The unmask platform is a resource for Ambazonians to start to take our story to third parties. It has been said that Genocide in Amazonia is “the most neglected crisis” on the planet. We have to grudgingly acknowledge that La Republique du Cameroun has managed to marshal her diplomatic capital to minimise the light on her criminal and genocidal war in Ambazonia. Even so we the Ambazonians have to be relatively satisfied with our tenacity given we started from a bank of no diplomatic capital.
What we need to do next, those of us in the diaspora, is to renew our efforts to take this to the constituents of those who have sought to look the other way while La Republique du Cameroun has been burning homes, killing children on their way to school and proudly publishing tales of how their valiant army killed youths in Southern Cameroons just because they were “suspected separatists”. Our neighbours can help us to question and get a change in attitude from those International Partners who have been looking away and waiting.
We must also let them know that our people on the ground have moved on and now enjoy the freedom and dignity of being Ambazonian. Looking away is no longer an option and they must all remember saying “never again” only a quarter of a century ago. Our supporting evidence is the proliferation of Community Schools where our people have voted with their feet to invest in their childrens’ futures separate from La Republique du Cameroun – waiting and looking away are no longer a viable options as a free people are not gong to return to servitude and second-class citizenship.
Reports relayed by mimimefoinfos.com from Bui state that La Republique du Cameroun militias invaded a Catholic school in a criminal intimidation. According to the reports they fired shots and threatened children, insisting “If you like education so much you must go to the government school”, in reference to the La Republique du Cameroun’s sub-standard “schools”. It would appear that La Republique du Cameroun has gone from posing as a dubious protector of the right to education to openly demonstrating that their aim is to “show” that they are running Ambazonia!
The IG this week released the first drafts of the new Ambazonia Interim Curriculum for Community and Authorized Schools. In a statement accompanying the release the IG warned parents and leaders of community schools to brace for just the type of intimidation that is reported. According to sources the IG does not expect this to be sustainable for La Republique du Cameroun as the Ambazonian RFs will collaborate to repel such war crimes. The IG will be seeking the support of peace loving international partners to ensure our children can access education, which is the minimum right if any child on the planet, without having to face such callous actions.
We encourage our people to be mindful that this action, though painful and intimidating only points to our victory as it shows La Republique has finally given up all pretence that Ambazonia was in a union with them and now wish to engage us in an overt manner in front of the international community. It should be recalled that this is a routine modus operandi of La Republique du Cameroun to intimidate school children in their genocidal war against Ambazonia.
They have already previously admitted killing two children on their way to school in the last couple of years when they claimed it was a “bavure” or “mistake”. In any normal country “security forces” would not be firing into school-run traffic, never mind repeating the process a few months later.
Ambazonia News understands the IG will be asking our civilians to stay calm and vigilant but continue to exercise their live-freedom, live-dignity as is their right under international law.
We never signed up to a union and have the right to our own country and educational system separate from La Republique du Cameroun. Even if we had signed up we would still be in the right to seek self-determination from the oppression of La Republique du Cameroun.
“Our children shall be like the stars above.”
“We shall live in plenty meeting our own needs”
“The Most High God is the Watchman of our nation and people.”
1st October 💙Southern Cameroons Independence Day🤍 . This year President Marianta is summoning the philanthropist in us on behalf of the Ambazonian children in refugee camps. We can support their education and welfare at the crucial stage where other children around the globe can take their educational development for granted.
10km Sponsored Charity Walk.
What can you do for the children in the refugee camps?
Support Friends of Southern Cameroons’ effort in providing for our refugee children by making a contribution on PayPal. You will not be charged for the transaction on this link.
Ambazonia News has secured a copy of the Address to the Nation delivered by President Marianta Njomia on 24th September 2022.
You have the chance to scrutinize it at leisure before you take up the challenge of securing our collective freedom and dignity.
