The Biya Francophone army’s initial assault on Southern Cameroons was meant to be a show of superior military might and overwhelming force. But the reality on the ground is very different as Ambazonian Self-Defense Forces are now heading to Buea, the historic capital of British Southern Cameroons.

The Ambazonian fighters arrived at the gates of Muea early today the 15 of May, 2018, less than a month after the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia united all self defense grounds into the Ambazonia Self-Defense Council Restoration Forces. And with the decisive battle for Buea looming, the UK House of Common has reportedly held a debate on the crisis in Southern Cameroons.

But there was a problem with today’s attacks in Buea launched by the Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces – the lack of an enemy. There was small arms fire from government forces and by close to evening this had petered out entirely. The city looked as if it had been deserted by government soldiers.

Immediately after the attacks, the French Cameroun army arrested several innocent civilians and it is still unclear if the Amba fighters trooped in from Muyenge or Kumba.  Today’s scene in Buea was really like a movie and it sounded great to the majority following of the Interim Government.  There was panic everywhere, men and women screaming and shouting, running across, lots of noise, lots of energy, but it wasn’t a long battle.

By Chi Prudence Asong

Southern Cameroonians in Western Europe and North America have saluted the decision by the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia endorsing the policy of self-defense. Supporters of the Interim Government on Ground Zero have also welcomed the move declaring victory after the IG succeeded in unifying all defense groups under the Ambazonia Self-Defense Council. But the Interim Government hasn’t learnt the lessons of how far the Biya regime has gone in corrupting the UN and the Africa Union systems. Unless some sort of action is taken deep inside Yaoundé, the Biya Francophone government’s slaughter of Southern Cameroonians in the cruelest and most illegal of ways is sure to continue apace.

Tactically, self-defense does not seem successful enough in urban centers such as Buea, Limbe, Kumba and Bamenda. French Cameroun’s oft-exaggerated military capabilities have turned out to be impotent. Questions are now swirling over self-defense’s effectiveness and long-term impact on the revolution following silly and childish comments made by the new US ambassador to Yaoundé,  Peter Barlerin last week describing the responsible leadership of the Southern Cameroons people “…a very tiny minority of Cameroonian-born individuals living in the United States”.

The Ambazonian Communications Secretary, Hon. Chris Anu said the self-defense objective is to degrade the Biya regime’s killing capability and deter Biya from exterminating the Southern Cameroons population. Our senior correspondent in the Southern Zone hinted recently that the IG objective has been fulfilled.

No Western diplomat in Yaoundé has articulated how the ongoing killings of innocent Southern Cameroonian citizens fit into a larger diplomatic or political strategy in resolving the Anglophone crisis. Likely, there is none. No UN, EU or AU official has said anything about President Biya’s mass atrocities, his war crimes or his crimes against humanity. The clear message to President Biya from Ambassador Peter Barlerin is that Biya is free to keep killing Southern Cameroonians.

Only a few meters from the US embassy in Yaoundé precisely at the Commissariat Central, Biya has been running a torture and killing factory that former US ambassador Frances D. Cook called the worst machinery of cruel death inside Africa. Some brave French Cameroun defector soldiers have provided to Acting President Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako documentary evidence of Biya’s torture and murder of thousands of Southern Cameroons civilians in custody. It is estimated that some 2500 including the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Julius Tabe still linger in Biya’s jails.

French Cameroun soldiers are using a siege to starve civilians in Lebialem, Belo, Akwaya and in Muyenge.  Biya regime artillery shelling alone has killed hundreds of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians including traditional rulers. Cameroon government forces have raided hospitals and targeted civilians from the air. All these atrocities are violations of international norms and laws that the world shouldn’t tolerate. But they are continuing in Southern Cameroons under the watchful eyes of Ambassador Peter Barlerin.

The Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia should ignore Ambassador Peter Barlerin and his female acolyte at the US State Department and liaise with the US Congress to facilitate the application of several other tools at the US Congress disposal to stop Biya’s ongoing war crimes and crimes against humanity, and to impose justice and accountability for the perpetrators.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Western air safety experts say the disappearance in 2014 of Malaysia Airline MH370 flight was the result of a murder-suicide mission by the plane’s Captain Zaharie Amad Shah.

The conclusion was revealed by a panel of international air transportation specialists discussing the 2014 incident during an Australian TV news program, 60 Minutes, on Sunday, when they agreed that the pilot deliberately hijacked the plane and brought it down in the southern Indian Ocean, where they said the pilot knew the aircraft could not be located.

