Several dozen English-speaking candidates in Cameroon’s Feb. 9, 2020 local council and parliamentary elections have resigned amid separatist threats and attacks on them and their property. Houses belonging to some of the candidates have been razed and the whereabouts of others are unknown. 

Dozens of people visited the Yaounde residence of Joseph Mbah Ndam, vice president of Cameroon’s National Assembly, the lower house of its Parliament to offer condolences after his house was destroyed by separatist fighters this week.

Among the visitors was 21-year-old businessman Elvis Mbuh, who said he witnessed the incident and fled to Yaounde because he and the lawmaker’s relatives were threatened by separatist fighters.

“They were just shooting in the air,” Mbuh said. “They told us that anybody who did not respect what they said would be killed. Then they asked us, ‘Where is Mbah Ndam? Where is Mbah Ndam?’  We saw fire everywhere and they told us that they would come back if we go to vote.”

Shortly after Ndam’s residence was burned, Batibo Mayor Tanjoh Fredrick Tetuh decided not to run for re-election, saying the security situation there, the killings and abductions, did not permit him to run.

Separatist fighters have said on social media that they will not allow the elections to take place in the English-speaking regions they call their territory. The separatists claimed responsibility for the abduction of at least 40 candidates for Parliament and local councils who defied their demands to resign. The whereabouts of some of the abducted candidates is still unknown. 

The separatists admitted that they torched at least six houses of candidates who escaped to the French-speaking regions for safety and refused to resign. One such house, they said, belonged to Donatus Njong, mayor of the English-speaking town of Kumbo. Njong did not bow to separatist pressure to resign and escaped from Kumbo to the French-speaking region.

Amid the tensions and threats, the opposition Social Democratic Front and the ruling Cameroon Peoples Democratic Movement of President Paul Biya announced that at least 27 candidates for the elections have resigned.

Maurice Tangem, candidate for Parliament in the English-speaking town of Mbengwi is among those who resigned. He doubts elections can be successful under the prevailing security situation in the English-speaking regions.

“Considering the failure by the president of the republic to create an enabling atmosphere for such elections, considering the ongoing extrajudicial killings in the Anglophone regions, I now officially withdraw from the said elections, which will be nothing but a sham if they [the elections] at all hold amidst prevailing circumstances,” he said.

Cameroon’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, insisted that in spite of the threats, the elections will still take place. He said security in the crisis zones must be improved and called on residents in those areas to work with the military and the administration by reporting suspected separatists in their towns and villages.

“In the northwest and southwest, the head of state has given firm instructions that we have to do everything for this elections to hold properly,” he said. “The security services must protect the electorate, protect those who are going to vote, protect the system and protect all the structures put in place to conduct free and fair elections.”

Separatists have been fighting since 2017 to detach English-speaking northwest and southwest Cameroon from the rest of the country and its French-speaking majority. The government organized what it called a “grand national dialogue” to solve the crisis. 

The dialogue suggested a special status for the two English-speaking regions, with elected presidents and vice presidents and additional powers given to mayors, but the separatists rejected that proposal, saying they want nothing but an independent state. 

The crisis has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced over 500,000 according to the United Nations.

Source: VOA

Lawmakers in French Cameroun on Wednesday adopted a draft law on decentralization granting special status to the country’s two English-speaking regions, where a deadly conflict between the army and separatists has been going on for more than two years, according to national radio.

The Cameroonian radio station explained that if the law is approved by the Senate and promulgated, the regions will be allowed to develop public policies in the areas of education and justice.

This special status was the main recommendation agreed upon by the participants at the Grand National Dialogue convened by President Paul Biya in early October to end this crisis, which has left more than 3,000 people dead.

At a time when many voices were being raised to criticise the limited legislative follow-up to this major dialogue, the National Assembly met in extraordinary session on Friday to finally examine this bill.