The president lauded the collaboration that most of the RFs have engaged on GZ and promised to maintain the 90:10 (:0) ratio for dispensing the funds that Ambazonians sacrifice for the liberation of their homeland. That is, 90% to the RFs, 10% to the refugees welfare and resoundingly 0% in stipends for any Diaspora leader.
Action and Accountability will ensure that all funds collected and managed by the IG are dispatched post haste to serve the purpose rather than stock-piled to “prove” the success of fund-raising. Instead Action and Accountability will prove our collaboration in liberating our land and restoring the freedom and dignity of ours.
On this day in 2017 Ambazonians rose as one, armed with peace plants, to say “Enough is enough!” La Republique du Cameroun laugh in their faces “Vous allez faiire quoi?”
Five years on, La Republique is not laughing and Ambazonia has made notable strides despite many mistakes and stumbles which could be directly attributed to lack of experience and sheer unpreparedness.
If you read this please comment to give your perspective of the progress towards Ambazonian Liberation in the last five years
The old saying goes, paraphrased, “No good crying over spilt milk”. It is much less good crying over someone else’s spilt milk or spilt milk that one never had … or over only a mirage of spilt milk.
There has been a rush to claim wisdom and good judgement with hindsight for not being intimately involved with the “process”. Some who could not cope with team work may now seek to extol their prophetic instincts in not taking the “process” seriously and point fingers at others for being naïve in giving the “process” higher importance than it deserved. Whatever the case, Ambazonia News never expected Ambazonia to come of out the “process” with any favourable or advantageous positions or genuine acquisitions at this stage of the struggle with the current balance of power. Certainly much less so, at the time of the setup of the “process” when Ambazonia was much less powerful, to pursue the power-balance argument. As always suspected, LRC, certainly, and possibly the “misunderstood partners”, were playing for time with the hope that wariness would account for the Ambazonia Liberation struggle and that “normalcy” would return and they would not have to do anything profound.
Shooting into school-run traffic: act of a party who wants to negotiate?
During the time of the “process” La Republique du Cameroun has continued to burn villages and massacre civilians in Ambazonia. They have continued their 60-year practice of cattling [this is not a word but expresses the idea!] the people of Ambazonia with armed check-points every mile of “road”. One of these check-points was actually constructed and inaugurated during this period in Bafut, to believe the reports at the time! The high-profile acts on these check-points in recent times were the killings of the two school girls with weeks of each other in Buea and then in Bamenda. In addition to these constant visual tools of intimidation and extortion on Ambazonian citizens generally and stealthily taxing them to pay for the militias to oppress them, La Republique du Cameroun also went even further and orchestrated massacres in villages. These were direct assaults by their militias, which were first denied and then acknowledged as “bavures” committed by individual militiamen or commanders. Do any of these acts, in their sheer volume and frequency, speak to a party that has any intention of a peaceful negotiated resolution? Has La Republique du Cameroun ever previously stated for the record anywhere that they were engaged in any “contacts”?
Why Now? What should Ambazonia do?
Having never acknowledged any engagement, and in fact denied for the record in the past, why is La Republique du Cameroun now making a big circus of “withdrawing from the Swiss-Process”? What conditions have aligned to convince their strategists that now is the time to break cover about playing for time? This acknowledgement, even by the peripheral figure of Mr JD Momo, went into boastful details of how Mr Biya had cleverly played the Ambazonian “Leaders” and eased the pressure from International partners. So the sage of Etoudi managed, to believe Mr Momo’s analysis (boasts), to out-wit all the parties who allowed their names to be associated with the “process”, viz. Canada, Switzerland, UK, USA and others. Really!
Ambazonia News believes that the international partners who “backed” the process probably had a self-interest in seeing the “crisis” die of wariness if it could. They certainly were not “played” by the clever Mr Biya, who couldn’t “play” a primary school child if he wanted, given his state of health over this period! Ambazonia should understand that those parties have no interest one way or the other and are not against Ambazonia per se. Neither are they against or for La Republique du Cameroun!
