should understand that teachers and the milieu in which they operate are sacrosanct and fighters should understand that, without teachers, the community is preparing for a kind of dark ages,” Tameh said.

Cameroon’s Minister of Basic Education, Laurent Serge Etoundi Ngoa, says the military is protecting schools, teachers and school children in regions where there is a security crisis.

He encouraged teachers who fled insecurity to return to relatively peaceful areas for the sake of the children in need of education.

“We’ve just recruited 5,000 teachers to support those who have already been in the field. When you (teachers) go to teach in a region of Cameroon, you must know that it is your country. The children, who are there, are all our sons and daughters, so we have to do everything necessary for them to have a safe education because they are the actors who tomorrow will continue building Cameroon,” Etoundi Ngoa said.

The United Nations declared October 5 as World Teacher’s Day in 1994 to honor educators for the important role they play in economic development and other sectors.

Source: VOA

Distant machine gun fire interrupted a speech by Cameroonian Prime Minister Dion Ngute on Tuesday during a visit to the capital of the restive North West region that Anglophone separatists had vowed to disrupt.

A video on social media shows Ngute trailing off mid-speech as the crowd turns and exclaims at a burst of far-off shots. In other footage, a suited man in a flak jacket puts his arms protectively around the premier as they are escorted away by security forces.

It was not clear who was responsible, but the incident underscores the insecurity plaguing Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions since insurgents seeking to form a breakaway state first took up arms against the military in 2017.

There was no immediate comment from the prime minister’s office.

A source at the office of North West’s governor said the shots were fired in the mountains outside Bamenda, the regional capital, and the prime minister was unharmed

“The situation was brought under control,” the source said on condition of anonymity.

Before the shots rang out, Ngute told a cheering crowd that he was there to help resolve the crisis. “It is time that this suffering ends for us all. This is what brought me here,” he said in pidgin English.

North West is one of two regions where English-speaking secessionists seeking to form a state called Ambazonia have been battling government forces over perceived marginalisation by Cameroon’s French-speaking majority.

Both sides have committed atrocities in a conflict that has killed over 3,000 and forced hundreds of thousands to flee.

Ahead of Ngute’s visit to Bamenda, the so-called Ambazonian Defence Forces ordered residents to stay at home, saying that anyone participating in meetings with Ngute did so at their own risk.

“There will be planned military operations to challenge the colonial prime minister’s visit,” they said on Monday.

The separatists were not reachable for comment.

Last week, the U.N. humanitarian agency (OCHA) said it had been obliged to halt its activities due to a lockdown imposed in both regions by a non-state armed group banning all movement, work, or social activity between Sept. 15 and Oct. 2.

There had been a notable increase in violence, kidnappings and attacks against those defying the lockdown, including teachers and students, it said.

Source: WSAU

In recent weeks, Cameroon’s anglophone separatists have carried out a series of deadly ambushes against the Cameroonian army which have been on a bigger scale than anything yet seen since the start of the conflict five years ago. The army high command wants to change strategy but has yet to say how it intends to proceed.

At least three Cameroonian soldiers were killed on Thursday in an ambush by separatist fighters in the country’s restive Anglophone region of Northwest, according to local and security sources.

Separatist fighters ambushed soldiers who were on patrol in Bamali village of the region and opened fire on them, according to a military official who asked not to be named.

A video of the ambush filmed by separatist fighters went viral on social media in the Central African nation.

Clashes between government forces and separatist fighters were also reported early Thursday in at least seven parts of the region, according to security reports.

Reported by Africa Intelligence and Cameroon Concord News