In western Cameroon, hundreds of single mothers protested this week against the cultural practice of forced marriage. The women, who say their parents forced them into early marriage, called on authorities to help end the practice, saying it too often ends in broken families.

Twenty-year-old single mother Metombemb Aicha has been leading protests against the forced marriage of teenage girls in western Cameroon. 

Around the towns of Foumbot and Foumban, parents often force their girls to marry early, believing that tying the knot after the age of 14 brings the family bad luck.  

Aicha says their protests at local palaces and in public urged Cameroonian authorities to put a stop to the cultural practice.   

Aicha says most of the 300 people protesting were 14 years old when they were forced to marry men they did not know. She says some single mothers among the protesters decided to leave their homes with their babies after their husbands brought home other wives. Parents should allow young girls to choose their husbands, says Aicha, to stop the pain that forced marriages are inflicting.  

Aicha formed the group Noun Sisters to support single mothers who leave these marriages and to push for an end to the tradition, practiced among Cameroon’s Muslims and in villages. The group says the girls should be allowed to go to school. 

The protests were sparked when a widowed, 17-year-old mother was last week being forced to marry her dead husband’s brother.  

The marriage was called off after the demonstrations.  

But local officials say they should protect cultural practices of their forefathers, including forced, early marriage.

Foumbat palace official Ousmanou Mefirou says early marriage ensures that girls are married with their dignity as virgins. According to cultural norms, if a girl is a virgin, the groom’s family gives her family more gifts as a so-called bride price. Her parents are also praised as model members of the community.

Mefirou says their tradition holds firm that a girl has no say on whom her husband should be. He says when a girl is 14, her father contacts the parents of a potential husband and they discuss the possibility and date for the marriage. Tradition also holds that a man who sees a girl he wants to marry should inform his parents, says Mefirou, not the girl.

But Cameroon’s district-level officials say they oppose forced, early marriage. 

Foumban district official Julien Gael Kono says the government is bent on eradicating such harmful traditions.

He says forced marriages are rampant all over Cameroon but, more concerning in the west of the country. He says in these mainly Muslim communities, there are misconceptions that boys should make their choices while girls stay at home to prepare for early marriage. Since they are finding it difficult to convince people that boys and girls should be treated equally, says Kono, they will start punishing those who abuse their rights.

Cameroonian authorities say six out of 10 girls in these communities are forced to marry before the age of 16. Last year, Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics, citing the U.N., said nearly one-third of girls were married before their 18th birthday.

But in eight out of 10 of the forced marriages, the wives end up leaving their husbands before turning 18.  

Source: VOA

Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has defended a statement made public yesterday by his office on the lockdown reportedly announced on Ground Zero saying French Cameroun and their Southern Cameroons surrogates will not succeed in undermining the majority following of the Ambazonia Interim Government by spreading lies.

In this week’s Amba cabinet briefing, the exiled leader rejected the lies and rumors concocted in Yaoundé and recently spread about the Ambazonia policy of lockdown unveiled by President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe after the declaration of independence.

Yerima observed that by announcing a Lockdown which was to start this Friday 10 July 2020, French Cameroun agents knew they were walking on broken bottles. The VP also pointed out that the Ambazonia Interim Government has established a transparent roadmap for getting Southern Cameroonians to Buea via the Amba Bonds scheme and a principled guideline for Ambazonia Restoration Forces which will go operational throughout the homeland.

Comrade Dabney Yerima said the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is expected to emerge as Africa’s leading democracy and economic power after the war of liberation with French Cameroun.

Yerima dismissed as lies the information that spoke of a lockdown in Ambazonia beginning today circulating in pro French Cameroun media houses which was announced by a fake group sponsored by French Cameroun’s Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji.

By Chi Prudence Asong

An unknown Southern Cameroons group says its homemade bombs have hit targets in Yaoundé, following warnings that retaliatory attacks would hit deep in French Cameroun territory if the Biya Francophone regime did not stop its aggression against Ambazonians.

A spokesman for Southern Cameroons’s Restoration Forces said in a statement that Ambazonian Self Defense groups have not conducted any operation inside French Cameroun. But an audio aired in pidgin said that Ambazonian fighters used locally made bombs in the Yaoundé operation.

The audio also emphasized that legitimate retaliatory attacks would continue as long as the Biya Francophone regime pressed ahead with their war in Southern Cameroons and that Ambazonia fighters will continue to target French Cameroun military installations that are spearheading the aggression against the people of Southern Cameroons.

On July 1, 2020, French Cameroun’s Lieutenant Colonel Anaba was shot by unknown gunmen in Besongabang, a village some 3 km from Mamfe the chief town in Manyu County where there is a military barracks while he was celebrating his promotion.  Lieutenant Colonel Anaba is currently in Douala where he is fighting for life in a military hospital.

