MINORITIES UNDER MILITARY OCCUPATION:
The Case of the Southern Cameroons
(Ambazonia)
The context in which we find ourselves here, in the
midst of the United Nations Rapporteur on Minority Issues (Dr. Fernand de
Varennes) is understood, but it would be difficult to concede to the idea that
the Southern Cameroons is a minority. Can we call a territory that in history
has had a Parliament, a Prime Minister, and a defined international territorial
boundary, can we in all sincerity reduce it to just a demographic minority? We
are a people, the Southern Cameroon peoples, and therefore self-determination
is our business.
A West African proverb says that he who does not know
where the rain began to beat him cannot say where he dried his body. The rain
of military occupation that beat the Southern Cameroons began sixty years ago,
from the day its independence was stolen, that is 1st October 1961,
through the 1972 dismantling of the two-state federation of equal partners, to Paul
Biya’s outright declaration of war on the peace-loving peoples’ of the Southern
Cameroons on the 30th November 2017. This sinister declaration that
would culminate into a vicious genocide would be the first in our parts of the
world since the Biafran civil war to render a defenseless Southern Cameroon
people one of the world’s endangered oppressed today.
The Southern Cameroons never had an army. Throughout
the Mandate and Trusteeship periods before 1961, some Nigerian policemen were
deployed mainly in the capital of the Ambazonian, Buea. Generally, each
community in the SC had its local 'police' , what was called Native Authority
police. In the days of West Cameroun, that is, the period of their federation
with French Cameroon, the Buea government established a police force. But it
was not armed. The policeman had a whistle and a baton stick. Even when the
armed Mobile Wing Police was created it was a special unit that remained in the
barracks and was deployed only on special duty in some trouble spot especially
in border areas with French Cameroun where the 'maquisards' from there tried to
use the West Cameroon (Southern Cameroons) border areas as rear bases. So, our
people generally never experience armed security officials. They were used to a
civil police imbued with a high sense of discipline, integrity and respect for basic
human rights. This armless innocent and defenseless nature of these peoples
came as a result aloof their education. During colonial days under the British,
it was the missionaries most especially the Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians
who were in charge of education. The British colonial masters never set up even
one single college for the people. And so the education was education with a
human and spiritual face, Christian education if you like. They never
experienced any incident of violence by security officers. The policeman in the
Southern Cameroons was a peace office and a friend of the people.
The only time the people of the SC saw armed soldiers
was when the UK government deployed a battalion of the British army to ensure
security during the plebiscite of February 1961. The British army built and was
housed in three camps (built with prefab), one in Buea, one in Mamfe and a
third in Bamenda. The British army was withdrawn from the Southern Cameroons immediately
after the plebiscite.
2. So when Following the de facto political association
with French Cameroun on 1 October 1961, the oppressing government of French
Cameroun took three measures within the first week of October 1961. These
measures were very traumatic for the people of the Southern Cameroons.
- First, French
Cameroun moved armed troops into the SC and were housed in the very emergency
camps British troops had built and vacated. These were experienced by the
Southern Cameroonians up till today as a foreign army of occupation: they spoke
and still speak only French (meaning they cannot communicate with the people),
they rough-handle and mistreat the people on the slightest pretext, and they
are armed and ever-present and take pride in intimidating the people. They
assume an air of superiority and conduct themselves as an out-and-out army of
occupation.
They routinely carry out violent cordon and search
operations (for what the people knew not) during which the people are severely
abused and treated like prisoners of war. They also set up roadblocks every
few kilometers along the highway for checking 'laisser-passer' and 'carte
d'identite' and other documents it pleases them to ask. Non presentation of any
document requested is punishable by torture and imprisonment.
Dear Friends we are talking about a 50-year experience
of a defenseless people in the hands of military barbarians.
- Secondly, the repressive Yaoundé government decreed a state of
emergency over the whole of the Southern Cameroons. The state of emergency was
for an indefinite period since it was renewable ad infinitum every six months.
