Cameroon’s main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, has gone on trial in a military court in Yaoundé, along with 90 of his supporters. Kamto, who was the runner-up in last year’s presidential election, is accused of insurrection and rebellion, and could face the death penalty.

Kamto arrived in court on Friday under tight security. The trial venue was protected by 200 police officers in anti-riot gear, while others patrolled the area in pick-up trucks.

There had been calls from the opposition leader’s followers for a protest rally outside the court.

Kamto, together with several dozen of his political allies and supporters, faces charges of insurrection, hostility to the motherland and rebellion, crimes which, in theory at least, could carry the death penalty.

The head of the opposition Movement for the Rebirth of Cameroon (MRC) was arrested in January after months of peaceful opposition protests denouncing the results of the October 2018 presidential election.

The MRC alleges that the election was rigged in favour of President Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years. Kamto claims that he himself won the election.

Cameroon’s former colonial ruler France, the United States and the European Union have repeatedly called for his release.

“There is no justification for Mr Kamto and his supporters to have been incarcerated for eight months in these conditions,” their French lawyer Antoine Vey told the French news agency, AFP.

“None of them took part in acts of violence, none called for acts of violence or rebellion, there is no reason for their arrest other than a political motive.”

Ready for justice

The crackdown against the opposition has caused outrage among rights groups and many western governments.

In March, the US assistant secretary of state for African Affairs Tibor Nagy, told RFI that Cameroon would be “very wise” to release Kamto because his detention is widely perceived as politically motivated.

A top European Union official criticised the arrests and the military court’s “disproportionate” proceedings against them.

France in May also demanded the release of Kamto and his supporters.

On Monday, just days ahead of their trial, Kamto and his fellow defendants said they were “ready to face justice so the truth would come out,” demanding free public and press access to the courtroom.

“Mr Kamto is full of confidence,” his spokesman Olivier Bibou Nissack told journalists.

Conflict on all fronts

The authorities in Cameroon dismiss claims from the defendants and others that this a political trial designed to “decapitate” the opposition.

Along with the political protests, President Biya is facing a struggle on other fronts.

Since 2017, fighting between the army and English-speaking separatists demanding independence in two western regions has killed hundreds, forced nearly 500,000 people from their homes and filled jails with anglophone activists accused of militancy.

In the north of the country, Boko Haram’s nearly 10-year Islamist insurgency which is based in northeastern Nigeria, has more recently spilled over into Cameroon.

Source: AFP

Six Southern Cameroons Self-Defense Groups have announced the formation of a unique restoration force to curb crimes and abductions in Ambazonia. The groups in the Southern Zone also say the new force is needed to coordinate self-defense action against the invading French Cameroun army soldiers.

Vice President Dabney Yerima who brokered the deal is expected to issue a statement on the outcome of very intensive and productive discussions that were held late yesterday. Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in Ground Zero revealed that the merger would operate as a coalition working within the framework of the Ambazonia Interim Government.

A spokesperson for Comrade Dabney Yerima told this reporter that the merger policy will also be implemented in the Northern Zone in the weeks ahead and the Vice President will call for a new strategy of popular resistance to French Cameroun occupation and colonization and opposition to policies that fuel the weakness of the Interim Government by perpetuating division.

In a recent outing in the Federal Republic of Germany, Vice President Yerima warned that Ambazonians faced liquidation if they could not achieve unity in the face of the intensified French Cameroun attacks. He also emphasized the need to uphold the Interim Government under the leadership of President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe as the legitimate and sole representative of the Ambazonian people.

The participating self-defense groups will remain independent but strive to be a model of Southern Cameroons unity that would get rid of the French Cameroun occupation, win the right to self-determination in a sovereign state with Buea as its capital.

By Asu Isong in London with files from Sama Ernest and Rita Akana

Angry residents of Yaounde express frustration as the trial of Cameroon’s main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto was adjourned on Friday.

Kamto’s trial for insurrection will now take place on October 8.