French Cameroun and its leader Paul Biya launched a devastating war on Southern Cameroons four years ago in an attempt to subdue an uprising that is clamouring for an independent state known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The UN estimates that the war has claimed more than 3,000 lives over the past four years.

By Isong Asu in London

INTERIM GOVERNMENT OF AMBAZONIA STATEMENT:  THERE IS NO LOCKDOWN FROM 10 JULY 2020

Fellow Ambazonians,

Today, Wednesday, 8 July 2020, the Interim Government of Ambazonia was inundated with calls and enquiries from Ground Zero and the diaspora regarding a Lockdown starting Friday 10 July 2020.

After consulting with other frontline movements of our struggle, your Interim Government is hereby stating that these rumours are inaccurate and unfounded.

As a government, the safety and security of our people in Ground Zero is our utmost priority and your Interim Government would consult with our self-defence heroes before making public notices of national significance.

These rumours are speculative and must be disregarded. Daily business and community activities within the territory of Ambazonia should proceed with vigilance and without interruption.

Our self-defence forces are called upon to perform their duty of protecting our people and their properties dutifully.

We have committed to getting our freedom and independence. At the core of our current challenges, let us remember that solidarity and integrity must be our companions in this journey.

May God bless you all.

Thank You

Dabney Yerima

Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Cameroonian rights and press groups are alleging a military cover-up in the death of journalist Samuel Wazizi, after the military on Monday refused to hand over his body to the family.  Cameroon’s military in June admitted Wazizi had died at a military hospital in August last year after months of silence on his whereabouts or condition.  Supporters of Wazizi, who was arrested for allegedly collaborating with anglophone rebels, have accused the military of torturing him to death — a charge they deny. 

Spokesman for Cameroon’s military Serge Cyrille Atongfack says they will not hand over the body of journalist Samuel Wazizi to his family any time soon.  

Atongfack says no family member or lawyer can have access to Wazizi’s body now because it has been sealed.  He says the body was sealed to allow investigators to determine the cause of death, as ordered by Cameroon’s President Paul Biya.  Before Biya ordered the investigation, says Atongfack, Wazizi’s family had 10 months to remove the journalist’s body from the mortuary but they refused.

Wazizi family member and spokesman Tah Javis rejects Atongfack’s claim, which conflicts with the public record.   

He notes the family had been seeking the journalist’s whereabouts since his arrest and disappearance last August, when they filed a complaint, but authorities did not respond.

The military — under public pressure — in June finally admitted that Wazizi had died at a military hospital just days after his arrest.  

Javis says the family immediately went to court.  

“The family filed a case in court for the court to actually grant that Wazizi’s body be handed over to the family or be brought to Buea,” he said. “The person who actually kept the corpse in the mortuary was the government.  And, till now, the government has not contacted the family officially.”

French Ambassador to Cameroon Christophe Guilhou said President Biya in a June 5 meeting promised an investigation to determine the cause of Wazizi’s death.

Family members, their lawyers, and colleagues accuse the military of torturing and killing Waizizi — a charge the military denies.

President of the National Trade Union of Cameroon journalists Denis Kwebo says the military’s months of silence and refusal to hand over the body is clearly a cover-up.

He says the government confiscated the body of Samuel Wazizi to hide evidence of torture the journalist underwent before the military killed him.  Journalists are reiterating that a national, independent commission should be set up, says Kwebo, to investigate what killed Samuel Wazizi.

Wazizi was a presenter for Chillen Media Television based in the southwestern town of Buea. 

Cameroon’s military arrested Wazizi in Buea for allegedly supporting anglophone rebels who want independence from the French-speaking majority.

Cameroon’s four-year separatist conflict in its western regions has displaced more than half a million and left over 3,000 people dead.  

Rights groups have accused both sides of committing atrocities in the conflict, including abductions and murders of civilians. 

Source: VOA

The leadership of the Ambazonia Interim Government has censured French Cameroun government’s statement by Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi as an act of continues aggression against the people of Southern Cameroons. The Biya Francophone government said via its Minister of Information that it is not in any talks with President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his top aides’ as widely reported last week.

Vice President Dabney Yerima speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News London Bureau Chief, Isong Asu called for a solid and united front against the criminal regime in Yaoundé.  Comrade Yerima highlighted the serious dangers posed by unnecessary division and unhealthy rivalry among front line leaders to the Ambazonian cause.

“We should have been approaching Buea by now because the Ambazonia people are capable of confronting the French Cameroun army! So I am calling on Southern Cameroonians particularly those in the diaspora to quickly move to stop French Cameroun’s continuous aggression against Southern Cameroonians by investing in the Amba Bonds Project” he added.