The state of emergency decree introduced detention camps called 'les
Centres d' Internement Administratif '. These were detention camps for
those declared to be "dangerous to public security". They were not different
from Hitler's Gestapo camps.
- Thirdly, six months later, in March 1962, Yaounde decreed a Subversion
Ordinance which criminalized a wide range of ill-defined conduct and shielded
the regime and its members from any form of criticism whatsoever. French
Cameroun's system and practice of torture was introduced in the Southern
Camerouns. Torture facilities known as BMM centres: (brigade mixte mobile
centres), were established in Victoria, Kumba, Mamfe and Bamenda. The favourite
torture techniques were the 'balancoire' and the 'courant'.: a stand sort of
device for suspending victims after they have been tied up like animals; they
are made to swing on this device as they are subjected to merciless beating;
often too, the passage of electrical current through the body of the victim,
the points of application being the armpits, the genitalia, the eyelids etc.
The Emergency decree and the Subversion decree were arbitrarily enforced by
newly created military tribunals from which there was no appeal.
In May 1972 French Cameroun illegally
decreed the federation out of existence and formally annexed the Southern
Cameroons. This action was met with continuing protests by the people of the
Southern Cameroons. French Cameroun responded by drafting more of its troops to
occupy the Southern Cameroons with orders to shoot to kill. From June 1972 to
1989 incidents of military killing of Southern Cameroons' civilians gradually
escalated.
Another peak point was the period of the launching if multiparty politics
(animated by the Southern Cameroonian political consciousness), that is, after
the launching of the SDF in May 1990 to 2016 the people of the Southern
Cameroons rose up again like one man to protest against repression, occupation
and colonization. The response from French Cameroun was the dispatching of more
troops into the Southern Cameroons with orders again to shoot and to kill.
Widespread killings by these occupation troops were carried out with impunity.
The Yaoundé regime encouraged and glorified these killings by its troops in the
occupied territory of the Southern Cameroons.
It was in November 2017 that armed conflict broke out between the Southern
Cameroons and French Cameroun when the latter declared war on the former and
poured thousands and thousands of troops and war materiel into the Southern
Cameroons. The occupation has tightened entailing more and more widespread
killing and destruction and occasioning hundreds of thousands of refugee and
IDP flows.
Thinking of an appropriate metaphor to describe the brutal
unbearable nature of military occupation of French Cameroon over the Southern
Cameroons(Ambazonia), I could only think of the metaphor of Kinfa’fa’ai – the poisonous wasp – a
notorious predator of the insect family. Wasps, we learnt in our African story
telling time, greet unsuspecting prey with an agonizing, paralyzing sting, then
lay eggs on their body, which then proceed to ‘eat the victim alive’. The
occupying military forces of Paul Biya have transformed themselves into the
personification of Kinfa’nfa’ai. Our
poor innocent people are daily eaten alive, to say the least, by the Cameroon
republic’s military forces. Humanitarian crisis after four years, contrary to
the underestimated figures given by international humanitarian institutions and
organizations the real situation of the humanitarian crisis is progressively
deteriorating with about:
v
15,
000 deaths
v
5000 detainees
v
400
burned villages
v
500,000
refugees scattered in various countries especially Nigeria.
v
2 million internally displaced persons.
v
800,000
children deprived of the right to education.
In four years, the bloody confrontations that have
broken out in the Southern Cameroons have shocked the conscience of the
international community, though they have refused to become part of the
resolution of this problem thus facilitating the despot and oppressor to do his
mayhem and go scot free. The silence is deafening especially from international
bodies and media, the affected people must not be scared by the enormity of the
task, by the immorality of the present. I call on the international human
rights bodies, the African Union and the United Nations Organization to play fair.
After all the problem at its roots is the failure of the United Kingdom and the
UNO to grant full independence to a nation that was supposed to be one.
