26, July 2019
Ambazonia: Interim Government calls for Two Days Lockdown and Protest at Embassies in Solidarity with Political Prisoners 0
On Monday, the 22nd of July 2019, there were peaceful protests by Ambazonian Prisoners of Conscience held in Kondengui central prison, Yaoundé. Their reasons for demonstrating were; excessively overcrowding as their detention centre built for 1500 inmates now currently holds over 9000; unlawful detention without charge; no access to lawyers; living in inhuman conditions; no access to healthcare and routine torture.
These peaceful demonstrations continued till late that night. Instead of sending in police officers, the Cameroun authorities sent their elite anti-terrorism unit. We were later informed by dependable sources and allowed video evidence showing live ammunitions and teargas canisters being used against defenceless, peaceful and caged protestors by the authorities in La Republique du Cameroun.
On Tuesday, the 23rd of July 2019, we witnessed yet another clampdown by the same regime on peaceful protestors in the prison in Buea, with the use of live ammunition and teargas.
We are told that over eleven defenceless inmates were massacred, over 50 wounded, some with life threatening injuries. Over one hundred detainees have been ferried to unknown destinations for torture and perhaps massacre. Some prominent political leaders ferried away in blindfolds include Comrades Macho Bibixy, Penn Terence, Tsi Conrad, Ngalim Felix, Babila Vena. We find these events very disturbing, as they are nothing short of genocidal violence on a people guilty of nothing but the right to express their political views and uphold the origins of their constitution in an unholy union.
On behalf of the people of Ambazonia, and all people of goodwill the world over, The Interim Government of Ambazonia and her collaborators condemn this in the strongest terms. We would use every tool in our armoury to take these incidents to the eyes, ears and minds of the international community. 1. The facts of these two separate incidents confirm what was already the opinion of an overwhelming majority of Ambazonians when it comes to Cameroun’s disregard for the lives of our people, and thus the implications to the life and safety of our people everywhere in the world. In that sense what these incidents communicated to us is Cameroun’s unwavering commitment to violence as the sole medium of resolving this conflict and its determination to wipe Ambazonia (Southern Cameroons) as a nation and a people from the face of this earth.
After monitoring the situation in the Kondengui and Buea central prisons, The Interim Government of Ambazonia and its collaborators hereby make the following pronouncements:
1. we call on the Cameroun authorities to make public immediately without delay the whereabouts of all the detainees that have been removed to unknown destinations;
2. we call on the Cameroun authorities to release with immediate effect all Ambazonian political prisoners in their dungeons;
3. we call on the Cameroun authorities to give immediate, unconditional access to all independent international media and human rights groups to be able to reach every detainee of their choice in any LRC detention facility, especially Kondengui, Yaoundé; and
4. we call for a Two Days Total Lockdown of the Republic of Ambazonia on Monday the 29th and Tuesday the 30th of July 2019. All business and social undertakings are required to adhere to this lockdown. We equally call for worldwide solidarity protests at the Embassies of Cameroon and/or France over the next few weeks. This is in solidarity with our heroes currently experiencing the worse acts if dehumanization in prisons and torture centres in La Republique du Cameroun.
Fellow Ambazonians, this is a treacherous and difficult journey we have embarked on. No one can say with 100% certainty what the outcome will be. We have seen hundreds of our villages burnt to the ground, thousands of our men, women and children shot dead for no other reason than belonging to our community. Livelihoods destroyed from the burning of the bikes of bike-taxi riders to the destruction of corn farms in Bali. From the shooting dead of a 4-month-old baby to the burning alive of elderly grandparents, and everyone in between, our innocents have suffered. No one can say for sure how much more suffering we will be subjected to by this regime — how many more months of hardship, how many more people will be killed. We must continue forward and keep our eyes on the prize. The greatest danger of all is for us to give up at this point. The price of freedom is always high but we must remember that we tried peace at the expense of freedom and got 58 years of bone-chilling terror instead of real peace. We most definitely shall not accept a return to the status quo, nor accept anything less than total independence. This time, we want real freedom and real peace.
This declaration is one of our many peaceful steps intended to bring this gloomy state of affairs to a close. As a people, it has always been our intention to achieve our freedom and independence through peaceful means and we hope the regime in Yaoundé lives up to its international obligations.
