Senior official warns: UN can't grant Ambazonia independence!.

Fondong, a Cameroonian and an Anglophone in particular, shared his opinion in a detailed piece. The write-up touches on key issues relating to the armed conflict in the two English-speaking Regions of Cameroon. 

His piece was made public over the weekend. He pays special attention to the persistent imposition of school boycott campaigns by separatists, who in their naive thinking, are hoping to use it as a way to win or attract the sympathy of the international community. 

The author argues that the move is rather counterproductive and will haunt separatists and their foot soldiers sooner than later. It is an enriching and educative write-up, which The Guardian Post herein publishes in full.

The so-called “school resumption” lockdown: Why Cameroon’s separatists keep getting it wrong 

By Julius Fondong*

I have just seen a flier being widely circulated online captioned “Ambazonia National Lockdown” to run from 02/09/24 to 02/10/24. According to the flier, the objective of the lockdown is, inter alia, to send a strong message to the “United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).... not to turn a blind eye on the genocide being committed in Ambazonia”. 

The promoters of the “lockdown” have further added that it is also intended to ensure that there is no school resumption in “Ambazonia”.  There is a lot to unpack here. Let me first start with the allegation of ‘genocide’.

The Ambazonia separatists regularly make the claim that the Cameroon government is committing genocide against the people of its Anglophone regions, namely the North West and the South West Regions (the same regions that the separatists refer to as Ambazonia). But the facts prove quite the contrary.

Figures from international organisations that speak

According to UNCHR, as at 2023, there were some 84,000 Cameroon refugees in Nigeria, who fled the armed conflict in Anglophone Cameroon. Human Rights Watch reported in 2023 that the armed conflict in Anglophone Cameroon has displaced some 600,000 people. 

If we go by these figures from generally reputable international organizations, we surmise that an overwhelming majority of Anglophone Cameroonians fleeing the conflict in their region (516,000 or 86%) are actually relocating to the Francophone regions (or to La Republique, as the Ambazonians prefer to call it).

During previous lockdowns, we saw thousands of Anglophone Cameroonians paying triple the bus fare, to flee their region to the relatively safer francophone regions. 

A bus trip from Bamenda to Yaounde or Douala takes on average eight hours. From Bamenda Hospital Roundabout to the Cameroon-Nigeria border town of Ekok takes about two hours. 

Yet, in the days ahead, as the lockdown looms, thousands of Anglophones will be paying triple the bus fare to take the 8-hour trip to Douala or Yaounde, instead of taking the two-hour trip to the border to cross to Nigeria and become refugees. 

False genocide claim

How then can you speak of “genocide” when the very people you claim are being exterminated by the government, are prepared to make tremendous personal sacrifices and take risks to travel to the Francophone regions and willingly place themselves under the protection of the same government you want the world to believe is trying to exterminate them? 

And I also do know for fact that a vast majority of Anglophones IDPs in the Francophone regions, were running away from the atrocities and daily hardships imposed on them by their supposed “liberators” – the so-called Amba Boys.

Under such circumstances the “genocide argument” does not hold any relevance when confronted with the facts. It is tenuous and unsubstantiated at best, outlandish and laughable at worse. The international community knows better, and cannot be duped. 

School boycott persistently wrong strategy 

The school boycott and the imposition of a lockdown to undermine the resumption of schools for the 24/25 school year in the Anglophone Regions, is another strategy (if It can be called one) that the Ambazonians have persistently gotten wrong. 

Anyone with even the most elementary notion of world affairs should know, almost by intuition, that the education of children (especially in the context of armed conflict) is a very sensitive issue in international politics. 

How real freedom fighters guaranteed right to education

Real freedom fighters like Sam Nujoma, John Garang, Samora Machel etc understood it. That is why during their respective struggles, they went to great lengths to guarantee the continued education of children. 

John Garang for one, formed strategic partnerships with countries like Norway, relevant UN agencies and International Non-Governmental Organisations, INGOs, to create and operate schools for South Sudanese children in refugee camps. 

During the 2020 negotiations between the US and the Taliban for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, the Americans demanded guarantees from the Taliban that they (the Taliban) will allow Afghan girls to continue schooling as had been the practice during the US occupation. The Taliban yielded. 

Today, if you ask any US politician what the US achieved after its 2-trillion-dollar-two-decade-long, occupation of Afghanistan, they unabashedly say, the right to education of the Afghan girl-child!

If even the Taliban can understand the intricacies of the children’s right to education in international politics, why is it so difficult for the Ambazonians to get it? 

Int’l community will never support group denying kids right to education

So, let me say this as clearly as I can: No self-respecting international organization or civilised nation shall ever deal with or recognize a group that uses the education of children as weapon to achieve a political goal. 

You cannot be asking the international community to uphold your political rights as guaranteed under international law, while you are yourself actively violating with near impunity, a fundamental principle of the same international law: the child’s right to education. 

Imposing a lockdown to draw world attention to a non-existent genocide but which will serve to undermine the resumption of schools in the NW/SW regions will not, and cannot, attract attention from the UN General Assembly.

In fact, it will have the direct opposite effect: it will attract nothing but indignation and contempt of, and further alienation from, the international community.

UN does not grant independence 

I’ll like to end by addressing this recurrent but fallacious notion constantly parroted by the Ambazonians and some Anglophone Cameroon nationalist alike, namely, that the UN “grants” independence or granted independence to Southern Cameroons.

The U.N does not and cannot grant independence. Independence is achieved solely through the expression of the sovereign will and desire of a people as freely expressed in a plebiscite, a referendum or an election (see General Assembly resolution 1514 (XV) of 14 December 1960 bearing on the Declaration of the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples).

So, the UN does not 'grant' independence, and definitely didn't "grant' independence to any of its trust territories, including the UN Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons (which some now refer to as “Ambazonia”). 

The UN only "recognises" and “upholds” the independence/sovereignty of a people as freely expressed by them in a plebiscite/referendum or an election.

Position of UN on Southern Cameroon Question

The position of the UN on the Southern Cameroons Question (decolonization) is very clear. As far as the UN is concerned: The decolonization process of the former UN Trust Territory of Southern Cameroons ended on 01/October/1961, the day Southern Cameroons achieved independence by joining The Republic of Cameroon, pursuant to the results of the  11 February 1961 plebiscite. All other matters arising therefrom are considered the internal affairs of the State of Cameroon. 

This position was clearly conveyed by the late UN-Secretary General, Kofi Annan, to Southern Cameroon’s leaders during a meeting he had with them in IRIC in Yaounde in 2005. Some of the SCNC leaders who attended that meeting are still alive today. 

So, to me younger brothers, the “Amba Boys”: If you have been told to attack schools and kill your brothers and sisters so that the UN General Assembly can take notice and come “give you independence”, you are being duped. 

Amba boys being duped 

You are being manipulated into committing grievous human rights violations, for which you shall be liable. But if you choose to protect school children and guarantee their right to education, you shall earn the respect of the both the national and international community. You may even be remembered and celebrated as a hero. It’s all in your hands. 

*The subheads in the writeup are those of The Guardian Post 

This story was first published in The Guardian Post issue N0:3217 of Monday September 02, 2024