Most of Cameroon’s Anglophones live in these regions, who consider themselves disadvantaged compared to the country’s Francophone majority. The crisis began in November 2016, with mainly demands from teachers or lawyers, calling for more representativeness for Anglophones. Most of them called for a return to federalism, but a minority demanded independence and the proclamation of a new state, Ambazonia.

But in the face of Yaoundé‘s intransigence and the repression of peaceful demonstrations, the conflict has intensified. At the end of 2017, some of the separatists took up arms.

Since then, fighting has been raging between the army and these armed groups, taking the population in hand. Over the past two years, more than 700,000 people have had to flee their homes.

After more than two years of conflict, Yaoundé decided at the end of September, under international pressure, to organize this dialogue to resolve the crisis.

Will a special status resolve crisis?

The boycott of this meeting by the main pro-independence leaders did not prevent the participants from advocating decentralization through the creation of this “special status”. A proposal far removed from federalist aspirations, for the most moderate, and independenceist for armed groups, but which had raised hopes of a return to the price after two years of inaction.

However, these discussions have so far not been successful in bringing peace. Worse still, fighting and violence against civilians have intensified, several NGOs reported in early December.

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in Cameroon in February 2020, but the two main opposition parties have announced their intention to boycott the elections, which they consider to be unrealistic due to the fighting in these two regions.

AFP with additional editing from Camcordnews

The clashes that erupted between Cameroon army soldiers and Ambazonia Restoration Forces  has for the fourth year running not subsided as the French Cameroun head of state Paul Biya, worked to contain his worst internal crisis in his 37 years in power by placating the people of Southern Cameroons with the so-called Special Status.

Just a month after Biya told the world in Paris, France that French Cameroun’s diabolic harsh ploy to assimilate Southern Cameroonians have failed, his soldiers have continued to battle in the streets of Southern Cameroons with Ambazonian Restoration Forces who are making the territory ungovernable. Biya has been talking to the Southern Cameroonians in his regime and has painted the jailed leadership of the Ambazonia Interim Government as extremists and separatists.

But beneath that French Cameroun common ground with some pro Yaoundé CPDM Anglophone barons, a profound division remains between the French Cameroun surrogates such Prime Minister Dion Ngute and the Ambazonia Interim Government that presently has legitimate authority in Southern Cameroons.

Whereas Dr Dion Ngute and his cream of Anglophone CPDM leaders have embraced the special status solution that seems to offer Southern Cameroonians nothing new, the Ambazonia Interim Government is demanding the restoration of the independence of British Southern Cameroons.  Mr. Biya and Dr Dion Ngute need the French government to realize their goal; the Ambazonia Interim Government regards the French government as a threat.

The fundamental disagreement over goals, layered with accumulated resentments, are, ultimately, the reason hundreds of Southern Cameroonians in the Republic of South Africa have urged the Ambazonia Vice President Dabney Yerima to endorse the creation of an Ambazonia National Army.

Both Yaoundé and the Ambazonia Interim Government now seemed alarmed by the fighting going on in Southern Cameroons which in some localities include Southern Cameroonians against Southern Cameroonians.

With international pressure mounting on the regime in Yaoundé and coming mainly from the United States, Mr. Biya and his inexperienced Beti Ewondo political elites appeared to be at a standoff — each afraid of the other, and each afraid of who is planning to use the Southern Cameroons crisis to replace Biya as head of state.

The nearly four years long conflict is entering an uncertain phase, as American pressure and Biya’s health situation is compelling the French government into forcing Yaoundé to the negotiating table. Peaceful negotiations would never result in the recognition of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia by Yaoundé and the French government, so the world is in for another prolong political crisis.

President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and his Vice, Comrade Dabney Yerima may have no choice but to accept whatever the US and Europe brings to the table if the Ambazonia Interim Government wants to retain American support for the creation of a Southern Cameroons state.