Short Live the Revolution
Justice for Ambazonia Political Prisoners
God Bless the Federal Republic of Ambazonia
Yours in Servant Leadership
Dabney Yerima
Vice President Federal Republic of Ambazonia
26, July 2019
Cardinal Tumi calls for schools to reopen in Southern Cameroons 0
Schools in Cameroon’s troubled Anglophone regions need to re-open at the beginning of the school year, according to the country’s only cardinal.
The country’s North West and South West regions have been suffering an ongoing insurgency by English-speaking rebels complaining of discrimination and marginalization by the French-speaking majority.
The boycotts began in 2016 with a strike by lawyers and teachers protesting the use of French in courts using the Anglo-Saxon common law tradition (practiced in the English-speaking parts of the country) and in Anglophone schools, and it soon boiled over to the general public, with many Anglophones calling for outright secession. Since then, armed rebels have enforced the school boycott, leaving children in the two regions without an education for three years. With barely two months until the start of the 2019/2020 academic year, Cardinal Christian Tumi, the Archbishop emeritus of Douala, has called for the schools to be re-opened.
“It can’t continue this way,” the cardinal told Crux in his Douala residence.
In a recent visit to his hometown Kumbo – located in the North West region – Tumi said he came home with the shocking realization that schools in that part of the country do not function anymore. “A people who go for a single moment without school – what future do they have?”
“Assuming that the ‘amba boys’ become political leaders tomorrow, where will they get the educated manpower to work with for the good of the state?” asked the cardinal, referring to the common term for the rag-tag force fighting for the independence of the English-speaking regions of Cameroon.
Tumi noted that most of them are illiterate, and he said he doubted whether they really understand “the importance of education for the human being.”
He also admonished them for kidnapping teachers and students and described such actions as “torture.”
“There is a Catholic school in my village – St. Augustine’s College – where they went and kidnapped 150 students at night. Imagine the school age these days – these were children between 12 and 14 years. They were taken at night without shoes on and forced to trek for several kilometers. It’s torture,” the cardinal said.
“No matter their convictions, even if they are convinced that it’s necessary to continue fighting against established authority, they should allow schools to continue,” Tumi said. Church leaders in Cameroon have accused the government of being heavy-handed in its actions against the separatists, and complained that innocent civilians are the ones suffering the most.
Rather than negotiate, the government opted for military force to quell the tensions, leading to several deaths.
Originally most of the population wanted greater autonomy within Cameroon, as promised in the country’s original constitution, but the actions of the security forces have moved more and more in to the camp of those demanding outright independence for a country they want to call “Ambazonia.”
So far, at least 2,000 people have died in the conflict, and over 400,000 have been driven from their homes.
In 2017, several Anglophone groups called for a stop to the school boycott, calling it counter-productive, but were brandished as traitors by the separatists and school authorities who tried to reopen schools, and students who tried to attend them, were often kidnapped.
UNICEF, The UN’s children’s agency, estimates over 600,000 school-aged children aren’t attending classes in the Anglophone regions.
“Prior to October 2016, more than 6,000 schools were operational within the region. As of December 2018, less than 100 schools were operational; meaning nearly 5,900 schools were closed down with over 40,000 students out of school and over 40 schools burnt down,” said a July 9 statement by the Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa.
Other prominent voices are joining the cardinal in urging the rebels to stop their boycott.
Mancho Bibixy Tse, a journalist jailed for his support of the Anglophone movement, originally supported the school boycott.
He signed a document from his prison cell to call for the schools to be reopened.
He said the decision to campaign for an effective start to the new school year is borne “out of our consciences given the injustices our children have suffered for three years as a result of school boycott.”
“Our protest was for an improvement of the living conditions in the Anglophone regions. It was meant to be the voice of the voiceless masses who have been suffering without a way of letting the authorities know. It was meant to improve our educational system and not to destroy it,” Bibixy said in the June 20 statement.
“The Coffin Revolution [the local name for the revolt] is not the cause of the current crisis. Our peaceful course was hijacked, and we are suffering the consequences. We therefore are calling on parents in the two Anglophone regions to send their children back to school in September (2019). We are appealing to all political, religious and traditional authorities, development associations, Parent Teacher Associations, Civil Society Organizations, and human rights groups to join us in sensitizing our parents, children and teachers and all those involved in the education of our children for a total resumption of school in September,” the journalist said.
Tumi told Crux that is the right thing to do, so that “light will chase away the darkness.”
Source: Crux