Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has confirmed a four-day lockdown of Ambazonia territory that started on Friday against the staging of French Cameroun so-called pioneer regional elections scheduled for today Sunday December 5.

The lockdown will run from Friday to Monday, according to a statement issued by the Southern Cameroons Interim Government on social media.

We understand the streets have been deserted and all sorts of activities are not operational. Ambazonia Restoration Forces have also issued death threats to residents if they participate in the Biya Francophone election.

On Wednesday, the Francophone dominated army told observer missions and media organizations that it has taken necessary security measures to ensure the elections unfold without hitches in Southern Cameroons.

The ruling CPDM party hopes today’s regional elections will help appease Southern Cameroonians by accelerating decentralization.

Southern Cameroons Self Defense Groups have been clashing with Cameroon government forces since 2017 in a bid to defend their homeland now known as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

In yet another incident on the derailment history in French Cameroun, a goods train en route to Yaoundé went off the track in the Souhè tunnel yesterday December 3, 2020. The incident took place deep within Eseka. 

Cameroon Concord News gathered that due to damaged rail track on the route, all services between Douala and Yaoundé got disrupted. Images posted on social media revealed that several poles were also broken in the incident. French Cameroun railway officials are now trying to clear the route.

Train derailments have become regular at Eseka and for the past four years, the town of Eseka has become famous because of the railway disaster that occurred on October 21, 2016 “officially” killing 79 people and injuring 551.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde

Unable to travel, 87- year- old President Biya has reportedly turned his palace into a clinic. The president is confronted by protestors whenever he travels abroad for medical treatment. So now he gets his foreign doctors to treat him in Cameroon.

Biya is suffering from a suspected cancer and has been receiving treatment at his private presidential palace in Mvomeka’a in the South Region of the country.

The French Cameroun dictator repaid his late sister who had always been loyal, by participating in her funeral. President Biya’s 102- years- old sister Bidjang Regine Ndonda died on October 31, 2020 in Yaoundé due to an illness and was buried on Friday, November 13.

It was the third time the president has held a funeral for a family member in his 38 years in office with the first and second being that of his first wife and mother-in-law respectively. But in all three cases Biya did not deliver any eulogy and the guest list was limited to only family members, including the president’s eldest son, Franck Biya.

Four years ago, Paul Biya launched the war on Southern Cameroons to suppress an uprising that led to the declaration of the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The war has taken a heavy toll on Southern Cameroons’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals and health centers including schools. Women and children are among the most vulnerable victims of the Biya French Cameroun war, but the issue has barely drawn any international response.

He has misruled the two Cameroons and as a consequence, patriotism is now in very short supply in Yaoundé. Whatever Biya wants, Biya gets as he has also successfully kept the population frightened enough! For more than 38 years, he assumed that no one will get on his way-and he is right!!

But now that his ancestors are reportedly knocking on his door, Mr. Biya the French Cameroun monarchical president has drastically reduced his outings in Yaoundé.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Officials of the Ambazonia Interim Government have raised the alarm about a worsening humanitarian crisis as a result of the Biya French Cameroun war against the English speaking community in Southern Cameroons, saying that “Southern Cameroons children are dying in the bushes in Ambazonia.”

The Ambazonia Secretary for the Economy, Hon. Tabenyang Brado issued the warning on Wednesday during a zoom cabinet meeting summoned by Vice President Yerima in which the exiled leader explained the decision in favour of a tactical withdrawal of Ambazonia Restoration Forces from Ground Zero.

According to several local human rights groups both in Nigeria and in Southern Cameroons, acute malnutrition rates among Ambazonia children living in the bushes with their mothers are the highest ever recorded in West Africa.

Also on Wednesday, the top Ambazonia Interim Government officials also highlighted the need for an independent fact finding mission from the UN and warned that the Biya French Cameroun-led aggression had claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people over the last four years contrary to what is currently being reported by the world governing body.

Secretary Tabenyang Brado was quoted as saying that the large number of Southern Cameroons women and children dying in the bushes is unfortunate and unacceptable.

Four years ago, the 87 year old French Cameroun dictator Paul Biya launched the war on Southern Cameroons to suppress an uprising that led to the declaration of the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

The war has taken a heavy toll on Southern Cameroons’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals and health centers including schools. Women and children are among the most vulnerable victims of the Biya French Cameroun war, but the issue has barely drawn any international response.

By Chi Prudence Asong

The Ambazonia Interim Government on Wednesday dismissed as false, reports made public by the Biya Francophone regime claiming French Cameroun security apparatus have arrested the Ambazonia general behind the Kumba massacre.

The Biya regime announced this week that the suspect, Ngwa Neba alias Commandant Zabbra, 24, was arrested on Tuesday during an incidence when he tried to rob an elderly man. Yaoundé also revealed that the success of the operation came to bear fruits after local police continued their hunt for the Kumba suspect since the incidence occurred on 24 October.

The Biya regime statement endorsed by the Senior Divisional Officer for Meme County also noted that after a thorough questioning by the police, Neba Ngwa confessed being a separatist fighter adding that he belongs to a gang of Ambazonia fighters based behind Government Bilingual High School Kossala, Kumba.

Speaking exclusively to Cameroon Concord News earlier today, Vice President Dabney Yerima said, Biya and his criminal French Cameroun gangs were behind the massacre of innocent Southern Cameroons children in Kumba.