“This was planned, this was deliberate, and it was done over an extended period of time,” said Martin Dolan, the chief commissioner of the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB), who spent two years heading the search for the airliner.

Dolan dismissed the possibility that terrorism was involved, saying, “If this had been a terrorist event, it’s almost invariable that a terrorist organization will claim credit for the event. There was no such claim made.”

The Malaysia Airlines jet was on a routine flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing on March 8, 2014 with 239 people on board when it disappeared.

Analysis of satellite data indicated that it ran out of fuel and crashed in the Indian Ocean west of Australia, thousands of miles from its intended destination. The biggest underwater search in history, coordinated by ATSB, was called off in January 2017 after two years.

Six days after the MH370 disappeared, the houses of the 53-year-old Zaharie and first officer Fariq Abdul Hamid were searched in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur, and the computer equipment seized contained evidence suggesting that Zaharie had used flight simulation software to prepare for diverting the aircraft.

Captain Simon Hardy, a British pilot and Boeing 777 specialist and instructor who has flown the plane widely in Asia, said Zaharie’s mission was “planned meticulously to make the aircraft disappear,” including by flying along the Thai-Malaysian frontier to avoid either side taking action.

“If you were commissioning me to make a 777 disappear, I would do exactly the same thing,” he said during the TV program.

Additionally, a former senior investigator with Canada’s Transportation Safety Board, Larry Vance, said he believed Zaharie put on an oxygen mask before depressurizing the aircraft to render the passengers and crew unconscious.

“There is no reason not to believe that the pilot did not depressurize the cabin to incapacitate the passengers,” he said.

The participating experts disagreed over whether Captain Zaharie was in control of the passenger plane at the time it plunged into the ocean. While Vance said he believed the pilot “ditched it deliberately to keep it as intact as possible,” Dolan said the evidence indicated “the aircraft spiraled into the ocean and crashed.”

Meanwhile, a second search of a wider area of the Indian Ocean seabed for the remains of MH370 was launched in January, conducted by a private firm called Ocean Infinity. The underwater exploration in an area north of the previous zone has so far found nothing related to the missing airliner and is likely to conclude in June.

Source: Presstv

Around 160,000 people have been displaced in the crisis-hit North-West and South-West Anglophone regions that have been gripped by clashes and insecurity since late 2016. The majority of the displaced have fled into the bush with little to survive on.

Others are hosted by local communities who are also grappling with adverse living conditions. The conflict has also forced around 20,000 civilians to seek refuge across the border in neighbouring Nigeria.

Aid organisations in Cameroon are planning to roll out emergency food, health, protection, shelter and education assistance as well as provide basic household items.

At least 12 attacks targeting Government troops have been reported in the past week, according to the Ministry of Defense.

South Africa has recalled its ambassador to Israel following a bloody crackdown on Palestinian protesters by Israel forces that left at least 55 dead and 2,700 injured either by live gunfire, tear gas or other means.

Israeli troops shot the protesters on the Gaza border on Monday when the high-profile opening of the U.S. embassy to Israel in Jerusalem raised tension to boiling point after weeks of demonstrations.

The South African foreign ministry explained that its decision had been taken to protest the indiscriminate killing of protesters.

“Because of the grave and indiscriminate nature of the latest Israeli attack, the South African government has decided to recall Ambassador Sisa Ngombane with immediate effect,” read part of the statement. The violence took place on the day of the controversial transfer of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

While South Africa and Turkey recalled their ambassadors to Israel because of the US decision that has been widely criticised by its Western allies, some African countries sent representatives to witness the official opening of the US embassy in disputed Jerusalem.

The United Nations General Assembly rejected by a huge majority the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Palestinians seek East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they hope to establish in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Israel regards all of the city, including the eastern sector it captured in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed in a move that is not recognised internationally, as its “eternal and indivisible capital”.

Most countries say the status of Jerusalem, a sacred city to Jews, Muslims and Christians – should be determined in a final peace settlement and that moving their embassies now would prejudge any such deal.

Israel’s foreign ministry said thirty three countries attended the ceremony including Angola, Cameroo, Republic of Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Zambia.

In December 2017, Togo was the only African country to support the US motion to establish an American embassy in Jerusalem.

The United States which was furious at the lack of support from its allies, threatened to cut aid to countries that don’t support its positions at the United Nations and in several other international fora.

