The last time the gruesome killing of a Southern Cameroonian shook me to the core was the Ngarbuh Massacre, which I’m pretty sure or at least hope we still remember. When Ngarbuh occurred, there was this same social media outcry, great shows of indignation, solidarity etc etc etc. “We are Ngarbuh”…”I stand with the people of Ngarbuh”… “Enough is enough”…”God where are you?”….

Then, a demonstration was called at a major news media outlet in Downtown DC. Not wanting to deal with DC parking headaches, I took an Uber from Laurel, Maryland to the Downtown DC location of the demo. For those who know the general DC Metro Area, that’s not a short distance. Throughout the drive into DC, I was yapping to the Uber driver about the atrocities that were being committed against my people in my homeland. How the worst had just happened in a locality called Ngarbuh. Women and children killed…burnt alive in their homes. I told him how we, immigrants from Southern Cameroons, were going to have this massive demonstration in front of the news media outlet. Paint the whole place blue & white! A demonstration that had never been seen before and that would force the outlet to tell our story to the world. The Uber driver himself got caught up in my frenzy.

As we approached the location, I almost thought we were at the wrong address. But, I know that part of DC and had driven right by the news media outlet myself several times. The driver, who had been excitedly looking forward to seeing my massive crowd inquired if the address was correct. I was confused and embarrassed. I opened my eyes wider and looked around. Then, as we got closer, I saw some specs of blue & white Southern Cameroons flags. Then a handful of familiar faces. The same faces I’d been seeing at protests and demonstrations in DC, Maryland and New York since 2016. That was it. No massive crowd.

In my embarrassment, I quickly jumped out of the Uber, avoiding any eye contact with the driver, who clearly had many questions for me. Most probably wondering what kind of liar or drama queen I was. To tell such an exaggeratedly false story. I, nevertheless, joined the pitifully small group of Southern Cameroonians who had dropped everything on that day, to come out and tell the Ngarbuh story on the streets of DC. As I approached folks on the street handing out pamphlets to them and telling them what had just happened in our homeland, the realization hit me, that no matter what we say, how much we decry and manifest anger when pictures of these gruesome events are shared and circulated in our social media groupings, truth is, we have normalized these acts. They no longer shake our cores as they should. Truth is, we forget them just as quickly as we forget what we had for breakfast by lunchtime.  Truly sad!

These images don’t shake me to the core anymore. They just leave me sad and wondering what it is that needs to happen to bring back that real fire and rational commitment…take us back to where we were at the beginning. So we can get this shit right (excuse my choice of words). So that innocent men, women, children can stop dying…not for anything they’ve done but simply for who they are.

How many more gruesome pictures/videos do we need to see. Or perhaps the question is, do we even need to see them anymore?

Syh Aji-Mvo Ambe

Article published with the consent of Dr. Ebini Christmas

Southern Cameroons Interim Government spokesman, Milton Taka has ruled out discussing the so-called Special Status with the regime in Yaoundé, stressing that the only way to resolve 59 years of marginalization and assimilation dispute in the two Cameroons is for the United Nations and the European Union including the AU to recognize the two states.

In a Wednesday telephone conversation with Cameroon Concord News London Bureau Chief, Isong Asu Secretary Milton Taka said decentralization and regional autonomy favored by the French government of Emmanuel Macron and being teleguided by the French Cameroun regime would not be on the agenda whenever Yaoundé decides to sit down with the people of Southern Cameroons and talk.

Hon. Milton Taka observed that there is no longer any solution but for the international community to recognize both British and French Cameroun as two independent states. “Whether La Republique du Cameroun accept it or not, there is no decentralization or federation anymore,” the Ambazonia Communication Secretary told Cameroon Concord News Group.  “Everyone should go their own way” he added.

Comrade Milton Taka also stated that “There is no point in discussing old solution formulas… which disregarded basic human rights to the people of British Southern Cameroons. That business is finished now.”

At the heart of the crisis, which started in 2016, was a strike by teachers and lawyers, in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The professionals, supported by citizens of their areas, protested the unfair use of the French language and unjustified appointments of French speakers in their territories. Cameroon is passing for a bilingual country. By 2017, the situation had spiralled out of control and developed into a fully-fledged separatist war. Both government forces and separatists are now bogged down in a conflict that observers say, can only be resolved through dialogue.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai with files from Isong Asu in London

When at least 53 people died in Cameroon in late January after a bus collided with a fuel-laden truck—one of the worst road accidents in the country’s history—few observers would have expected that reactions to the tragedy would include ethnic slurs, mainly on Facebook. They were directed toward members of the Bamileke community, from which most of the victims appeared to originate. Cameroon has long prided itself on the relative harmony between the country’s approximately 250 ethnic groups, none of which dominates nationally—a diversity that many Cameroonians consider to be a safeguard against communal violence.