La Republique du Cameroun has used up that card now and burnt bridges with the “victim” International Partners so Ambazonia should take advantage. Ambazonian Leaders have always insisted we wanted independence but been nudged towards the possibility of a peaceful negotiated settlement, which, being a negotiation, would inevitably accrue only a lesser position! Ambazonian Leaders would not expect LRC to come to negotiate and agree to independence for Ambazonia! Now that Mr Momo has made it clear that the international partners cannot take Mr Biya’s or LRC’s word and declared LRC is not interested in a negotiation, Ambazonia’s position is strengthened when it comes to any considerations about possible negotiations.
For now Ambazonians on the ground should continue to exercise and enjoy their dignity. They should collaborate with the Restoration Forces and among themselves to live independence and dignity. They should engage with Community Education that they control for the true benefit of their children. That is a key and important milestone in breaking the colonialism that is the link with LA Republique du Cameroun. Ambazonian children will gain certificates which give them true access to social advancement, unlike the current racket which La Republique runs where parents have to pay bribes for the right to access an inadequate education, gain value-less certificates and then become unemployed and excluded unless their parents make additional financial sacrifices in pseudo competitions that the Ambazonia children should have won fairly.
Viability of Negotiations and when
La Republique du Cameroun is very unlikely to come to the negotiation table except at the very last opportunity. The legal positions militate against LRC. There is no union treaty so LRC is only exercising de fact authority over Ambazonia. As soon as any negotiations kick off, LRC has acknowledged Ambazonian sovereignty and the notion of granting any favours to Ambazonia would dissipate. LRC knows this and most international partners know it. They just hope that time will account for our Liberation struggle and that the de facto status quo would prevail.
To change this fate, Ambazonia must continue to expel all vestiges of LRC influence from our land and “behave” and “live” free.
The Most High God is the Watch Man of Our Nation!
This prayer is answered every time there is any slight doubt. Ambazonia’s focus now is on the one course to freedom – the forcible ejection of LRC from our lives and lands. There is no need to pause to say “I knew” or “I told you so!”. To quote Jimmy Cliff, “Our hearts are set; Our minds made up; We’ll never stop; Our faith will see us through”.
This section extols the need to promote accountability and responsiveness in the leaders, including during a war.
It also promotes the opportunity for voter education in an open and competitive election process which would force aspirants to defend their past actions and future plans for their proposed tenure. The following two paragraphs are quoted directly:
” Elections thus provide political education for citizens and ensure the responsiveness of democratic governments to the will of the people. The overwhelming majority of Southern Cameroonian (Ambazonians) have demanded election modalities to govern the conduct of elections to the presidency of the country. “
“This law (Election Modalities) is therefore intended to provide a leveled playing field where Ambazonians aspiring to presidential leadership of our struggle can exercise their civic rights in a free and fair election. Modalities of election of members into other institutions shall be subject to another law (The APP Laws).”
The Critique
The responsiveness extoled here in this quote contrasts with the Restoration Council’s lack of response to the flaws and deficiencies outlined in the Executive feedback! It is tempting to also point to the several typographical errors which persist in the document. Laws are supposed to be unambiguous and the minimum that should have been ensured was that the words used were the intended words and one way is to submit to many eyes to help spot and correct them.
The unintended consequence of the “competitive” process has lead to challenges verging on personal insults and interpreted as such! Ambazonia News doubts whether this particular artefact was intended or anticipated by the RC. The solution would have been a properly reviewed and amended document based on common consensus rather than a flawed edict which the RC then allowed many vocal “defenders” to “protect” with accusations of “sabotage”.
What about a solution? One way would be by responsively addressing feedback, after duly presenting the draft to the people and other organs of government.
It must be noted and clear that ownership of the document belongs to the citizens, even if, at first glance it appears to be the purview of the RC. The individuals who happen to be at the RC at any time will come and go. Being in the RC does not elevate anyone to a status of infallibility! Instead, Councillors would benefit from being responsive to the aspirations and views of their constituents.
The Ambazonia Elections 2022 has been plagued by failures to address pre-poll challenges contrary even to the current Election Modalities, Ambazonia News understands from sources close to the deliberations.