Culled from Africa News

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s lawyers are currently in French Cameroun seeking an independent audience with the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia who was abducted in Abuja, Nigeria and extradited with 46 members of his government to Cameroon. Cameroon Intelligence Report sources have confirmed the presence of Hon. Abdul Oroh and a delegation of powerful Nigerian legal experts in Yaounde.

A member of the Sisiku Ayuk Tabe’s defense team, led by Barrister and former Nigerian politician, Abdul Oroh told CIR that they were in Cameroon to meet with the Attorney General of the Supreme Court in Yaoundé and the Minister of Territorial Administration to make a request to see their clients.

The mission was delayed following major disagreements with Cameroon embassy officials in Abuja, he further pointed out.  Cameroon Intelligence Report understands Barrister Abdul Oroh will be meeting with other legal practitioners in Cameroon hired by the Interim Government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia. Hon. Abdul Oroh and his delegation also intends to hold talks with heads of human rights groups and religious leaders in Buea and Bamenda.

The Hon. Abdul Shaibu Oroh mission is expected to begin tomorrow, Tuesday the 15^th of May and ends on Friday with a press conference in Yaoundé. The man of law is supported in his Yaoundé mission by Precious Ijeoma Igbowelundu.  

It is vital to include in this report that contrary to some fake postings on the whereabouts of President Ayuk Tabe, the Southern Cameroons leader is in Yaounde.

source: Cameroon Intelligence Report

“They are hunting us,” murmurs a secondary school teacher, turning his back to the camera and asking not to be named. “The Cameroon government security forces were entering villages and killing unarmed people. Bodies have been found in forests, they used every method and means to kill. It’s a huge number of fatalities.”

Nearly 26,000 people, four-fifths of them women and children, have fled into Nigeria from Southern Cameroon. The number has doubled since January, according to Caritas Internationalis and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). More are arriving daily, while an estimated 40,000 people are displaced inside Cameroon. Political upheaval is provoking an under-reported humanitarian crisis in both countries, with refugees flooding into Nigeria’s border states carrying nothing but their children and the clothes on their backs.

The refugees tell the same story over and again, of a brutal crackdown by the Cameroon military against anyone suspected of sympathising with the secessionist movement of the English-speaking minority. Known as the Anglophone crisis, Cameroon’s English-speaking Catholic bishops have described it as “a growing genocide”, although there are no reliable data on how many have died.

The secondary schoolteacher, as an activist who has spoken out for the Anglophone cause,  has taken refuge in Nigeria. But he still feels unsafe. “Recently, Cameroonians, especially young men, have been arrested by Nigerian security forces,” he explains. “So we are scared. Many activists and non-activists have been targeted, some are in prison living in hideous conditions, some of our leaders have disappeared, others killed.”

Parts of south-west Cameroon are becoming no-go areas, with the military reportedly setting villages ablaze and multiple witness accounts of civilian deaths. The militant arm of the separatist movement has killed around 43 soldiers and police. Running battles are turning their fields into war zones, say farmers.

Journalists and non-governmental organisations are barred from the region. Reports are getting through, however, from Church sources and from eyewitnesses among the refugees. “I went to the field with one of the bishops,” says Fr Kisito Balla Onana, of Caritas Cameroon. “We visited deserted villages where the houses were burned down. Many of their inhabitants had left and were living in extremely difficult conditions. Our English-speaking brothers and sisters are in distress.”

As the conflict reaches their villages, families have been fleeing from the gunfire and taking to bush paths through the forest to hide, going deeper in the country’s interior or travelling on foot to the Nigerian border. Mispa, a mother of three, describes how she grabbed her children and ran for her life when government forces arrived in her village and started shooting indiscriminately. “We heard the army was coming,” she says. “We were grabbing what we could; we tried to find a motorbike to transport my father. When we attempted to get back to the house, my neighbours told me that the soldiers had shot him.”

Mispa wanted to go back to bury her father but was prevented: “There were some boys in the village who buried him because we couldn’t get back in, as the army had blocked the entrance.” Forced to leave in the midst of her grief, she fled into the bush with her daughter, Helen Duchess, and her other children. “We didn’t have anything with us, we just ran.” Eventually they found refuge at her brother’s house in Nigeria’s Cross River State.

Bishop Andrew Nkea, from Mamfe in Cameroon, described his shock after a recent visit to some of the refugees in Nigeria. “The conditions under which they live are appalling,” he told L’Effort Camerounais, a Catholic weekly. “They are scattered all over the place and sleeping on verandahs and open spaces like people without a homeland.”