“While the charges against them were being read, one of them – counselor Christian Penda Ekoka – felt dizzy and I have to tell you what led to this discomfort. This audience was held in a sort of matchbox, forgive my use of the term. The room is very small and poorly ventilated. We were suffocating and I think this is what led to the discomfort that caused suspension of the hearing”, Kamto’s lawyer, Ntchale Michel said.

Residents reiterated their plea for the Anglophone crisis to be resolved.

“I traveled more than 600 kilometres to attend this trial. For me, it’s a historical trial. We are asking the Biya’s government to do two things, solve the Anglophone crisis and release the political prisoners. This will calm tensions”, psychologist and president of an association for the protection of human rights, Germain Ekwala said.

Maurice Kamto claimed to have won last year’s presidential election. He came in second against President Paul Biya in the polls. Kamto was put to trial along with 88 others in a military court for insurrection.

Human rights groups have denounced the jurisdiction of the military court to try the case.

Source: AFP

Villagers near Meiganga, a town in northern Cameroon, are protesting against Chinese gold miners for allegedly ruining their land. The villagers say they are poorer than before the Chinese arrived, with their farms and forests now destroyed.  

Area cattle ranchers and farmers say that if nothing is done to save them from Chinese miners, famine may strike their locality soon. 

Their spokesman, rancher Mamoudu Poro, 54, says the miners destroy farms and do not bother to cover holes and trenches they dig on roads and ranches before leaving. He says they want the Chinese to build the roads they destroyed and fill the trenches they dug, give them electricity and at least a school and a market before leaving. 

Until 2014, Meiganga and surrounding villages cultivated maize, beans and groundnuts and produced cattle for markets in Cameroon, Nigeria and the Central African Republic. 
 
Then, 300 new mining sites producing gold, zinc, nickel and other materials were discovered in the region.  Among the explorers were Chinese companies. 
 
More than a hundred of the companies’ miners work in and around Meiganga. They use tractors and equipment that clean stones and sift soil, allowing them to detect gold faster than locals who use manual tools.  Locals are paid about $2 per day to work at the Chinese mining sites. 
 
Cameroon’s minister of mines, Gabriel Dodo Ndoke, says the complaints of the villagers are legitimate. He says he has asked the companies to respect the terms of their contract with the government.  

Ndoke says the population suffers as a result of environmental degradation and does not benefit as expected because their mineral resources are exploited in a disorganized manner. He says he has given instructions to all exploitation companies to make sure they respect environmental laws and stop destroying farms and cattle ranches, which for now are the only sources of earnings for the people of the area. 
 
Officials with the China Mining Company in Meiganga declined to be interviewed about the allegations.  However, company official Hu Long said the firm has assisted communities by providing aid to hospitals and building or refurbishing schools when solicited.  He says the company also employs about 100 youths.  

This is not the first time Cameroonian villagers have protested against alleged exploitation by the Chinese.  In 2016, residents of eastern Cameroon had conflicts with small-scale Chinese gold miners who had been there for six years. The local miners said the Chinese had taken away their livelihoods and were not living up to promises to develop the area. 
 
Cameroon has not officially announced how much it gains from the mining business but says it contributes a significant amount to the country’s gross domestic product. 

Source: VOA

Paul Biya’s 37-year rule in Cameroon is fast approaching its end, a highly placed French Cameroun political elite hinted Cameroon Concord News Group late on Thursday as several Cameroon government army soldiers launched a fierce resistance against being deployed to Southern Cameroons.

“Everyone in the nation’s capital Yaoundé is seeing a regime crumbling. The sooner Biya realizes there is no way he can win the Southern Cameroons war, the better for everyone in this country” our source who sued for anonymity noted.

 It is evidently clear that the capabilities of the regime have all been eroded by the fighting in Southern Cameroons. “Clearly we’re into the last stage of the CPDM regime – the writing is on the wall” he observed.