By Asu Isong in London

The so-called special status is an insult. Did our parents, grandparents vote in 1961 for special status? Was the question in the plebiscite: Vote to join Nigeria or the Republic of Cameroon and acquire special status? What makes Southern Cameroon aka Ambazonians special? How special shall we be? I know since we are not citizens of the Republic of Cameroon, we can never become President of another man’s country. That is right.

 However, why do Ambazonians have to have special status in the Republic of Cameroon? Is it on trade terms in relation to the other nations of the world? Is it special status so that we allow them exploit our natural resources and leave us hopeless?

 La Republique du Cameroon can fool the so-called selfish self styled in Yaoundé but they cannot fool us the real Ambazonians. We gave them 57 years to think and change but they never did. They can give the special status to South Region of their country. What they are trying to do is called, Too little too late! Ambazonians

In October 2019, Nebane Abienwi, a 37-year-old Cameroonian man, died in ICE custody in San Diego. Abienwi was one of at least 10,000 Cameroonians seeking asylum in the United States. The recent increase in Africans being detained at the U.S.-Mexico border is largely a result of this exodus of people from Cameroon.

Many factors are causing heightened emigration from Cameroon, perhaps the primary one being the “Anglophone crisis.” Since 2016, there has been significant unrest and government repression in the western English-speaking (Anglophone) regions of Cameroon. Much of the media coverage has depicted protesters in the western regions as fighting to defend their “Anglo-Saxon heritage.”

Of course, Cameroon is a West African country. Its peoples’ histories date back thousands of years, the vast majority of which were lived without the exploitative presence of British colonialism. So why in 2019, nearly 60 years after Cameroon’s official independence, is British “heritage” given so much consideration in this West African nation?

Cameroon: 1884 to the present

Cameroon’s changing boundaries. Orange=German Kamerun, Red=British Cameroons, Blue=French Cameroun, Green=Republic of Cameroon. By Roke – Self-made based on public domain CIA map Image:Cameroon Map.jpg, original svg file located here., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=938868

To understand the current climate in Cameroon, one must understand its history. Germany claimed Cameroon as a colony in 1884 in the wake of the Berlin Conference, in which the major colonial powers of the time met to arbitrarily carve up the lands of Africa amongst themselves, without consideration for the desires of the incredibly diverse populations of Africa.

However, Germany’s control over Cameroon was short-lived. As capitalism entered its imperialist phase towards the turn of the 1900s, competition increased between the European powers over control of the various colonized nations, culminating in World War I. In 1919, after defeating Germany in WWI, France and England took possession of Germany’s colonies in the Global South, clearly revealing the inter-imperialist character of the war.

Cameroon — its borders already artificially constructed after the Berlin Conference — was once again arbitrarily reshaped. England took control of the smaller western regions of the country, and France claimed the eastern regions. As the 20th century progressed, like in most African nations, a national liberation movement developed in Cameroon. The movement was led by the Union of the Populations of Cameroon. The UPC led an armed struggle on the platform of national reunification and radical social proposals such as land redistribution, increased salaries for workers, and universal education.

In an attempt to undermine these growing, militant and principled movements, France strategically “granted” its many African colonies independence in 1959. In 1960, Cameroon and 12 other former French colonies were officially made independent. Far from an act of kindness, this was a strategic decision by France to install neocolonial governments in their former colonies — administrations that kept their nations’ people and resources subservient to French interests but led by native elites to present the appearance of national sovereignty.

In Cameroon, France appointed career politician Ahmadou Ahidjo as president. In a 1958 speech, Ahidjo described his allegiance to France, the nation that had exploited his own people for the past 40 years: “How can we conceive having any other partner than this country we know and love? How can we forget its accomplishment all these years that we have learned to understand and appreciate her. … ” (Takougang and Krieger, African State and Society in the 1990s, 1998) In collaboration with French military and intelligence agencies, Ahidjo’s government brutally crushed the UPC movement.

