VIEWS AND RESOLUTIONS OF THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS’ NATIONAL DEFENSE COUNCIL ON THE MOST RECENT POGROM AND HAVOCKS COMITTED ON THE TERRITORY OF THE BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS BY THE BIYA REGIME:
Fellow-citizens of the British Southern Cameroons,
In the last week of February, the people of Cameroun Republic gave an example of how the rebellion would be when they finally sit up against Biya’s long years of political stewardship to the French. That popular revolt was triggered by one man’s stubborn and reckless determination to crown himself life president of that country. It was also triggered by the cruel economic hardship and grinding poverty cynically imposed on the population by that man’s hideous misgovernment and ghastly mismanagement. That revolt spilled over into our Homeland, the British Southern Cameroons, which is for the time being still under the colonial occupation of Cameroun Republic.
The Yaoundé colonial regime seized upon that spill-over revolt as was stated in the earlier statement from the Presidency of the British Southern Cameroons, to once more order its military and police forces to carry out yet another round of organized extensive massacres of our people. These barbarities, which the ruler of Cameroun Republic and his brutal regime find very congenial, partake of that country’s national policy of continuing ferocious repression in the Southern Cameroons. That policy of repression is carried out in the hopeless hope of striking terror in us. The terror is meant to deflect us from the sacred task of breaking the chains of colonialism with which we are fettered and rightfully asserting our everlasting freedom as a sovereign independent nation.
But we are proud we have a gallant and avant-garde youth with an iron-will determination to soldier on with us until we get to the Promised Land. Our youths, girls and boys, students and non-students, employed and unemployed are the spear of our nation. They have never hesitated to attend to the call of Destiny and History. They have dedicated themselves to bringing forth a new nation in Africa dedicated to freedom, the pursuit of happiness, human rights, democracy, good management and the rule of law. We salute them even as we mourn those murdered in cold blood by the colonizer. We condole with the relatives and friends of all those visited by the angel of death from Cameroun Republic. Those who have been murdered by the colonizer gave their lives for the Southern Cameroons nation to be born. It shall be! We must therefore dedicate ourselves to the unfinished work that they have so far nobly advanced. Let the tyrant, with so much blood on his hands fear! He has to face this alternative: either the people of the Southern Cameroons are to be exterminated or the people of the Southern Cameroons are to be free from colonial bondage!
Fellow-citizens,
Our Homeland was once a peaceful, free, democratic, prosperous and fully self-governing country. It was a country under the rule of law and effective human rights protection. It was a beacon of hope and freedom in Africa, and, in fact, a home to thousands of refugees fleeing from French Cameroun. Bloodshed, repression, political prisoners, political assassinations, extrajudicial killings, torture, police maltreatment and harassment, arbitrary arrest and imprisonment were all unknown in our Homeland. But since coming under the colonial occupation of Cameroun Republic we have known nothing but death, mayhem, suffering, humiliation and sorrow. Our land has experienced nothing but desolation and spoliation. Complete darkness has descended on our land and on our people. There is hopelessness everywhere. The colonizer’s thirst for our blood seems unquenchable. Day in day out the colonizer slaughters our people. Day in day out we bury our dead. Day in day out we mourn our dead. Day in day out we grief over our relatives and friends maimed, tortured and arbitrarily imprisoned by the colonizer. Even those who have persisted in hoping against hope that they can patch up with the colonial occupation of our Homeland must now see that there is no future whatsoever under colonial rule. It is not by error that mankind has classed occupation and colonization as crimes against humanity, never to be accepted.
Fellow-citizens,
How long shall the people of Southern Cameroons grief and groan under the burden of foreign occupation? How long shall we carry this cross placed on our heads from across the Mungo by the Yaoundé colonial regime? How long shall we tolerate this colonization from hell as if we can do nothing about it?
Surely it cannot be our destined end and lot on earth to suffer and toil forever under the yoke of colonial occupation by the neighbouring country of Cameroun Republic. The time has come to shirk off the spirit of self-resignation and make a turning point in our history. We once did it before, and we shall do it again! ‘It was by daring and by doing that the Roman state grew and not by the timid policies that cowards call caution.’
The time of orphanage for our people is over! The time when the people of Southern Cameroons were like a flock without a shepherd is over! We have reached a turning point in the quest for the restoration of our homeland. The Restoration Government and all of us are condemned by Fate to set our land and ourselves free and to restore the peace, freedom, prosperity and the life of light and hope that existed in our land, before it was covetously occupied by a predatory Cameroun Republic!