The problems that have driven so many to leave their homes, crops and livestock are rooted in the bi-cultural nature of the country.

Cameroon was parcelled out between France and Britain after the First World War. French Cameroon gained its independence in 1960. A year later, the British-administered territory joined the north in a union, guaranteed by a constitution designed to protect the minority English speakers, about 20 per cent of the population.

These protections have gradually been eroded during the 36-year rule of President Paul Biya, now 85 and the longest ruling leader in Africa, who has retained close ties with France. Last September, Anglophone protesters came out on to the streets in large numbers, angered by the use of French in their law courts and schools. “There was a massive peaceful demonstration in all the cities, villages and towns of Southern Cameroon,” says the activist secondary schoolteacher. “The government frowned on these demonstrations, they fired tear gas at the crowds, they shot and killed people.”

Then, on 1 October, the activists declared a self-styled “Republic of Ambazonia”, provoking further clashes with government forces that left at least 17 dead, and leading to the current crackdown by the government, which describes the secessionists as “terrorists”. It has vowed to exterminate them. Defence minister Joseph Beti Assomof has declared that the military “will eradicate this inconvenient situation”.

Last month, long jail sentences were imposed on seven Anglophones convicted of various charges of activism and terrorism in a state trial; the men only narrowly escaped death sentences. The net of suspicion is being cast wide, and refugees arriving in Nigeria tell of arbitrary removals of people from their homes by the military.

“I have six friends who were taken between February and March,” says Collins, a 24-year-old engineer. “I don’t know what’s happened to them. The soldiers were killing young men like me; they would arrive and call a village meeting. They would then start arresting us, without even questioning us. Then they would take them [the young men] away. That’s why so many people fled.” Fearing he would be next, Collins escaped with his mother and family to Nigeria.

The influx into Nigeria’s Cross River, Taraba, Benue and Akwa-Ibom states is creating intense pressure on already tightly stretched households, as impoverished host families welcome scores of destitute Cameroonians. Previous cross-border migration and marriages mean some refugees have a friendly place to go, but the numbers are overwhelming. Many families are forced to live packed into tiny rooms; it is not a long-term solution for anyone.

“This is not our home,” says a young veterinary surgeon, Fred Assam, a refugee in the border village of Agbokim that has received thousands of fleeing people. While grateful for the generosity of his host community, he is only too aware of the difficulties. “It’s not where we come from. Finding our place here as refugees is challenging.”

It is challenging, too, for organisations offering help. “The humanitarian crisis seems to be very under-reported and the crisis is far more than we anticipated,” says Michael Ibe, an emergency officer for Caritas Nigeria and Justice & Peace.

Caritas and UNHCR are among the humanitarian actors working alongside the Nigerian National Commission for Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons to document the refugees and supply basic needs. The Nigerian government plans to move the refugees into camps, but many fear to register in case it results in reprisals, following reported sightings of Cameroonian spies. UNHCR has been given land by the government to establish camps, but has so far received none of the $18 million (£13m) from international donors that their plans require.

UN figures show that 95 per cent of the refugees have only three days of food in hand, and eat just once a day, saving anything they can for their children. Only one in four has so far received any kind of emergency relief. Clean water is scarce, with people drinking from open streams and pools. Malaria is on the rise.

In addition, survivors are traumatised. Many report feelings of fear and anxiety, as well as poor sleep, interrupted by flashbacks to the dreadful scenes they have witnessed. The Nigerian bishops have issued a statement urging both civilians and the government to support the refugees, pointing out that “to overcome their traumatic experiences, they need tolerance and a welcoming atmosphere”. Lives have been left behind, studies abandoned and schools emptied. Three-quarters of the refugee children are not in Nigerian schools because their families cannot afford books and uniforms.

What is to be done? The Catholic Church in Cameroon, which represents 26 per cent of the population, is calling for peace and an “inclusive dialogue”, as is the African Union. The International Crisis Group has suggested the Church is best placed to act as a peace-broker, and that the Catholic bishops should join forces with Presbyterian and Baptist leaders to seek solutions.

During the Episcopal National Council on 12 April, the bishops urged President Biya to bring all the parties to the table, free those that have been imprisoned and bring back the activists now in exile. That recommendation, however, is unlikely to be welcomed by the Cameroon government, which has said there will be no talks with separatists, only with those who embrace the unity of the country.