The English-controlled western regions were also granted independence in 1960. Part of the territory voted to join Nigeria, and the other part voted to join Cameroon. The French- and English-speaking regions of Cameroon designed a federated constitutional arrangement, and the English-speaking elites were folded into Ahidjo’s single-party administration. National reunification was at least partially achieved in 1961, but not in the manner the UPC and its supporters envisioned. When independence is granted and not won, it is done so on the terms of the colonizing powers.

In its 60 years of nominal independence, Cameroon has had two presidents: Ahidjo and Paul Biya, the current president. Both men were born in the French-speaking region of Cameroon, and both have maintained a subordinate position to France and the West more broadly. Major local industries are still owned and controlled by European interests.

For example, Cameroon’s largest export by far is oil. While there is a state-owned oil company in Cameroon, two of the largest and most profitable oil companies in the country, Total E&P and Perenco, are based in France (and Perenco is a Franco-British joint project). Perenco is the largest oil producer in Cameroon, while Total E&P is the largest distributor of finished petroleum products.

Additionally, after accepting an International Monetary Fund loan in 1988, Biya’s government bent to the West’s will to an even greater degree and implemented a Structural Adjustment Program, which included significant cuts to Cameroon’s national budget and the privatization of many “parastatal” companies (Takougang and Krieger, 1998). Finally, France still controls Cameroon’s currency and treasury.

Neocolonialism, neoliberalism, and the Cameroonian elite’s complicity in the continued exploitation of the Cameroonian masses have led to high inequality and low standards of living in much of the country.

Popular uprisings since the 1990s

In addition to neoliberal austerity and economic hardship, a major point of discontent in Cameroon has been the governance of the country, under both Ahidjo and Biya. Both have been criticized for altering the political structures of Cameroon to consolidate their own power, and for engaging in tribalism. Perhaps the most notable example was when Ahidjo’s government abolished the office of vice president in 1982. This angered some in the western English-speaking regions of Cameroon because as part of the country’s constitutional reunification agreement, the office of president was to be designated for a “Francophone” and vice president for an “Anglophone.”

Class society is always on uneven footing, and Cameroon erupted in the 1990s. A massive student movement broke out in 1991, and later that year, up to 2 million people participated in a tactic called “villes mortes/ghost towns” (similar to a general strike) to bring four provinces — two English-speaking and two French-speaking — to a grinding halt for months (Takougang and Krieger, 1998).

Some of the discontent was channeled into a growing “Anglophone” nationalist movement, which included organizations such as the Cameroon Anglophone Movement and the All Anglophone Conference. The government met these movements with both the carrot and the stick in an attempt to subvert their momentum: certain concessions, such as the introduction of multiparty elections in 1992, on one hand, and heavy repression, on the other. Eventually, the mass protest movements waned as the 1990s progressed.

Street of Buea (SW Region Cameroon) on a Ghost town day, 2016. Photo: DrAgach, CC-BY-SA-4.0

Since 2016, mass protests have again emerged in the two English-speaking regions that helped anchor the ghost towns movement in 1991. This time, the protests have been mostly defined by their “Anglophone” character. They were sparked when teachers and lawyers in the two English-speaking regions went on strike to protest the appointment of French-speaking judges and teachers and the use of French documents in courts, with “no understanding of the common law and educational systems that operate in these areas.”

Ghost towns have once again become a popular tactic. An armed secessionist movement has also emerged, declaring the “Anglophone” regions of Cameroon to be a nation named Ambazonia. Economic crisis, mass arrests, repression of protests, and government clashes with armed militants have caused at least 2,000 deaths and displaced thousands more. The ramifications of this situation reach as far as the U.S.-Mexico border.

Colonialism is relationship of exploitation, not heritage

The elephant in the room is that colonialism is a relationship of exploitation, not heritage. While it may be true that President Biya has consolidated state power in the hands of his “Francophone” party and has mostly stacked government positions with French-speaking administrators, it is also true that Cameroon ranks near the bottom in global quality of life measurements. Poverty afflicts millions of people in Cameroon, regardless of which colonial language they speak.