The Restoration Government calls on every woman, man, youth, and child of the Southern Cameroons, as a first and bold step towards our liberation, to, as from now withdraw from all participation in the political life of Cameroun Republic. We have no business with the affairs of that country, except that aspect of its affairs that consists in trying to keep us in bondage, in regard to which it is our sacred duty to ensure that its colonial occupation of our land comes to grief.
We call on traders, taxi drivers etc in all our towns and all our professionals to form and manage their own separate associations for the defence of their interests.
We request that those of our men and women called to holy orders should, in their weekly prayers of intercession, never tire of asking God to bring the Southern Cameroons out of the Cameroun Republic house of bondage even as He delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. For Jesus gave the assurance that ‘ask, and it shall be given you.’
Our men and women in uniform serving in Cameroun Republic have no business getting involved in the restless tribal intrigues among the politicians and military/police of that country. They would do well to avoid getting involved in the various crimes against humanity in which the civil and military leadership of that country would soon be indicted for. The task of today for our men and women in uniform is to factor their savvy into our national liberation struggle and thereby contribute towards our collective freedom as a people.
From now on we, the people of Southern Cameroons, have only one dream, one focus and one mission: the restoration of our Statehood. That is the only legitimate cause for which we must all focus all our energy and wherewithal. With this in mind we ask all our people to hold themselves ready to execute the commands of the Restoration Government. The moment of revolt for our cause shall come. For it is clear even to the cursory observer that this recent dance of death and mayhem by Cameroun Republic is a curious mixture of unconsciousness and deliberateness, of blindness and awareness, in which the doomed leadership of that country is moving, like the last days of the Nazi leadership, towards inexorable disaster.
The Restoration Government is at work. The outward symbols of the independent state of the Southern Cameroons (flag, anthem, emblem, motto etc) have already been formally publicized. There would follow in the weeks ahead the proposed draft national constitutional which will be submitted to the people for extensive debate and eventual adoption. There has been set in motion a process by which we can all participate in the choice of our country’s name. At the end of the process the name selected for the country would be formally announced. Furthermore, there are a number of policy frameworks that are in gestation. These will be put out one after the other as soon as they are ready. The major one, an economic framework, is near completion. As soon as it is ready it shall be made available to the people to see and gauge the vision we have for independent Southern Cameroons.
We have been informed by a number of stakeholders of certain initiatives by them that are afoot. There is unshakable determination out there to ensure that the civil and military officials of the Biya royal gangsterdom who are most criminally responsible for crimes against humanity are made to answer for their crimes internationally. We shall actively support that initiative by providing the documentary and real evidence that we have gathered over the years relating to those crimes. We invite our people to supply us with more names and evidence. We are determined to put an end to the institutionalized culture in Cameroun Republic of impunity for crimes under international law. Our support for this initiative does not of course mean we shall remove the names of the individuals concerned from the ‘List of Most Wanted Persons for Crimes against Humanity’ that we have compiled and continue to update.
We are also informed that at the moment a list of some of the persons involved is being put together for the purpose of initiating an international campaign for asset freeze and travel bans. We have some names ourselves and would support this initiative as well.
Finally, a Cameroun Republic human rights organization based in Douala, known as ‘Maison des Droits de l’Homme’, and a Cameroun Republic political organization in exile, Known as ‘Conseil National pour la Résistance’, are both calling for an international commission of inquiry into the latest pogrom carried out by Biya and his military and police forces. We support that call and would work with those organizations to ensure that such a commission is instituted.
The liberation of the Southern Cameroons is not a matter of if, but when. Right now, the captive citizen of the Southern Cameroons is up on his feet resolved to be a slave no more. He is resolved not to commit the historical contradiction of submitting to the very colonialism which has wrought age-long suffering and ruin in the Southern Cameroons, the very colonialism to be fought and which makes the sovereign statehood of the Southern Cameroons a categorical imperative.
God made the Southern Cameroons our own land. He tells us, ‘I have given you the land to possess it; stop begging for what you are entitled to.’ That land shall be our own space of existence on Earth!
The British Southern Cameroons shall be free, come what may!
Calson Anyangwe ,
Head of Restoration Government
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