Yerima observed that highly placed officials in the French Cameroun regime benefiting from the war ordered and teleguided the killings in Kumba.  The Southern Cameroons Second-In-Command added that Yaoundé was attempting to avoid a discourse of the crisis in the ongoing UN Security Council meeting in New York.

“The French Cameroun regime earlier announced to the world that they arrested 122 persons linked to the massacre in Kumba and now they are moving the goal post claiming to have arrested an Ambazonia fighter still on the same issue!!These are meant to taint the image of the Southern Cameroons people, undermine the legitimacy of the Ambazonia Interim government and render our suffering people more helpless” Dabney Yerima furthered.

“The Ambazonia Interim government would like to debunk and dismiss these French Cameroun diabolic harsh ploy with the contempt it deserve,” said Vice President Yerima

Pressure is mounting on the Francophone dictator Biya who is reportedly suffering from a suspected cancer. Soldiers loyal to the regime in Yaoundé have taken control of main roads in Southern Cameroons harassing businessmen and women and extorting money from the local population.

International pressure is also mounting against Biya as Southern Cameroons detainees have reportedly been sexually assaulted in both the New Bell prison in Douala and the Kondengui High Security prison in Yaoundé.

The Biya regime with support from the French has blocked all UN Human Rights experts who demanded or expressed the need to visit the country and assess the situation in the Southern Cameroons.

The government also accused Southern Cameroons diaspora, civil society organizations and opposition aligned online media of promoting political activism.

By Isong Asu in London

A separatist commander suspected to have led an operation that murdered seven school children was captured on Tuesday in Kumba in Cameroon’s troubled English-speaking region of Southwest, according to a government official.

The commander popularly known as commander Zebra was ambushed and arrested on Tuesday noon by the military in collaboration with the local population while he was strolling in the town, Meme division prefect Ndong Chamberlin Ntou’ou told reporters.

“We will take all measures to ensure all actors of the crime are arrested. He is the second one to have been arrested. We will capture the others one by one,” Ntou’ou said, adding that six others are on the run.

The seven children were killed in a classroom in October while they were studying in Kumba. Separatist leaders have since denied having taken part in the massacre that was widely condemned.

Separatists want to secede from the majority French-speaking Cameroon and create an independent nation in the Anglophone regions they call “Ambazonia.” They have been clashing with government forces since 2017.

Source: Xinhaunet

Lawyers in Cameroon abandoned their gowns and wigs Monday as they launched a five-day protest to express their dissatisfaction over the lack of respect shown to them by the country’s magistracy, military and executive branch.

The decision was made by the Cameroon Bar Association, which met on Nov. 21 following the arrest and detention of lawyers who were charged with “contempt of court and destruction.”

The incident occurred on Nov. 10 at a court in the city of Douala, where two lawyers were facing trial on charges of corruption.

They were said to have collected a large sum of money from a client who ended up receiving an 18-year sentence instead of 18 months. A relative of the client went to the judge to claim back the money paid, but he referred them to the lawyers, who admitted receiving the money.

The two lawyers were remanded in custody on Nov. 9 and sought bail the next day, but the judge adjourned the matter to Nov. 25. Other lawyers present did not welcome the decision and expressed themselves vocally.

Moments later, police officers and gendarmes entered the courtroom and dispersed the angry lawyers with tear gas. Some of the lawyers sustained injuries during the commotion.

While the Cameroonian press portrayed the event as “a strike,” for lawyer Djanda Maurice, this is not the case.

“The council of order has decided to suspend robe-wearing for a week. We did not talk about a strike. This means that we won’t do anything that we usually do when we wear our black dresses,” he told Anadolu Agency.

He considers this decision “much awaited” by his colleagues and him because the latest news on lawyers was the “last straw.” He said there are more and more obstacles to the exercise of their profession but also acts of bargaining around citizens’ freedoms.

“Faced with this, we lawyers are the last rampart. This is not the first time we have been mistreated. There are always incidents. My opinion is largely favorable to the measures we have taken,” said Djanda.

For lawyer Tchamo Mafetgo, it is “a peaceful and poignant way to express oneself and be heard.”

Above all, she said they are “fed up with the problems related to our profession. Among other things, [there is] the disregard of lawyers at the judicial level and by judicial police officers despite the provisions of the Code of Civil Procedure.”

– Urgency to reform

The lawyers contacted by Anadolu Agency are convinced that things can change if the authorities make a complete diagnosis of the judicial system.

Because “justice in Cameroon is well underway in a very bad way. It is undermined by many evils at the level of lawyers and magistrates,” said Djanga.

According to him, difficult working conditions do not guarantee the impartiality of magistrates or judges.

“People prefer to go and pay judges instead of paying lawyers. Sometimes it is the judge who suggests using him instead of lawyers. It’s a real bargain,” he said.

Tchamo only considers that “this disorder” creates problems that should not take place between lawyers and magistrates. The situation is also against people who trust the state court for their defense.

“Magistrates should not settle scores against lawyers. There is only open language that could be used to diagnose conflicts and roles. The magistrate should also not allow himself to destroy a file whose right is on the lawyer’s side,” she said.

For this, Djanda believes there are many reforms to be made. In particular, many obsolete laws dating from before independence should be revised and systematically imprisoning lawyers should be avoided.

Source: Anadolu Agency