Since the French installed Ahidjo and crushed the popular anti-colonial UPC movement, political life has largely been a playground of the elite in Cameroon. Even prominent “opposition” political leaders that emerged in the unrest of the 1990s, such as Samuel Eboua and Adamou Njoya, were former administrators in President Adhidjo’s government (Takougang and Krieger, 1998).

When Western and Eastern Cameroon agreed to reunify in 1961, the “Anglophone” elites brokered a deal to be absorbed into Ahidjo’s party and government — some with leadership positions, including the guarantee that an “Anglophone” would always hold the vice president’s office. Throughout the following decades, this power-sharing agreement between elites gradually eroded, with the “Anglophone” elites largely stripped of their influence. The colonial-inspired sectarian division of “Anglophone” versus “Francophone” misdirects the justified anger of the Cameroonian masses towards a battle that ultimately benefits the elites.

Additionally, while there is certainly an element of tribalism in Cameroon, the protest movements vary ideologically. For example, The Stand Up for Cameroon movement is a coalition of political parties and organizations — each with strengths and shortcomings — that are united against tribalism and in their calls for political transition in Cameroon. To reduce the ongoing conflict in the country to “Anglophone” versus “Francophone,” as many have, is inaccurate and characteristic of the racist trope that reduces conflict in Africa to an irrational tribalism, rather than tangible contradictions.

Strong movements rooted in national unity have precedent in Cameroon and reveal the political frailty of tribalism. The UPC became a force in the 1950s with its program of national liberation, reunification, and radical economic redistribution. In Cameroon’s first multiparty presidential elections in 1992, John Fru Ndi, the Social Democratic Front party’s candidate, won major support in both “Anglophone” and “Francophone” regions with a program that spoke to peoples’ widespread concerns. Many believe that Biya only won the 1992 election due to fraud.

As President Biya approaches 90 years of age and protests continue, Cameroon’s political future is unclear. However, history shows that only a movement that speaks to the root causes of the challenges that people are facing, rather than to the manufactured issue of colonial heritage, will be able to effectively energize a critical mass of Cameroonians to liberate the country from the strings of neocolonialism and capitalism.

Source: Liberation News

Cameroon’s Parliament is divided over the so-called special status President Paul Biya ordered for the country’s English-speaking regions as a solution to the crisis that has killed more than 3,000 people.
 
Some lawmakers who convened for the extraordinary session of Parliament on Biya’s instructions suggest that only the creation of federal states, one incorporating the country’s English-speaking regions and the other made up of the French-speaking regions, can stop the crisis. 

Others said the English-speaking regions’ special status already cedes enough power and resources to the crisis-prone areas, where separatists are fighting to create an English-speaking state

Cavaye Yeguie Djibril, speaker of Cameroon’s National Assembly, told the lower house of the Parliament that Biya asked him to convene the extraordinary session  solely to examine the bill and vote it into law because Biya is determined to restore peace in the restive English-speaking regions.  

Lawmaker Njume Peter Ambang from the English-speaking South-West said the section of the bill granting a special status to the English-speaking regions could calm rising tensions for peace to return.

“It is a moment for us to leave a legacy and we should look at this particular document with a lot of seriousness and responsibility,” Ambangsaid.  “We owe Cameroonians a lot. This is the moment that I think we have to make Cameroonians to know that they elected us for their own interest.”

The bill envisages the creation of assemblies of chiefs, regional assemblies and regional councils for the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions with each of the two regions having elected presidents, vice presidents, secretaries, public affairs management controllers and three commissioners responsible for what the bill describes as economic, health, social, educational, sports and cultural development affairs. 

It also would also create the post of a public independent conciliators, responsible for solving disputes over the functioning of regional administrations. The bill also proposes more powers for elected mayors and would give them the authority to recruit hospital staff and teachers. 