The story about the Yaoundé meeting came from credible sources and Cameroon Concord News Group chief correspondent was among the people in the know.  However, the Group’s editorial team simply kept things under wraps, waiting for the right moment to fill the population in.

According to a well-placed source in Yaoundé, the Francophone government made a dramatic u turn after its military announced it had taken control of the main road leading to Kumbo in the Bui County.

Dabney Yerima however pointed out that the Ambazonia Security Council had ordered Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces to withdraw from the area. The Vice President reiterated the Interim Government’s unified stance against all French Cameroun plot and stressed that all conspiracies against the Southern Cameroons revolution and quest for independence would be thwarted.

Ever since the war started four years ago, thousands of Southern Cameroonians have become “roving Jews” of Africa, with many travelling to distant lands just to seek peace and stability.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in London

The Vice President of the Southern Cameroons Interim Government, Dabney Yerima has assured the people of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia that as always, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is carrying them along with him and will not forsake the duty of getting Ambazonians to Buea.

Dabney Yerima made the remarks to a cream of reporters late on Sunday in Holland. The exiled leader revealed that he was satisfied with the briefing he got from President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe immediately after the meeting with French Cameroun government officials in Yaoundé.

Yerima furthered that the Southern Cameroons Interim Government stays true to the struggle in line with the founding fathers of British Southern Cameroons and also in keeping with the value-based principles laid down for the Interim Government by the late Mola Njoh Litumbe.

Vice President Dabney Yerima also underscored the importance of strong communication among Southern Cameroons front line leaders and groups and on a humorous note he observed that “The meeting in Yaoundé with French Cameroun representatives was not to decide who controls My-Trip-To-Buea Funds but to put in place a mechanism that will foster dialogue to be chaired by the United Nation.”

By Chi Prudence Asong in Den Hague

Millions of French and Southern Cameroonians continue to become direct casualties of President Paul Biya’s misrule of the renowned United Republic of Cameroon. Today, the situation has become more intractable with the coming of the coronavirus.

For 37 years, the economy under Biya has grounded to a near standstill due to corruption, tribalism, nepotism imposed by the ruling CPDM crime syndicate. As a result, almost 10 million people in Cameroon have become unemployed with thousands migrating to neighboring countries.

Covid-19 has made thousands redundant overnight in Yaoundé, Maroua, Garoua, Edea and Bafoussam while thousands more have lost their livelihoods in the war ravaged Southern Cameroons and in the Douala metropolis.

President Biya’s failed policies had heralded many Cameroonian families into financial hardship before the pandemic hit. Now they have been pushed into abject poverty.

Cameroonian families are now struggling to provide just a meal a day for their children. Many now rely on their relations living in Europe; South Africa and North America.

From every indication, the economy will never pick up under Biya as many are still without work even after the Yaoundé Ali Baba launched the 2036 Emergence Program.

The threat posed by the secession war in Southern Cameroons and succession crisis in Yaoundé including a second wave of the coronavirus will only foster mass layoffs in Guinness, Dangote, and Brasseries groups.

By Isong Asu

Cameroon Concord News Group

United Kingdom

Cameroon says it has deployed more troops in the capital Yaoundé after yet another bomb exploded, leaving at least 20 people severely wounded. No one has claimed responsibility, but it is suspected that separatists fighting for the creation of an English-speaking state in Cameroon and people who escaped from prison a month ago are responsible.

Naseri Paul Bea, governor of the Central Region, where Yaoundé is located, says he convened a security meeting Friday night because there has been mounting insecurity in the capital city. He says he is calling on the clergy and traditional rulers to help bring peace back to the city.

“I instructed them to control those who sell arms, to include the traditional rulers to be able to know the new people who come into their quarters so that if there is any person who looks strange, they can be able to inform the forces of law and order{military},” said Bea.

The government said on Thursday night, yet another bomb exploded in the Damas neighborhood, severely wounding five people. 15 others with wounds were later discovered in their houses.

Bea says he has information that some prisoners were organizing the attacks from their detention centers.

“Some of the organizers are in the prisons and they have people outside who are doing it {planting the bombs} for them,” said Bea. “I instructed the penitentiary administration to put their ears to the ground to be able to get those information and sensitize the population to know that the security of the country is their own security.”

Bea said the bombs were locally made. It was the third locally made bomb to explode in a popular neighborhood in Yaoundé within two weeks. At least 37 people were wounded in the three explosions. No one has claimed responsibility.

Rights activist Edwin Ayuk of the Cameroon Human Right Center says it is imperative for the government to open negotiations with English speaking separatist leaders who are detained at the Yaoundé-Kondengui prison if they want peace to return. Speaking via a messaging application from the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda, he said the government should also investigate the activities of former ministers arrested and detained at the Kondengui prison by Cameroon president Paul Biya for corrupt activities.