The incumbent president raised concerns about lack of consultation, the inadequacy of some provisions and the failure initially to properly present the modalities to the Constituents Assembly or get the signature of the president before publication as a law.
Calls for these issues to be addressed were not heeded even with an acknowledgement of receipt. Instead a minority of members of the Restoration Council engaged in a campaign of intimidation labelling the challenges sabotage.
The president duly convened a Constituents General Assembly of the Ambazonia Peace Plan on Saturday 3 September 2022 to address her concerns as time runs out on a consensual resolution ahead of the poll.
After hearing from several speakers, including the key contributor to the framework for the Election Modalities and county Chairs who outlined shortcomings in the operation of the Election Commission of Ambazonia, the assembly passed several resolutions to ask the IG to regularize the document. The expert testimony confirmed that the widespread concerns about the ECA operation were a moot point as the Election Modalities could not be operational without having been signed into law by the executive.
Read the resolutions of the Ambazonia Peace Plan Constituents Assembly here.
President Marianta Njomia has concluded that the RC is not going to amend the Election Modalities to meet the needs of Ambazonia.
The president has issued a document to outline the flaws, the biggest of which was the failure to pass the “law” through a citizens’ assembly or even to get the presidential signature as required by constitutional articles.
Ambazonia news will be doing an article-by-article analysis of the offending “Election Modalities” in separate posts but we can confirm that the president has chosen to persist with doing the right thing – making sure that Ambazonian institutions are functional and fit for purpose, not just for the present poll but in setting a standard for being reflective and responsive to the needs of all citizens henceforth.
Time will tell how the conflict evolves but Ambazonians would benefit from inspecting the facts and drawing their own conclusions. Our citizens are not and should not be helpless. They should know the facts and insist on their representatives being responsive and reflective to/of the citizens’ wishes. This should apply to all representatives be they LGA chairs, or County Chairs, or Restoration Councillors or members of the Executive.
The president is insisting on transparency and accountability. That is the right thing to do in the view of Ambazonia news.
The following was found on one of the Ambazonian social media fora. It is a long read but provides reassuring legal expertise regarding often discussed legal righteousness of the Ambazonian Liberation Struggle. Ambazonians need to read it for their education, which ever route they choose thereafter. Ambazonia exists and an internationally recognisable geographical area and qualifies as a state. Acknowledgement of the effort of others in compiling this work goes without saying … It is not claimed as the work of this poster!
Francis Ngwa put the questions to Chief Barrister Taku Charles, Read on from archives: Q What are the legal basis for the complaints of English-speaking people in Cameroon? Do they need a federal state or an independent country to resolve the problem? A: In answer to your question, permit me to correct one misconception implicit in it. There is no such thing as “English speaking people in Cameroon”. I presume your question is directed at the legal basis for the restoration of the Sovereignty of the Southern Cameroons- Ambazonia over her territory. With that caveat, permit me to state clearly that it is not contested that Southern Cameroons is a state recognized as such in International Law. The Southern Cameroons fulfilled the legal criteria of Statehood spelt out in the 1932 Montevideo Convention on Rights and Duties of States. Article 1 of the said Convention states: “The State as a person of International Law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population. b) A defined territory. c) Government. d) Capacity to enter into relations with other states.