But lawmaker Henry Kemende, from the English-speaking North-West region, said the special status for the English-speaking regions will not solve the crisis because most English speakers expect the creation of a federal state recognizing the people’s cultural and linguistic diversity. He said the French-speaking regions should constitute one state while the English speakers form another in a federal republic.

“We thought that will have a bill that will admit the fact that we have failed in a unitary state and that we were going to try something different from the unitary state,” he said.

George Elanga Obam, Cameroon’s minister of decentralization, said by opting for the acceleration of decentralization, Biya is respecting proposals made by people his government consulted.

Obam said after consulting Cameroonians of all walks of life and organizing a national dialogue called by Biya, it was unanimously agreed that effective decentralization is the solution to the crisis in the English-speaking North-West and South-West regions. He said the special status will make the English-speaking regions more involved in making decisions that affect their lives and contributing to their own development.

Separatist leaders invited to the national dialogue this fall refused to take part, calling it a non-event. The talks  recommended that the English-speaking regions be given special status.

Violence erupted in 2017 in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions when teachers and lawyers protested alleged discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

Source: VOA

Lawmakers in Cameroon are debating a bill that seeks to grant more autonomy to the troubled Anglophone regions.

The recent development comes more than two months after the Grand National Dialogue called by government which took place in the capital, Yaoundé.

Parts of the new law adopted earlier this week stipulates that court decisions can be rendered “in any of the official languages, depending on the choice of the litigant and the understanding of all present in court.”

Cameroon’s English-speaking North West and South West regions have been experiencing a civil conflict since 2016, when protesters and security forces clashed.

The demonstrations were initially over the use of French in the English majority regions, it started from teachers and lawyers marching the streets with branches of trees.

But the relating security crackdown led to a spiral in the demands as a group of activists declared a security-political push to secede from Cameroon.

People in the twin regions have long hoped for a return to peace. Hundreds of people have died in the clashes between secessionists and government forces. Thousands have also been displaced by the violence.

President Paul Biya recently brought up the issue of granting special status to the regions as part of efforts to end the crisis.

Source: Africa News

Over the last two weeks, a lot has been happening in Yaoundé. The pressure from the United Nations and the United States has triggered a flurry of activities in the nation’s capital and despite their best efforts, the ruling CPDM, popularly known as the crime syndicate that has been made of the mold as the Sicilian Mafia, has been working hard to foster its negative ideas that have put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

The immediate cause of the Southern Cameroons crisis was the use of French in Southern Cameroonian schools and courts, and for three years now, the protest that was started by lawyers and teachers has actually morphed into a full blown civil war that has already consumed more than 5,000 lives, including some 2,000 army soldiers.

In normal circumstances, the effort would be to appease the English-speaking minority with a view to restoring peace, but Cameroon’s authorities are hell-bent on seeing more blood flood the streets of Southern Cameroons.

Soldiers have been on their regular killing spree. Killing has become their stock in trade and over the last weeks, more than 100 Southern Cameroonians have been killed by trigger-happy, sex-starved and alcohol-inflamed soldiers sent by the Minister of Defense, Joseph Beti Assomo, to kill as many Southern Cameroonians as possible before Americans and the United Nations come in.

In Mankon, in the North West Region, a small family was put through excruciating pain a few days agao when two brothers were pulled out of their house and shot point blank by army soldiers. The soldiers walked away as if nothing had happened. They have become inured to killing to the point where human life has no meaning to them.

In Bamanda, the North-west regional capital, an American working for the United Nations and who has elected anonymity, has reported that a deaf man was killed in cold-blood when soldiers on their way to a killing site saw a deaf Southern Cameroonian wearing hearing aid which they mistook for espionage equipment.

They tore down the hearing aid, making it impossible for the deaf man to even understand them and, of course, they were speaking in a foreign language. When they started raining questions on him, he could not hear, so he could not answer any of their questions. The soldiers beat the living day light out of the deaf man and lodged a few bullets into his chest.