But the subjection of our people into mental and
psychological servitude has been most dangerous to even physical military
occupation. The fear of pain and suffering is no longer the problem, it is the
struggle for survival that rules the minds of our people for this wild and
barbaric occupation has been a thing so terrible and despicable that the word
‘genocide’ is beginning to be an understatement. But there has been another
consequence, in fact a pandemic that is not talked about in this part of the
world now as a result of the genocide. The explosion of mental and moral
illness. Major depressions, psychosis, grief responses, schizophrenia, manic
angers, from our suffering people - on a scale none of us have had before. They
have been the story book victims of a cultural holocaust. Since the biblical story
of Cain and Abel history has not inflicted on a people such brotherly betrayal
as that in the Southern Cameroons and their so-called brothers of the Cameroon
republic. Indeed, we bear the scars of brotherhood in a union between a lamb
and a lion.
The moral illness is a weakening of faith in a moral
international institution like the UNO that has let down our people and that
has not only passed unnoticed the wounded man in the biblical Good Samaritan
parable, but that seems to enable and encourage the oppressors of our people.
History is our great teacher, and Ruanda is still fresh in our minds.
Military occupations are an act of moral cowardice on the part of the malignant
oppressor, especially in the 21st century where true power is
displayed on the dialogue and debate table. For if the government of the French
Cameroon knew that its presence in the Southern Cameroons is legitimate, why is
the area being militarized? They know very well that the people’s hearts had
long left Yaoundé. All that militarization is a clear indication that the
annexing power knows that its days are numbered.
It is important to underline here that I am deeply
involved in this independent struggle because my family has been victim
struggle. The example of my biological father has inspired the whole family to
choose the painful path of being the awakened conscience of our people- so my
whole family is pointedly involved, more because they have been helpless
victims of the bestial military occupation, so I would betray my conscience if
I back down for I am firmly convinced that a true apostle of Christ must
embrace, in the manner of Christ himself, the preferential option for the poor,
the oppressed and the vulnerable of this world.
Consequently, we are nearly all in exile because of our outspokenness.
My parents are wanted people, wanted by the barbaric political powers of
Cameroon; and my life, since 2016, is in the balance, because it has received
threats. My father left for Nigeria in
1997 in exile and later joined us in neighboring French Cameroon in Douala for
another 15 years of exile. So am in Italy enjoying the freedom I have never had
in my entire life. I was already considered dangerous by the Cameroon
Government because I was already on newspapers and the radio touching on issues
concerning the country’s moral soul. There I already had ambitions to be a
writer. Since writers name the unnamable, that is, to express what other people
fear to say as Salman Rushdie said in his novel The Satanic Verses, writing became my own weapon against the
despicable ethical and political situation of that country.
The Dantean Inferno, the hell of the Southern
Cameroons today is abysmal. And the betrayal is not only external but it is
deep within the revolution. The pain is that some Southern Cameroons have
zoomed off into the best-cushioned limbo of saboteurs of the revolution. Or
like some have done recently, rely on tainted information of a proud people,
and withdrawn into a life of austere examination in search of masturbatory
assistance by resorting, ostrich-like, to material from victims and the
oppressed to paint the story of the oppressed people dark and to give victory
to the oppressor. That the Church of the Southern Cameroons has sadly been a
victim.
We have discovered painfully that no one can speak for
us. And so our people are ready for anything, to gain their independence. Only
those who daily live through the humiliations, the third class citizenships of
the world, in the slaughterhouse of bondage, only we can fully figure out and
see the sights of these inconsistencies in a world experiencing such speedy and
puzzling changes.
You cannot suppress the truth. Colonialism is a crime
against humanity, an international evil, and an evil which has been condemned
by all nations of the world including the United Nations Organization(UNO). And
when the colonizing power turns out to be your own brother it is even more
disgraceful. The Southern Cameroons is a territory with well-defined
boundaries, and its independence was hijacked or stolen in 1961. As long as the
occupying forces of the Republic of Cameroon continue to do what they know is
wrong, my people will continue to struggle. As God is always on the side of the
truth, I have no doubt whatsoever that the Southern Cameroons would achieve its
goal of a full independent State.
By
Rev. Fr. Gerald
Jumbam
Ph.D., Moral
Theology,
Professor, Italy