That the Southern Cameroons possessed these qualifications is no longer subject of reasonable controversy, regard had to be made to the fact that the UN through its Resolutions affirmed her exercise of the right of self-determination through a well-conceived procedure with full UN participation, that was to commence with a UN organized Plebiscite and ending with an Internationally recognized union treaty with La Republique du Cameroun. That process, we all know, was aborted and so no treaty worthy of recognition and enforcement pursuant to articles 102 and 103 of the UN Charter exists between Southern Cameroons and La Republique Du Cameroon. It is therefore futile for anyone to invoke alleged historical or political arguments to justify the existence of any union between the two, without first ascertaining whether the UN-laid down basis for the existence of a legally binding treaty was executed or faithfully implemented pursuant to the Charter responsibilities of the all the parties involved. In conflating the notions of Sovereignty and that of Statehood to justify its annexation of the Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia, La Republique Du Cameroun is oblivious of the fact that Southern Cameroons as a Legal Order, prior to the annexation of her territory, had her own executive and legislative organs, conducted foreign relations through her own organs, had her own system of courts and legal system, had her own nationality laws, and above all had her own constitution. Her loss of the decision making over these matters due to the overbearing foreign control through military, economic and political blackmail and downright colonial criminality do not affect her statehood status in International Law. Similarly, Iraqi exercise of sovereignty over Kuwait, American exercise of sovereignty over Iraq, Allied exercise of sovereignty over Germany after the Second World War or Soviet exercise of Sovereignty over the Soviet Republics did not ipso jure lead to a loss of the statehood of the occupied states in International Law. The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights only recently reaffirmed that Southern Cameroons constitute a people recognized as such under the Charter. That can only be construed within the context of the distinctive statehood of Southern Cameroons since the constitutive tribes of La Republique do not have any of the qualifying attributes of a state defined in the Montevideo Convention. There can be no gainsaying the fact that had La Republique du Cameroun as an occupying force not invoked the status of Southern Cameroons in International Law as well as the treaties that defined her International Boundaries, and all other acts that accord with the Montevideo Convention, the case she initiated against Nigeria would have been dismissed as a matter of law and fact. To this extent, the exercise of sovereignty over that case, culminating in the Greentree agreement in which both Nigeria and La Republique undertook to withdraw their forces to their respective boundaries at Independence as the leadership of Ambazonia has correctly argued, is but a logical conclusion of an exercise of sovereignty which an occupying power merely undertook for the benefit of the State of Southern Cameroons- Ambazonia as their pleading and evidence tendered at trial reasonably suggests. In this regard, there is no other reasonable conclusion or inference to draw from the totality of the proceedings and its outcome. To that end, therefore, the continuous occupation of the territory of the Southern Cameroons by La Republique Du Cameroun is manifestly illegal, untenable and unacceptable. Coming to the next arm of your question whether Southern Cameroons need a federation or independence to resolve the problem, I will defer in part to the preceding answer. I wish however to emphasize that the Southern Cameroons overwhelmingly voted for independence in a UN supervised plebiscite in 1961 and was required thereafter to exercise her right of self-determination by negotiating and defining with UN and British Government’s participation of a union treaty with La Republique du Cameroun. Note must be taken of the fact that the British Government’s participation was in respect of her UN Charter obligation and not in any other capacity. To the extent that the said Charter responsibility was never affected and has never occurred, there is no union between La Republique Du Cameroun and Southern Cameroons. Assuming for the purpose of argument only, one were to say that Southern Cameroons was never independent as the spokesman of La Republique Isa Tchiroma stated lately, that conflation of the notion of independence and Statehood would reasonably be construed as ignorance of the state of international law on the subject. Ian Bronwlie and Jose’ E. Alvarez, Leading authorities on International Law have stated that it is inappropriate to confuse independence as an aspect of statehood, because several factors may explain a loss of independence and / or sovereignty which may not necessarily lead to a loss of statehood. Brownlie emphasizes that “a common source of confusion lies in the fact that “sovereignty may be used to describe the condition where a state has not exercised its own privileges, and immunities in respect of other states. In this sense, a state which has consented to another state managing its foreign relations, or which has granted extensive extra-territorial rights to another