French Cameroun army soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons have reportedly received truckloads of new Chinese made weapons and munitions dispatched by the Biya regime, irrespective of the so-called national dialogue by Yaoundé aimed at ending the war in Southern Cameroons.

Requesting anonymity, a senior Cameroon government army officer serving with the Rapid Intervention Battalion, BIR in the economic metropolis of Douala told Cameroon Concord News on Sunday that the regime in Yaoundé has received huge amount of weapons and logistical equipment provided by Beijing to Yaoundé to assist in the war in Southern Cameroons.

Our source added that the ammunitions came in via the Douala port from China and has been transported to Buea and Bamenda. He further noted that Yaoundé recently sent a convoy of 9 trucks loaded with military service men and women from the French Cameroun base in Koutaba to Bamenda.

French Cameroun sponsored militias continue to kidnap people, commit armed robbery and carry out raids on Ambazonia citizens in both the Northern and the Southern Zones. They recently carried out a string of attacks – supported by French Cameroun forces in Bamenda, Bali and Ekok in Eyumojock with many Ambazonia detainees taken to unknown locations and their fate remains uncertain.

By Rita Akana

Moscow on Sunday said three Russian seamen abducted in an act of piracy off the coast of Cameroon in August have been freed and brought to Germany.

The Russians were part of a group of sailors, including Chinese and Ukrainian citizens, taken hostage in mid-August after an attack on their merchant ships in the Gulf of Guinea.

In a statement, the Russian foreign ministry said they were “released from pirate captivity” and that their health was “satisfactory”.

They are due to return to Russia on Monday, it added.

The attacks took place off the port of Douala, located at the northeastern corner of the Gulf of Guinea that has become a hotspot of seaborne crime.

The total number of hostages taken in the attack is unclear. The Cameroonian navy reported the kidnappings at the time but was unable to give the number of those taken.

The Gulf of Guinea, whose coastline stretches in a huge arc from Liberia to Gabon, is notorious for piracy as well as oil theft, illegal fishing and human and drugs trafficking.

In recent years, the seas off West Africa have become “the world’s worst for pirate attacks,” according to the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) watchdog.

Attacks doubled in the Gulf of Guinea in 2018 compared to the previous year — the bulk of them due to piracy, it said.

The 17 countries bordering the Gulf of Guinea and adjacent coastline have limited surveillance and maritime defence capabilities.

Source: AFP

A senior commander of the Ambazonia Restoration Forces has said that the recent attacks on a military convoy that was transporting the remains of the late General James Tataw in Batibo and also that of Ayaba Hotel in Bamenda hosting a delegation headed by French Cameroun’s Minister of Interior Paul Atanga Nji bears witness to the strength of Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces.

Speaking late today in Bamenda during a memorial ceremony for a prominent Ambazonia fighter, the Southern Cameroons commander who did not identify himself during his presentation at Bali Road added that Yaoundé was trying to demonstrate that Southern Cameroonians who represent Francophone interest were more valuable than the Ambazonia blood spilled everyday by French Cameroun army soldiers.

The Southern Cameroons commander also warned the French Cameroun soldiers heading to Ossing village in Manyu that they were gambling on a failed Biya plan. He reiterated that Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces will never let French Cameroun army attacks go unanswered.

With new rules of engagement already being implemented by the Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima and the growing strength of French Cameroun opposition against Biya, observers believe the Federal Republic of Ambazonia will soon become a reality and that Biya and his French Cameroun political elites are in a state of denial.

By Sama Ernest in Bamenda

Cameroon’s government forces on Friday repelled coordinated attacks by armed separatists on government officials in Bamenda, the largest city of the country’s restive Anglophone region of Northwest, the army said.

A group of separatists attempted to infiltrate a hotel in the city where senior government officials were lodged, but were repelled by troops deployed to the area, according to local authorities.

“Some of the secessionist terrorists escaped with serious injuries,” an army officer told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Minister of Territorial Administration Paul Atanga Nji also stayed in the hotel, the officer said.

