French Cameroun must halt harassment of Ambazonia children ⁰

Southern Cameroons Vice President Dabney Yerima has called on French Cameroun officials to put an end to their continued harassment of Ambazonia children with their so-called back to school policy. Vice President Yerima observed during a recent meeting with the exiled Southern Cameroons cabinet that French Cameroun’s attempt at stifling the Ambazonia resistance through a corrupt back to school program has met with a stone wall.

French Cameroun authorities deployed hundreds of army soldiers to Southern Cameroons lately in an ill-disguised attempt at placating the international community that the crisis in Southern Cameroons was finally over. The Biya regime imposed a travel ban on all Anglophone teachers and donated Chinese made academic materials to some pupils to encourage Southern Cameroons parents to send their kids to school.

The French Cameroun military surrounded some of the Ambazonia schools used in staging the back to school campaign and disappeared immediately after the administrative authorities left.  Southern Cameroons schools harboring French Cameroun children are permanently under surveillance by agents of the so-called Rapid Intervention Battalion, (BIR) who have been harassing and molesting Ambazonian women and children.

Roman Catholic Bishops have called on the Southern Cameroons Interim Government to halt the harassment of teachers and students, and to guarantee a successful academic year.

Elsewhere, French Cameroun prison officials have put the Ambazonia leader President Sisiku Ayuk Tabe and 9 of his top aides into solitary confinement following a life sentence handed them by the Yaounde Military Tribunal.  

Thousands of anti- French Cameroun regime protesters have held demonstrations in Europe and the USA on an almost daily basis ever since a popular uprising began in Southern Cameroons three years ago.  They are demanding that the Biya Francophone regime release all detained Southern Cameroonians and allow a Southern Cameroons state now referred to as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to be established.

Yaounde has gone to great lengths to clamp down on any sign of dissent killing 4000 Southern Cameroonians and burning down hundreds of villages.  President Biya approved the trial of Southern Cameroons civilians at military tribunals in Yaounde and Douala in a measure blasted by human rights campaigners as being tantamount to imposition of an undeclared martial law.

By Sama Ernest and Rita Akana