In their view, the deaf man was spying for the Southern Cameroonian fighters who have given government troops a run for their money. This has become a daily show in most of Southern Cameroons.

In Mutengene, a small vibrant town some 4 miles from the Southwestern regional capital, Buea, soldiers loyal to the country’s president, Paul Biya, pulled out four able-bodied young men from their home and sent them to an early grave.

Killing innocent civilians is now a sport in Southern Cameroons and this has only radicalized many people in the two English-speaking regions, with the Diaspora delivering much-needed financial and military assistance for the civilians to defend themselves.

This self-defense initiative has in three years sent some 2,000 army soldiers to the world beyond and this is not fazing the government which sees military violence as the only solution even after three years of fighting with no significant results.

The latest killing of soldiers occurred yesterday, December 12, 2019 in Widikum in the Northwest region where three Special Forces were ambushed and killed. Seven others had fallen a day before in the Northwest region and one would think such unfortunate situations will cause a change in the government’s strategy, especially as the international community is breathing heavily down its neck.

The Biya government seems to be intent on destroying the country before it ever leaves and each of its actions only makes secession possible. The Parliament is seriously supporting the executive branch of government by passing into law bills that will only push Southern Cameroonians further away from East Cameroon.

Today, it is possible for Francophone magistrates to try Southern Cameroonians in a language many Southern Cameroonians deem foreign. This was one of the triggers of the conflict and the government has decided to pour more gasoline into a burning house.

Southern Cameroonian lawyers are against that and they have clearly articulated their disagreement in a letter to the justice minister, Laurent Esso, himself one of the architects and enablers of the crisis that has pushed the country’s economy further into the abyss.

But one question remains. Can Francophone magistrates be that bold to sit in courts in Southern Cameroons when many armed groups are kidnapping and killing government officials in the two English-speaking regions of the country?

With insecurity attaining unprecedented levels in that part of the country, won’t it preposterous for a Francophone magistrate to accept to play such a role in an environment where there are more guns than bread?

Due to the government’s indifference to the plight of the people, Southern Cameroonians now see security forces more as enemies than friends, making it hard for them to help security forces in their search for civilian criminals, as there are also military criminals.

A source in Kumba has lamented that both the military and criminal elements who pass off as Amba boys are now threatening young girls that their entire families will be killed if they do not come to specific locations to have sex with them.

The young women who are in their early 20s actually have no options and they have been yielding to this pressure. Many have been infected with HIV and thousands have been impregnated by these criminal elements who have made life unbearable to the local population.

The people are helpless. The government’s recklessness is not helping matters. Its indifference and military violence are only making things worse. Young women are paying a huge price for a situation they have never bargained for.

The madness is spreading very fast and it will soon become a way of life if the government does not change its ways. The government might be playing games. It might think it is scoring some points, but it is the future of the country and that of its young men and women that are being ruined by a government run by a bunch of old people. The old people are simply a wet blanket over the country and until they are taken out of the system, Cameroon will never be one and indivisible.

The madness looks really serious and there are questions as to whether it can be cured. Of course, it is curable and it is up to Cameroonians, especially those in East Cameroon whose lack of courage has emboldened the government in its tragic-comedy that is keeping the international community awake all night.

By Dr Joachim Arrey

Cameroon’s House Speaker of National Assembly Cavaye Yeguie Djibril on Wednesday called on Cameroonians residing abroad to stop organizing protests to demand change back home.

“When one is Cameroonian, it is in Cameroon that one speaks about the affairs of Cameroon and not on the pavement of foreign territory,” Cavaye said at the close of the November session of the National Assembly.

Since January, a group of disgruntled Cameroonians known as “brigade anti-sardinard” has organized violent protests in Cameroon’s embassies in Europe and North America to press for “change of power” in Cameroon.

Cameroon has on several occasions blamed foreign countries for permitting the protesters “to destabilize the country” from abroad.

Source: Xinhuanet

Tamanjong Stella is upset because her children‘s school is closed, a victim of a bitter dispute between English-speaking protesters and the government of this largely French-speaking central African nation.