The minister was on an official visit to the region to reiterate calls for the separatists to surrender so as to deradicalized and reintegrated into society.

Separatists in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions, Northwest and Southwest, have been fighting government forces in an effort to establish a separate state. The rest of about 80 percent of the country is French-speaking.

Cameroonian President Paul Biya has called for a national dialogue by the end of September to end the separatist crisis and facilitate a “return to normal life” in the troubled regions.

Source: Xinhaunet

Roxana Willis has been awarded a grant by the University’s Global Challenges Research Fund for her project ‘Voices from the Civil Conflict in Cameroon: Creating a network and developing a research project to investigate the anglophone crisis’. The grant will go towards funding a full-time researcher to photographs of human rights abuses and reports of state violence are emerging regularly. To date, 530,000 anglophone Cameroonians are estimated to have been displaced by ongoing violence between the state and separatist movements.

Despite the severity of the conflict, limited international attention has been afforded to these events, and many of the human rights abuses occurring are undocumented. Accordingly, we intend to develop a research work on the project.

 Cameroon is in the midst of a civil conflict, which is worryingly under-investigated. Since independence from colonial rule in 1961, the minority anglophone population of Cameroon has been subjected to discriminatory treatment by the francophone majority. This has included several cases of torture confirmed by the United Nations. In 2016, these issues erupted into the current civil conflict. A strike by anglophone teachers and lawyers over the marginalisation of anglophone professionals led to a military response from the Cameroonian government. Since then, activities in the anglophone regions, such as attendance at school, legal hearings, and local markets, have been severely restricted. Harrowing

team and co-develop a project that will impartially investigate the conflict and draw international attention to the events taking place. Barrister Mbinkar Caroline will be involved throughout the lifetime of the project and present in Oxford in Hilary term 2020. The research team will use this pilot project as the basis for developing a larger GCRF bid in 2020.

Source: Law-ox.ac

French Cameroun army soldiers deployed to Southern Cameroons were behind the “barbaric” murder of a woman in the Momo County, Cameroon Intelligence Report sources in the northern zone have confirmed. The troops loyal to the desperate regime in Yaoundé have carried out several raids in Momo, Menchum and Bui County that have left a host of innocent civilians dead or injured over the past week.

Our chief correspondent in Bamenda, Sama Ernest hinted that a lot of the casualties that are civilians are not a mistake but from decisions that are made in Yaoundé by senior Beti Ewondo military barons.  A Roman Catholic priest serving with the Bamenda Ecclesiastic Province who spoke to us but sued for anonymity observed that there are many situations in which the French Cameroun army soldiers do knowingly target Southern Cameroons civilians.

Cameroon Intelligence Report understands that Defense Minister Beti Assomo, Minister- Secretary General at the presidency, Ferdinand Ngoh Ngoh and Minister Paul Atanga Nji are very much in charge of deciding whether or not Yaoundé would stop its troops from killing innocent Southern Cameroons civilians and that President Biya has “no say” since senior military officers are enjoying financial gains from the war in Southern Cameroons.

Speaking to our Yaoundé city reporter on Monday, a senior member of Prof Maurice Kamto’s MRC party who hails from the Centre Region noted that “The elephant in the room not being discussed is the tremendous financial gain that is being made by the military hierarchy in this so-called Anglophone crisis”

Thousands of French Cameroun troops are in Southern Cameroons, allegedly to fight Ambazonia Restoration Forces.

French Cameroun’s fifty-seven year rule over Southern Cameroons came to an end following the declaration of independence by the jailed Ambazonia leader, President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe but three years on, Yaounde is still seeking a military solution to the crisis with the Southern Cameroons Interim Government who still controls large swathes of territory.