“We’re seeing Divisional and Sub Divisional delegates  including principals of colleges packing their bags from the rural areas in Southern Cameroons and Yaoundé-controlled territory in Southern Cameroons is shrinking before our eyes” he added.

The Ambazonia Interim Government and other Southern Cameroons resistance groups are tracking what’s happening in Ground Zero and in French Cameroun.  The regime’s major ATM machines in Southern Cameroons including SONARA, CDC and PAMOL have all vanished in thin air and this is leaving government officials awake all night. The disappearance of these streams of revenue has really destabilized the French Cameroun government which is yet to find new sources of revenue.

Life has become unbearable for millions of French Cameroonians residing in the cities of Douala and Yaounde who, for many decades, have only been scrapping a living.

Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, vowed he would not step down and boasted that the nation remains one and indivisible even as Ambazonia Restoration Forces have made Southern Cameroons ungovernable.

Information filtered this week that Cameroon government resources are running dry, after a recent troop’s deployment to the Far North region.

By Chi Prudence Asong

A prominent Limbe-based lawyer, Barrister Helen Ebai, has died aged 76. The circumstances surrounding her death were sketchy at press time. However some sources said that the late barrister was preparing to travel to the United Kingdom for her regular health checks when she suddenly developed a certain medical challenge in her residence in Limbe.

Incorruptible and fearless career legal practitioner, Barrister Helen Ebai was among the few Southern Cameroons women to read law in England. She was married to the late Barrister Edward Ebai and was blessed with six children.

Tributes from all over the world have been pouring in ever since information of her sudden departure was made public. Reacting to the news, Chief Charles A Taku of the International Criminal Court observed that:

“The passing into the eternal glory of the Lord of the great legal luminary Barrister Helen Ebai has deprived us of a commanding voice at the service of justice and the truth. I did my first case as a lawyer before her at the Victoria Magistrate Court with the distinguished legal luminary Fon Gorgi Dinka in the case of C. J Woleta v Imoh. Several years later, she briefed me as counsel in the Besongabang Chieftaincy cases against Barrister Enonchong.

She was a passionate tireless and fearless crusader for justice, and a ferocious outspoken defender of the oppressed, the poor and the weak.”

Her last public appearance was during a town hall meeting with Prime Minister Dion Ngute. A QRC and Queens College product, she qualified as a lawyer in the UK. Went back home into ENAM and onto the magistracy profession . Helen Ebai later resigned and joined her husband in the family legal practice. She was subsequently appointed liquidator of the National Produce Marketing Board.

A devoted Catholic and an exemplary leader. She leaves behind 6 children, 8 grand children and family to mourn her.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

This item is still developing

The Yaoundé tyrant Paul Biya is reportedly hiding in a bunker he built some three hundred kilometers away from his palace in his native village of Mvomeka’s after rumour of a military coup spread like wild fire in the nation’s capital over the week end it’s been claimed.

The despot left Yaoundé by military convoy mounted by his kinsmen in the Francophone dominated army and is holed up at a bunker in the outskirts of his village.

A well placed source hinted Cameroon Intelligence Report that Biya is inside a room receiving treatment from his private doctors who are presently in the country.

Family relations of both President Biya and first lady Chantal Biya are effectively running Cameroon in his absence as he is banned from making phone calls due to ill health.  The dictator’s lavish palaces in Yaounde and Mvomeka’a can no longer provide protection to the ailing leader.

Meanwhile members of the Biya family both in Cameroon and abroad have begun hiding the leader’s financial assets alongside those belonging to his wife, Chantal Biya in the hope of protecting the money when he is gone.

Cameroon Intelligence Report informants have tracked the Cameroon military moving two presidential helicopters from their bases in Yaounde to Mvomeka’a.