But Cameroon now has to deal with a new reality. A heavily contested presidential election in 2018 has unleashed a new layer of political tensions that have taken an ethnic turn and found a formidable amplifier on social media. Among the supporters of longtime President Paul Biya and the main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, many now frame the political dispute that arose from that election as a competition for power between, on the one hand, Biya’s Bulu group and the ethnic Beti with whom the Bulu identify, and, on the other, Kamto’s Bamileke community.

If allowed to further deepen its roots, this increasingly ethnic acrimony could lead to violence and threaten the stability of a country already facing a separatist insurgency in its Anglophone region. Cameroon’s social fabric could then be torn apart, especially as both sides position themselves for the eventual end of Biya’s presidency. He will turn 88 next week, after nearly four decades in power. A rash of communal violence in a southern town in October 2019 gave Cameroon a taste of what could come if the genie is not swiftly put back in the bottle.

To avoid reaching the point of no return, Biya’s government and the opposition should engage in meaningful dialogue about electoral reforms, while the government should also strengthen the country’s laws against ethnic discrimination. Facebook, the most popular social media platform in Cameroon, has a role to play, too—by increasing its capacity to identify and remove inflammatory content on its platform.

The ethnic cleavages originate in the rivalry between the ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, known by its French acronym RDPC—which firmly intends to keep the upper hand whenever Biya’s presidency ends—and opposition leaders ambitious for power, Kamto most prominently. The 2018 election, considered by many observers as riddled with irregularities and whose results are still being contested by the opposition, stoked further political division.

Since then, Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement, or MRC, has boycotted parliamentary and regional elections in 2020 and condemned Biya’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Anglophone crisis. The opposition also wants to see the government undertake some electoral reforms before any future election. This wish notably emanates from a fear that Biya could die or resign before the end of his term, in 2025, leading to snap elections that the ruling party would be better able to control under the current, compromised electoral system.

Despite warnings from influential figures and institutions, like Cameroon’s Catholic bishops more than a year ago, the power struggle between the RDPC and the MRC is now increasingly aligned with ethnic affiliations—a situation only made worse by the use of social media by both politicians and the public.

While the rise of social media has been a welcome boost for free speech in a country where government-controlled outlets occupy most of the media space, it has also had some destabilizing effects. The platforms, and especially Facebook—the most popular social media platform in Cameroon, with close to 4 million users—are now used to spread ethnic stereotypes, exchange ethnic-based insults, propagate misinformation and even incite violence. That is all widening the divide between the two sides.

The power struggle between the RDPC and the MRC is now increasingly aligned with ethnic affiliations—a situation only made worse by the use of social media.

In the southern town of Sangmelima, such increased divisions seem to have played a role in riots that erupted in late 2019, when Indigenous Bulu targeted Bamileke and Bamoun groups originating from Cameroon’s West Region. Underlying tensions over land rights in the area, notably for space to open shops—which local Bulu feel locked out of by the other groups—spilled over into violence after a Bamoun man was blamed for the murder of a local motorbike taxi driver. Hundreds of locals then attacked Bamilekes, Bamouns and other Cameroonians from the country’s north with sticks and stones, while also looting and destroying their properties. Hundreds fled back to their region of origin in western and northern Cameroon.

The government quickly held intercommunal talks, which managed to calm the situation in Sangmelima. However, the episode is a possible sign of the dangerous path the country is currently embarking on. As political actors position themselves for the end of Biya’s presidency, there is a risk they will turn to their own ethnic groups when mobilizing support, meaning even more serious ethnic disputes could arise and shatter decades of relative harmony between ethnic communities.

Both the ruling party and the opposition have in their ranks people who understand the dangers of this trend toward tribalized politics, and who have voiced their concerns. But neither camp has done much to stem these tensions. The authorities have sounded alarm bells on rising hate speech, run seminars to warn of its potential harm and even passed a new law criminalizing “contempt of tribe,” in December 2018. But the political opposition has greeted these moves with suspicion, suggesting that they are a smokescreen for repressing journalists. Yet since its passage, the law against tribal hate speech, which provides for more stringent punishment for inflammatory language that appears on social media, has yet to be applied in even a single case. There are concerns over when the law will be used and on what basis, given widespread abuse by both sides.