The Ambazonia leader including Vice President Dabney Yerima have so far rejected a proposal to lay down arms and instead called on the UN and the African Union to send in an international fact finding mission to end the use of force in Southern Cameroons.  The Ambazonia Interim Government also insists that the so-called Biya national dialogue cannot move ahead until all Southern Cameroonians are released from French Cameroun detention centers and prisons.

According to the United Nations, nearly 3,000 civilians have been killed or wounded and some 50,000 Southern Cameroonians are now refugees in Nigeria.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Sama Ernest and Rita Akana

In the Human Rights Council, Cameroon has reaffirmed its determination to lead “tireless combat” against Boko Haram extremists.

Addressing the 47-member body in Geneva, Ambassador Mbella Mbella Lejeune also noted that numerous positive steps had been taken for a “durable peace”, following clashes between English-speaking separatists and government forces.

After explaining that President Paul Biya’s decision to hold a “grand” national dialogue with all sectors of Cameroonian society aimed to resolve the conflict, the Ambassador noted that there would be no impunity for those responsible for attacks in the north-west and south-west of the country.

Source: Devdiscourse

Fellow Southern Cameroonians and allies throughout the world,

As many of you know, President Paul Biya of La République du Cameroun addressed his people on Tuesday the 10th of September, 2019 — and in so doing confirmed the widely held perception of his total lack of interest in finding a peaceful resolution to the conflict with Ambazonia.

For the millions of our people and foreign observers who do not know what to make of the situation — in the face of constant bombardment with sleek, well packaged propaganda driven by thinly veiled neo-colonial interests — I want to tell you today with full confidence: fret not! and do not be confused by the noise from some quarters about this being the end of our revolution.

Here are your two signposts for understanding how these things shall proceed:

1. President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and our leaders behind bars are the LEADERS OF OUR NEGOTIATIONS TEAM. If anyone holds consultations about negotiating, mediation, negotiation capacity building, negotiation testing, or whatever else related to negotiation in any way form or shape, they will have to take it up with President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his team behind bars or it will amount to NOTHING.
2. The standard framework for building trust to end all modern conflicts is accountability as expressed by the parties allowing for an International Independent Fact Finding Mission, to establish a single set of facts on which the said conflict resolution will be centered. Mr. António Guterres of the UN and Moussa Faki Mahamat of the African Union should promote credible dialogue in this conflict by using their offices to publicly call for the United Nations to establish an International Independent Fact Finding Mission for this conflict.

Anything that ignores these two fundamental pillars for us, as President Sisiku AyukTabe and our leaders behind bars so succinctly put, “is a non-event and a non-starter.”

As far as the Southern Cameroonians – Ambazonian people are concerned, this time it shall be “Total Independence or Resistance Forever!”

God Bless the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

Dabney Yerima Vice President

Federal Republic of Ambazonia

Prime Minister Joseph Dion Ngute on Tuesday underlined the “important role” of the media and youth in addressing the conflict in the country’s two restive English-speaking regions.

Ngute made the remarks in the capital city of Yaounde during consultative talks with the Cameroon National Youth Council (CNJC) and the Cameroon Union of Journalists (CUJ), which focused on a national dialogue to end the conflict in the restive regions in the southwest and northwest.

“We have expressed the wish to have youth representatives in every stage of this national dialogue. Cameroonian young people from all over the country will be involved, and we are also going to consult the diaspora to be part of this historic event,” Fatimatou Iyawa, CNJC’s president said after the meeting.

“For peace to be sustainable, the media has a very important role to play,” Martin Nkemngu, secretary general of the CUJ noted.

Ngute, who will chair the national dialogue, has been laying the groundwork for the event that is expected to be held by the end of September.

On Tuesday last week, Cameroonian President Paul Biya announced the national dialogue to facilitate a “return to normal life” in the two English-speaking regions.

Crisis has rocked the two regions for over two years after armed separatists declared the “independence” of the regions that constitute a minority in the largely French-speaking country.

Over 530,000 people have been displaced internally by the conflict, according to the United Nations.

Source: Xinhaunet