Thousands of Southern Cameroonians have been killed ever since President Biya declared war against the English speaking community in the country.  The Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima said on Monday that a forceful response to the French Cameroun military onslaught was the only way forward as both Yaoundé and the Southern Cameroons Interim Government battle for control over Ambazonia.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has called on French Cameroun officials to put an end to their continued harassment of Ambazonia children with their so-called back to school policy. Vice President Yerima observed during a recent meeting with the exiled Southern Cameroons cabinet that French Cameroun’s attempt at stifling the Ambazonia resistance through a corrupt back to school program has met with a stone wall.

French Cameroun authorities deployed hundreds of army soldiers to Southern Cameroons lately in an ill-disguised attempt at placating the international community that the crisis in Southern Cameroons was finally over. The Biya regime imposed a travel ban on all Anglophone teachers and donated Chinese made academic materials to some pupils to encourage Southern Cameroons parents to send their kids to school.

The French Cameroun military surrounded some of the Ambazonia schools used in staging the back to school campaign and disappeared immediately after the administrative authorities left.  Southern Cameroons schools harboring French Cameroun children are permanently under surveillance by agents of the so-called Rapid Intervention Battalion, (BIR) who have been harassing and molesting Ambazonian women and children.

Roman Catholic Bishops have called on the Southern Cameroons Interim Government to halt the harassment of teachers and students, and to guarantee a successful academic year.

Elsewhere, French Cameroun prison officials have put the Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 9 of his top aides into solitary confinement following a life sentence handed them by the Yaounde Military Tribunal.  

Thousands of anti- French Cameroun regime protesters have held demonstrations in Europe and the USA on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in Southern Cameroons three years ago.  They are demanding that the Biya Francophone regime release all detained Southern Cameroonians and allow a Southern Cameroons state now referred to as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to be established.

Yaounde has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent killing 4000 Southern Cameroonians and burning down hundreds of villages.  President Biya approved the trial of Southern Cameroons civilians at military tribunals in Yaounde and Douala in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law.

By Sama Ernest and Rita Akana

The lessons at Seraphine Akwa’s house were supposed to be secret. She had been teaching at a primary school in Bamenda, in anglophone Cameroon, but repeated threats had forced the headmaster to shut the school’s doors.

The threats were from the “Amba boys”, separatists who have been fighting a two-year battle with Cameroon’s francophone government to break off and form their own state, Ambazonia. They enforced a school boycott to protest against educational injustices against English-speakers.

Thousands of schools were closed. Many were burned and now lie in ruins or are being swallowed up in weeds. Teachers have left the anglophone regions in droves.

Cameroon’s government launched a back-to-school campaign over the summer, but ongoing gun battles mean that any children walking to school at the start of term this week run the risk of being shot, and there is no clear end to the conflict in sight.

Akwa was struggling to make ends meet, so when several parents approached her, anxious for their children to receive an education, she agreed to take seven private pupils in secret.

This had been going on for several months when one Saturday, five Amba boys came to her house. Akwa was cleaning vegetables, and as soon as she saw them, she stopped what she was doing.

“They said they had been told that I continued to teach children at home. I lied that they were my neighbours’ children,” she said. “One of them asked me to shut up. He was the youngest of them all. He said I should stop it immediately, because they have declared no school in Ambaland. I was afraid. My neighbours were watching from afar. I apologised to the Amba boys and they left.”

Schoolchildren’s studies are collateral damage in many conflicts, but in anglophone Cameroon, education was a major trigger for the crisis, and schools and those teachers still trying to work are themselves a target.

Only 100 schools of 6,000 remain open, according to the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa – the other 5,900 have been closed down. Unicef said 80% of schools were shut, 74 destroyed and 600,000 children affected by the school ban. The head of basic education for the north-west said school attendance had gone down from 422,000 in 2017 to 5,500 children today.

Government officials have put the number of closed schools at around 3,000 and said around 200 had been burned. The government claims it was separatists that torched the schools, but the separatists say military forces destroyed many of them when they found they were being used as rebel bases.