Given the opposition’s boycott of the 2020 parliamentary elections, which lost it the opportunity of getting seats in the National Assembly, the ruling party and the opposition have no forum where they can engage on the difficult topic of electoral reforms. Both sides must nonetheless find a way of talking to each other in order to reach agreement on changes to make the process more transparent—perhaps, most importantly, by moving from a multiple ballot vote, which is more open to manipulation, to a single ballot.

Meanwhile, to deal with ethnic tensions, the government should strengthen the legal framework that prohibits ethnic discrimination, notably for access to public service employment. One way to do that might be to better empower a body it created in 2017 to fight this discrimination, but which lacks funding and only has an advisory role.

Social media companies have a responsibility, too. Curbing hate speech and disinformation online will not in itself solve the ethnic tensions born out of Cameroon’s political crisis. But it remains key to reduce their reach, and therefore to mitigate the risks of violence. Facebook, in particular, should improve its own capacity to identify and remove fake content and content that incites violence, including by hiring moderators familiar with the particularities of Cameroonian hate speech and linguistic nuances. The social media giant should also boost its outreach to politicians in Cameroon to help them engage with their supporters and tone down the rhetoric online.

Biya and his backers may be reluctant to take measures they will perceive as weakening their grip on power. Still, there is reason to hope that the president, at 87, will consider his legacy. With separatist sentiment mounting in the Anglophone areas, the man who has been leading Cameroon since 1982 should be particularly sensitive to preserving the country’s historically amicable interethnic relations.

Culled from World Politics Review

Cameroon’s government displayed an “openness” towards dialogue for solving the country’s ongoing Anglophone crisis, during a visit by the Vatican’s number two earlier this week, according to a top church official from the Anglophone regions.

“There is a kind of openness for dialogue,” said Andrew Nkea, Archbishop of Bamenda. “But how this is going to come about, I think we must also be discreet in the way we handle those things.”

Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, completed a visit to Cameroon on Wednesday, after a five-day trip during which he met President Paul Biya and held mass in Bamenda, the capital of the North West Region.

Fighting between armed separatists and Cameroon’s military continues in the North West and South West regions. The Catholic Church believes the only way to stop fighting and end the conflict is to hold talks between the warring sides.

“The cardinal was able to say to all the powers that be that dialogue was the most important tool for the solution of this problem,” Nkea told Africa Calling podcast, referring to discussions he sat in on between Parolin and the government.

Boycott and continued violence

Parolin’s visit to the Anglophone regions was marked by deserted streets, as armed separatists called for a boycott of his trip to Bamenda, but nevertheless, many church goers showed up at his mass.

Fighting and violence also continued during Parolin’s visit as three people were allegedly killed by Cameroonian soldiers on 31 January in the village of Semndzen, located in Bui Division in the North West Region.

Troops were searching for separatists, locally known as Amba Boys, and allegedly shot three villagers in the bush who were tapping palm wine, mistaking them for fighters, according to information RFI received.

Cardinal Parolin said during his trip to Cameroon that the Catholic Church, at both a local level and in Rome, is ready to facilitate dialogue between Yaoundé and the separatists.

“This facilitation depends on the actors involved, we cannot force the partners to dialogue,” said Nkea, in an interview.

Both the government and separatists have at times viewed the church’s efforts for mediation with some suspicion.

Local church leader Cardinal Christian Tumi had been trying to help bring fighting to an end, however, he was kidnapped by gunmen in the North West region on 5 November.

“It depends on the openness of the government, and it depends on the openness of the separatists,” said Nkea, discussing the possibility of future peace talks.

Building foundation for talks

Nkea would not be drawn on what the next steps for possible mediation might be, but mentioned steps and instruments that need to be put in place to lay the groundwork for any talks. “Now, it’s modalities,” he added.

“Things have moved at least a step forward,” said Nkea, describing candid talks with the authorities in Yaoundé.

“One of the big problems we’re talking about in this dialogue is there are at least 8 to 10 different leaders of the separatist groups,” said Bamenda’s archbishop, underlining the importance of including everyone.

“This needs time, and that’s the delicate aspect of it,” said Nkea.

Fighting started following protests in 2016 by Anglophones over perceived marginalisation by the Francophone ruling majority.

A crackdown on demonstrations led to a self-proclamation of independence for a state called Ambazonia and ultimately fighting between the army and separatist fighters.

Both separatist groups and Cameroon’s military have been accused of killing civilians and committing rights abuses during the Anglophone crisis.

Human Rights Watch said this week that soldiers killed at least nine civilians in the South West region on 10 January. The human rights watchdog said the soldiers looted homes and threatened residents.

Source: RFI