state, is not “sovereign”. If this or similar content is given to “sovereignty”, and the same ideogram is used as a criterion of statehood, then the incidents of statehood and legal personality are once again confused with their existence”. For the above reason, it is submitted that neither the statehood nor the independence of the Southern Cameroons are in question. What is at stake is the exercise of sovereignty that both confer on the State of Southern Cameroons. It is this stolen sovereignty that we are on course to recovering. That in essence is what we call the Southern Cameroons problem. With the suggestion that a federation may solve the problem, I may venture to state that the suggestion has been overtaken by events. These are evident in the acts and conduct of La Republique Du Cameroun that rendered the fulfillment of UN Charter responsibility on the Southern Cameroons problem impossible. First, the UN Resolutions required that the exercise of the rights of self-determination of the people of Southern Cameroons be inviolable and sacrosanct. Neither Foncha nor Ahidjo nor any other person however so called could alienate those rights upon himself. In addition to the none fulfillment of the UN Charter responsibilities by the UN and Great Britain as stated above, all acts undertaken by these individuals or who so ever at Foumban where a purported Federal Constitution was allegedly conceived adopted and promulgated by Ahidjo without the sanction of the Southerns Cameroons through her House of Assembly or by referendum was null and void ab initio and without an legal effect whatsoever. Even if the Federal Constitution that came out of that process was legitimate, the subsequent violation of article 47 of the said constitution that rendered any amendment that impaired the federal character of the Republic null and void rendered the alleged union the constitution purported to create void ab initio. Besides, that constitution was not and could not be the union treaty contemplated by the UN Resolutions on Southern Cameroons because in promulgating the said Constitution into law, Ahmadou Ahidjo did not draw inspiration from the UN Resolution on Southern Cameroons, or the Plebiscite of 11 February 1961. He simply did so through an amendment of and adaptation to the Constitution of a “reunified La Republique Du Cameroun” of 4 March 1960 through Law No. 61-24 of 1 September 1961. It is therefore in error for anyone to hold that that amendment of the Constitution of La Republique Du Cameroun by Law No. 61-24 of 1 September 1961 even before the Independence of the Southern Cameroons on 1 October 1961 created a valid and subsisting union contemplated by the UN for the purpose of its charter obligations. That law was rather the very basis of annexation and colonization of the Southern Cameroons which all peace-loving people of the world must condemn vehemently. It was therefore in perpetuation of this illegality that La Republique Du Cameroun in 1972 organized a purported referendum to create a unitary state, in violation of article 47 of its own amended constitution, a so-called Federal Constitution. These illegalities and criminal annexation and colonization have invariably been denounced by Prominent Southern Cameroonians led by HRM Fon Gorgi Dinka, Professor Carlson Anyangwe, Albert Womah Mukong and a plethora of others listed by an eminent Camerounian Scholar Pierre Fabien Nkot in his seminal book “Usage Politiques du Droit En Afrique: Le Cas Du Cameroun”.pg35-40. In recognition of the illegalities denounced vehemently and persistently by many led by Fon Dinka in particular for and on behalf of the severely repressed revolting masses of the Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia and cognizant of the gravity of the consequences of the crimes of annexation and colonization, the President of La Republique Du Cameroun, Paul Biya, in 1984, enacted a law reverting the Republique du Cameroun to its legal personality at Independence, and with it, its internationally recognized boundaries, its state symbols and re-emphasized this fact as Dinka has rightly stated in the Greentree agreement with Nigeria. La Republique Du Cameroun was offered an opportunity to get into a valid, Federation with the Southern Cameroons at the AAC1, reiterated at the AACII and she declined. In so declining, she exercised an act of sovereignty which Southern Cameroons was mandated in law to respect and did respect. La Republique is similarly obligated to respect International Law and her UN Charter obligations by vacating the territory of Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia forthwith. According to Pierre Fabien Nkot, (pg 40) Paul Biya has boasted that he was ready to organize a referendum to show the world that only a minority of Southern Cameroons was agitating to regain her sovereignty. The African Commission ordered that dialogue should be held under its auspices to resolve the Southern Cameroons problem. I encourage President Biya to bring this suggestion to the negotiating table which if accepted could be an alternative to violence and needless loss of life and limb. For me, and a majority of Southern Cameroonians, anything other than a regain of sovereignty in conformity with international law is simply unacceptable. The contrary will give tacit blessings to impunity and crimes against the peace for which the UN and the civilized world are firmly opposed.
Ambazonia News Briefs 