After the Amba boys left, Akwa immediately cancelled all her classes and left Bamenda, ending up in Logbessou, a neighbourhood of Douala. She found work, but struggles to make enough to live in Cameroon’s biggest city. She cannot grow beans and corn there as she did in her garden at home, so she has to buy them.

Sometimes she thinks about the pupils she left behind – like Noela, who was in primary school when the crisis began, and should have been well into secondary by now. She is not going to school. “Her mother told her to learn a trade,” Akwa said.

The consequence of so many girls being out of school is that the rate of teenage pregnancy has shot up, community leaders say.

Many of the older boys whose studies were abruptly stopped began driving motorbikes to make a living. When the government banned motorbikes in much of the north-west region for several months, residents of the city of Kumbo say, many then joined the separatists.

Fifteen-year-old George, whose name has been changed, said he had not been recruited by separatists because they valued physical strength and he was small for his age. He still wears his old blue and white school pullover to keep warm but has not been to school since 2016, instead spending his days hunting animals to sell and learning how to farm.

“I want to learn. I want to be educated, because I want to help myself in future,” he said. But if school does not resume this year, he could be well into adulthood by the time he has caught up on the lost years.

Whether they should support the back-to-school campaign has split anglophone separatists and protest leaders. A local chief was kidnapped last month as he oversaw the clean-up of one high school, according to the Cameroonian journalist Mimi Mefo.

Others who spearheaded the schools boycott now advocate its end, saying the long break in education has further marginalised the anglophone regions.

“The protest was to improve what we had, not to destroy the little we had,” said Mancho Bibixy, one of the most prominent protest leaders.

The headteacher of one primary school in Kumbo is thinking about reopening in September, but is caught between the demands of the government and separatists’ threats.

“We had meetings [with the government] and we were told that schools must resume this year,” said the headteacher, who asked not to be named. “Parents want their children to stay in school but the [Amba] boys have been threatening. If security is ensured, many parents will send their children.”

Security is by no means ensured, many residents of the anglophone regions say.

“No action is being taken to really prove they want children to go back to school. There’s no preparation,” said one community leader in Kumbo, who requested anonymity so he would not be targeted for speaking out. “If Unicef and other bodies could call for a ceasefire, school could resume, no problem.”

He has been holding a few conflict-specific lessons, training children to drop to the ground when they hear gunshots, and not to see joining the Amba boys as an attractive prospect.

One head teacher has tried everything to keep her school open, but parents in Kumbo have been keeping their children home because they are worried that they will get caught in one of the gun battles between the military and rebel fighters.

“We were able to register some 43 pupils last year at the beginning of the school year but some of them stopped coming. So we finally closed the school again,” she said.

Struggling even before the crisis, many teachers now cannot make ends meet. The Kumbo headteacher even offered lessons in the holidays – mainly to try to supplement her teachers’ dwindling incomes – but worried parents forbade their children from attending, and none showed up.

Others sent their children to Douala and Yaoundé, Cameroon’s two major cities.

“Even if we start this year, where would we take children from?” she asked. “They are all gone.”

Source: Guardian

Southern Cameroonians commemorates this Monday the birthday of the Interim President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia and leader of the Ambazonia Revolution, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, who including 9 of his top aides were sentenced recently to life in prison by the Yaounde Military Tribunal.

Birthday wishes bearing his photo have been posted in some towns and villages all over Ground Zero and on social media by hundreds of Southern Cameroonians who are also respecting the lock down. The Ambazonian Vice President Dabney Yerima in an act of faith, homage and commitment observed that the leader of the Ambazonia resistance; President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe is more alive than ever.

In a soul-searching message the Southern Cameroons exiled government said that “today is the birthday of the heir to the legacy of the visionary leaders who staged the blockade of the Eastern Regional Assembly in Enugu, Nigeria in 1953.”

Many Southern Cameroons daily newspapers are expected to dedicate their front pages and many of the inside pages to the Ambazonia leader, whose name is multiplied on social networks, in some cases to praise him and in others to deplore him.

By Chi Prudence Asong in London