“The teachers say they cannot start classes until the government has removed the security forces that are posted everywhere,” said Stella, who lives in Bamenda, the capital of one of two English-speaking regions of Cameroon. “I do not know what is going to become of my children without school.”

Months of protests and clashes with government troops have not only forced schools to close, but the Internet also has been shutdown and dissidents have been jailed as English-speaking citizens demand equal rights.

Although English and French are both official languages, the English speakers say President Paul Biya, 83, discriminates against them by installing French teachers, judges and officials in their regions.

“Francophone teachers who teach English-speaking children must be removed and replaced by English-speaking teachers,” said Wilfried Tassang, executive secretary of the Cameroon Teachers Trade Unions, whose members walked out of their schools three months ago. “Francophone judges must also be removed to have English-speaking judges.”

In December, police killed at least four people in a market in Bamenda after a strike by teachers and lawyers. A month earlier, police killed one person and arrested more than 60 during violent protests there.

The conflict stems from Cameroon’s colonial past, when separate parts of the country achieved independence from Britain and France in the early 1960s and the English-speaking regions opted to join Cameroon rather than neighboring Nigeria. The resulting country was supposed to draw strength from its linguistic diversity.

“We should never forget that we are walking in the footsteps of our country’s founding fathers, our national heroes, who shed their blood to bequeath to posterity a nation that is united in its diversity,” Biya said late last year in a rare statement about the conflict. “Cameroon’s unity is therefore a precious legacy with which no one should take liberties.”

Critics said Biya could quell the protests by granting more powers to the English-speaking regions. “President Biya said that the founding fathers wanted a rich country with its diversity, but this diversity is also linguistic,” said George Ngwane, who has written books about Cameroon‘s politics.

A week before Biya issued his statement, security forces arrested the leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, a banned group, without making the charges public. The group had organized “ghost town” demonstrations, where people refused to leave their homes or go to work.

Joseph Ayeah Chongsi, executive director of Human Rights, Peace and Advocacy, said Biya needed to hold accountable police who had killed citizens at protests or in jail or locked up activists without explanation.

“The Cameroonian government must set up an independent commission to investigate all suspected cases of death, particularly those arising during custody,” said Chongsi.

The problem has disrupted the economy of the two English-speaking regions, especially after Biya shut down the Internet in those provinces in mid-January.

Travel agent Awah Francis in Buea, capital of the southern English-speaking province, said he can’t book tickets or make financial transactions without Internet access.

“It is absolutely unacceptable,” Francis said. “I am obliged to travel to the capital to make money transfers, to receive my salary or even to consult my (email) mailbox. The banking establishments do not have a connection. We are tired of this suffering.”

The Roman Catholic Church, a powerful force in the country, offered to mediate the dispute, but so far Biya has instead asked chiefs, religious authorities and trade union leaders to find a solution to the crisis.

“There is need for dialogue, because violence, separation or anger never solves any problem. People must sit at the table to talk,” said Kwai Amos, a Catholic priest in the English-speaking Northwestern province.

That isn’t enough for many young adults who say they are missing opportunities and see a bleak future ahead.

Edmondo Bayo​, 24, from the English-speaking Northwestern province, left Cameroon last year to find more opportunities in Europe and hopes to join his brother who is studying in England.

Bayo took part in the December protests, but says he was arrested and tortured for three days. He escaped his captors and made his way to Lesbos, Greece, along with about 30 other English-speaking Cameroonians who are living in a refugee camp waiting to be granted asylum in Europe.

​”They call us young rebels, saying that we want to divide the country,” he said. “But as English-speaking people in Cameroon, we can‘t find a job.”

Edmondo Bayo, an English-speaking refugee from Cameroon inside the Moria refugee camp that was snowed in the beginning of January. He escaped his country to search for more opportunities in Europe. 

Culled from Livingston Ledger