“We have been calling on the government to call these individuals, sit with them on the table and let them discuss their differences so that the atrocities that have been going on can come to an end,” said Ayuk.

Innocent Ngono, a peace and development lecturer at the university of Yaoundé says Cameroon should handle the insecurity in its capital city with care since it already has many security challenges.He says if Cameroon has been able to resist the security challenges it has been facing since 2013, it is because the population has supported the military through information sharing. He says he is afraid Cameroonians may now be reluctant to assist the military because the government is not showing serious signs of wanting to solve the crisis the country is facing.   

Since 2013 Cameroon’s eastern border has suffered a spillover of the carnage in the Central African Republic with regular intrusions of rebels. Boko Haram terrorism on Cameroons northern border with Nigeria has entered its 10th year with at least 3,000 people killed. A separatist crisis in the English-speaking western regions of the French majority state has left at least 3,000 people dead and 500,000 displaced. The Cameroon military has been deployed to handle border disputes with Equatorial Guinea.

Many civilians say if the attacks on the capital city Yaoundé are not stopped, the military may be overstretched.

Source: VOA

A former employee at the U.S. Embassy in Cameroon claims he was fired because he filed a sexual harassment complaint against his male supervisor.

Julius Banka in a lengthy statement he sent to the Washington Blade says he was a warehouse supervisor at the embassy in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé from February 2009 until his termination on June 14, 2018.

“In my years of work at the embassy, I was never given any reprimand, put on any performance improvement plan nor sanctioned for any reason,” says Banka in the statement. “Instead, I had several awards for good work done and was even awarded employee of the month in 2017.”

Banka in a complaint he sent to the embassy’s Equal Employee Opportunity office on May 15, 2018, alleges his supervisor, William McllWain, “wanted me to be his gay partner and when I refused, he started retaliating.”

“I am straight,” Banka told the Blade last week. “I am not a gay and I have never been a gay … I don’t want to be a gay ever.”

The EEO complaint, which Banka provided to the Blade, does not contain anything that specifically says McllWain wanted to enter into a relationship with him. Banka on Wednesday referred to the complaint when the Blade asked him to further explain this claim.

Banka in his complaint does state McllWain “admired my body build and would like for me to come teach him how to work out and be like me at his home.”

“I felt very uncomfortable with the discussion because of his gestures during this conversation and quickly told him that I do not know how to teach sports, but (I) will however look for someone who can help him out,” wrote Banka in his EEO complaint.

Banka further alleges McllWain “constantly make comments about how I had a nice body and how what I was wearing looked good on me.”

Banka provided the Blade with a June 14, 2018, letter that informed him of his termination. Banka in the statement he sent to the Blade wrote “the security officer” who “gave me the termination letter … sounded surprised to hear that there was any sexual harassment case I had filed two months before.”

“This clearly showed that he only had one objective during his investigations and that was to fire me,” wrote Banka.

Banka in his statement said he wrote to U.S. Ambassador to Cameroon Peter Henry Barlerin and the embassy’s deputy chief of mission “to explain what happened, but none of them reacted or responded to my complaint.” Banka also said the State Department’s Civil Rights Office declined to help him.

Banka notes he “took” his case to Cameroon’s Ministry of Labor “and after careful review, the ministry sent a complaint to the Ministry of External Relations.” Banka in his statement further notes “after going through my case and asking me a few questions, the Ministry of External Relations eventually sent a letter to the embassy stating my complaint and their violation of the law in November 2018.”

“Till date, the embassy has neither responded to the ministry nor made any statement,” he writes.

The State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs in a Jan. 31, 2019, letter noted Harby Issa, the embassy’s Human Resource Officer, had due cause to fire him.

“Your separation was a result of the Embassy Regional Security Office (RSO) finding that you had been involved in the theft of embassy property — a charge to which you admitted,” reads the letter. “Further, you involved one of your direct reports in this theft, resulting in that employee being disciplined, as well.”

“Though that letter of separation does not specify the reason for your separation other than to state that it was due to security reasons, you were advised orally at the time that your theft of embassy property constituted grounds for termination of your employment,” adds the letter. “It does not seem credible that this termination came as a surprise, after your own admission of this malfeasance to the RSO.”

Banka provided the Blade with the letter. He denied the allegations in a June 26 email.

“None of these claims were mentioned to me while I was at the embassy and I never admitted to theft,” Banka told the Blade. “This was completely false because I have never admitted to stealing. Stealing was only mentioned when I left the embassy.”

“All of this had to be proven when I was there and the termination letter I was given on the day of my termination had to include this,” he added. “However, this was only mentioned in the second termination letter the embassy sent a driver to my house two weeks after my termination.”

Reported by Washington Blade