Cameroon: Troops Swoop on Activists in Tiko

By James Mukoh

     Armed troops last December 10 swooped on a group of Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) activists in Tiko-Fako Division, and arrested them.

   The activists had gathered in a private residence to hold what local authorities described as an illegal and dangerous meeting intended to strategize on how to sabotage the announced celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the so-called reunification of Cameroon.

    According to reports, radical SCNC activists such as Frederick Asongyen Fulu, who just returned from Belgium, were arrested and whisked off for detention.

Asongyen Fulu has before suffered several arrests due to his active involvement in the SCNC that is fighting for the restoration of the independence of Southern Cameroons. Even while in Belgium for further studies, Asongyen Fulu reportedly joined other diehard SCNC members abroad to castigate the Biya government.

   Security sources said they have since hunting for him for using the cover of the separatist group to tarnish the image of the Cameroon government.

   Harassment, Arrests, torture, and prosecution of SCNC supporters have been on-going since the creation in 1994 of the SCNC that had Lawyer Sam Ekontang Elad as pioneer chairman.

   Since its creation, the Biya government has described the SCNC as an illegal and separatist gang with plans to destabilize Cameroon and has vowed to disband them. But activists and human rights groups say the SCNC cause is just in law and history.

    Frontline campaigners for an independent Southern Cameroons such as 83-year old Mola Njoh Litumbe have argued that Southern Cameroons and la Republique du Cameroun are not in a legal union

   For a legal union to be established with a member state of the UN, the UN Charter prescribes a written agreement signed by both parties and duly deposited at the UN Secretariat in New York.

   But Mola Njoh, now the Home Front coordinator of all groups fighting for the Independence of southern Cameroons and who has been placed under house arrest at least twice, insists, “There is no such evidence, so the people of Southern Cameroons are perfectly entitled to assert their independence and in doing so, it cannot be described as secession”

    The activists say La Republic du Cameroun is only annexing Southern Cameroons, which calls for the immediate intervention of the international Community.