The UNHCR says a political solution to the situation in Cameroon is urgently needed. Meanwhile, it has called on Nigeria not to carry out any forced returns until the refugees can “safely and voluntarily return home”. One exhausted refugee says simply: “I want to go back to my country.”

That day is not close at hand. Prospects for peace between the entrenched sides are gloomy. Indeed, the situation is likely to intensify as elections approach later in the year. In an added twist, the discovery of oil in the south-west will inflame the desires of both sides to dominate the region. Meanwhile, Nigeria will just have to get used to its new arrivals, and seek support from the international community to start rebuilding their brutally interrupted lives.

Source: The Tablets

The intelligence cooperation deal signed between Yaoundé and Abuja that culminated to the abduction and subsequent extradition of the President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe and 46 members of his administration to Cameroon has created an equally dangerous enemy: corruption deep within the Nigerian police force.

That is according to Cameroon Intelligence Report correspondent in Calabar who recently found out that Nigerian police officers are enriching themselves by  arresting innocent Southern Cameroonian refugees and ferrying them to Abuja.

We gathered that the Nigerian officers are given handsome financial rewards and in some cases they are accorded rank progression for any Southern Cameroonian arrested in Calabar or Ikom and taken to Abuja. Our senior intelligence officer in the Nigerian political capital who contributed to this report noted that the dollar payments are made by officials in the French embassy in Abuja.

Some of the officers who spoke to our undercover reporter in Calabar revealed that sometimes raids are staged in camps hosting Southern Cameroons refugees and the unlucky ones are immediately transported to Abuja. “It’s a money making venture and we are enjoying it” noted a Nigerian police officer at the Ikom police headquarters.

Much of this money is said to have come from deals negotiated with French multinationals drilling the Bakassi oil fields by the Biya Francophone regime in Yaoundé. A police constable who confirmed French embassy participation in the scheme but sued for anonymity revealed that some of his superiors ordered him to include “ghost police officers” who don’t exist resulting in inflated payments that benefit some police chiefs.

A senior aide to the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Dr. Samuel Ikome Sako contacted by our London desk declared that the Interim Government was aware of the situation and had hired a legal team in the Cross River State in Nigeria to counter the move.

Inside sources in Abuja say the Biya regime is losing millions of dollars on fraudulent policing action targeting the Southern Cameroons communities in Nigeria. A Roman Catholic priest in Calabar was quoted as saying that Corruption in Nigeria is worsening the Southern Cameroons conflict.

The Buhari administration has opened secret detention centers in Abuja for Southern Cameroonian activists arrested in Cross River State. Elsewhere, United Nations officials have completed registration in Sardauna Local Government Area, Taraba state bringing the total figures of Ambazonian refugees in Nigeria to 21,291. In Boki Local Government Area, Cross River, seven new villages are reportedly hosting an unverified number of new refugees. The UN is planning registration missions to the said villages.

On 24 April, UNHCR chaired the monthly technical coordination meeting in Calabar on Cameroonian refugees to assess the multi-sectoral response to the refugee influx in Nigeria’s southeastern states. As key outcomes of the meeting, the Ministry of Health (MOH) committed to taking measures to ensure that refugees receive free primary healthcare services in Cross River state. Also, the Cross River state Primary Health Care Development Agency indicated that it is recruiting additional healthcare workers to meet increasing demand as a result of the refugee influx across the state. Some 50,000 Southern Cameroonians have fled the conflict into neighboring Nigeria

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

The spokesperson for the Ambazonia Self-Defence Council (ASC) is expected to make a public statement on Sunday the 13^th of May 2018 on the state of the resistance against the French Cameroun army. Cameroon Concord News gathered from reliable sources that Commander Nsoh Foncha will speak of the framework that was put in place in March 2018 by the Acting President of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, Dr Samuel Ikome Sako uniting all self-defense activities across the territory of Ambazonia.

Our senior political man, Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai who contributed to this report, hinted that the leadership of the Ambazonia Self Defense Council will channel its message to Southern Cameroons freedom fighters on ground zero, the Southern Cameroons Diaspora including the international community.

The self-defense discourse, the first ever since the revolution started two years ago is also expected to detail operations on ground zero and to inform Southern Cameroonians of the defense strategy being implemented with the approval of the Interim Government.  Commander Nsoh Foncha will also appeal to every Ambazonian to get involved in self-defense issues in their respective counties and constituencies. The address of the Ambazonia Self-Defense Council spokesman shall also bear a message to the governments of the United States, France and Great Britain.

This item is still developing

By Chi Prudence Asong in London