March 2021 Interview With Dabney Yerima, Self-Styled Vice-President of Ambazonia

Dabney Yerima is the self-styled Vice-President of the Republic of Ambazonia.

Thank you, David, for the opportunity given to the people of Southern Cameroons/Ambazonia to tell the true story of what the media and international community is missing in this conflict.

1. I would like to start by correcting the mischaracterization of the conflict as a separatist’s movement. The people of Southern Cameroons are not Separatists, we are a Restorationist and Pro-independence movement.
2. The conflict is not between the Francophone populations and the Anglophone populations.
3. The conflict is not a language issue between French and English as wrongfully portrayed.
4. The conflict is as a result of the incomplete decolonization of the Former British Territory of Southern Cameroons. The foundations of the crisis are political and institutional.

La Republique du Cameroun, the French- administered territory became independent on January 1, 1960 and became a member of the UN on September 20, 1960. Southern Cameroons remained under British administration, independent from La Republique du Cameroun. On February 11, 1961, the UN sponsored a plebiscite on the Southern Cameroons. However, the people of Southern Cameroons were offered two options to “achieve independence,” either by joining the independent Federation of Nigeria or by joining the independent Republic of Cameroon. Full and separate independence was never offered apparently because the British administering authority falsely claimed that the territory was not economically viable. This considerably undermined their bargaining power with either Nigeria or Cameroon. The decision to join was given effect by the UN General Assembly Resolution 1608 (XV). Southern Cameroons had enjoyed a degree of autonomy, with its own Executive Council and Legislative Assembly before joining Cameroun. These are historical facts that the public need to know that these were two different countries in 1960 and this is the bone of contention that we are not separatists because we cannot be separating from something that we have never been part of.

Even the condition to join with La Rebublique du Cameroun as “two states of equal status” was abrogated on May 20, 1972, by a bogus referendum that changed the form of the state into a unitary state. The star representing the Southern Cameroons was removed from the national flag. The name of the country was later changed by Mr. Paul Biya via a Presidential decree in 1984, returning to the pre-unification name, La République du Cameroun. These changes signalled the well-choreographed assimilation of the people of Southern Cameroons by The Republic of Cameroon. The sanitized version that Anglophones are marginalized in Cameroon is not the cause of the conflict. Marginalization, lack of economic and political opportunities are symptoms of the root cause of this conflict “The Incomplete Decolonization” of Southern Cameroons, which is what our people are fighting to restore.

Give me a very clear and categorical description of what the Cameroonian military is doing in the Anglophone regions (I want clear and direct wording that evokes vivid imagery of the violence and disruption to life going on there, because many audiences are only presented with a sanitized idea of what is happening).

What started as peaceful protest by lawyers and teachers in 2016 quickly degenerated into a violent conflict that has brought untold suffering and resulted in thousands of deaths. On January 17, 2017, the government imposed a four-month shutdown of the Internet in both the North West and South West regions to stifle the flow of information and hide the human rights abuses committed by the Cameroun military forces. In September and October 2017, massive nationwide peaceful protest was called by Restorationist leaders and on October 1, 2017, Restorationist leader Sisiku Julius Ayuktabe symbolically proclaimed an independent state of “Ambazonia”.

November 30, 2017, President Paul Biya of Cameroun declared war in a televised interview on the peaceful people of Southern Cameroon after deaths of four soldiers and two police officers in the South West region. This day marks the beginning of ethnic cleansing and genocide in Southern Cameroons. From this day, the people of Southern Cameroons, were targeted in increasing numbers, and either abducted, tortured, or killed in cold blood.

The Senior divisional officer for Manyu ordered the people of Esagem Village to evacuate the village within 24 hours or be considered terrorists.

On December 18, 2017, Kembong Village is burnt down by defense and security forces eyewitness reports and confirmed by the then Bishop of Mamfe, Archbishop Andrew Nkea. Many other villages and forced evacuations like Kwakwa then followed in quick succession and then the mass exodus of the people into the forest and the long walk to safety in refugee camps in neighboring Nigeria began and has continued unabated.

The Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa reports that between 206–550 villages in Southern Cameroons have been raided and partially or severely burnt down by the state defence in an attempt to crackdown on armed separatist forces. Entire villages have been burned down and emptied.

The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect has signalled evidence of crimes against humanity committed the Cameroon Military forces including but not limited to murder, forced deportation, imprisonment, rape, torture, and sexual violence.

Last year witnessed the most heinous crimes committed against the people of Southern Cameroons by the Cameroun Military with the following notable cases.

Ngarbuh massacre, February 14, 2020 that resulted in the murder of at least 22 civilians including women and children by Cameroonian soldiers and Fulani extremists.

Kumba School massacre, October 24, 2020, killing 7 innocent young children and injuring more than 13 as reported by Human Rights Watch. Our findings concluded that this was done by armed by gunmen sponsored by the Cameroun Military.

Mautu Killings, January 10, 2021 as reported by Human Rights Watch, army soldiers killed at least nine civilians. The dead included a woman and a child, and four civilians were injured. The soldiers also looted scores of homes and threatened residents.

February 11, 2021, about 8 Cameroon Military forces tortured a Southern Cameroonian man into a coma, for the sole reason that his brother was a separatist fighter.

According to HRW, an attack by Cameroonian soldiers on March 1, 2020 has come to light in which soldiers raped at least 20 women, including four with disabilities, arrested 35 men, and killed one man. The attack on the village of Ebam in the South-West region was one of the worst by Cameroon’s army in recent years. The soldiers also burned one home, looted scores of properties, and severely beat the men they took to a military base.

According to CHRDA, there is evidence that much of the violence is intentional and planned, including retaliation attacks on villages by government security forces, often followed by indiscriminate shooting into crowds of civilians, invasions of private homes and murder of their inhabitants, and the rounding up and shooting of villagers. The military is conducting a deliberate, violent campaign against civilian populations. Violence against women has been widely reported.

The above reported atrocities, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide have been orchestrated by the Cameroun military and her security operatives to systematically eradicate and permanently scarred and humiliate Southern Cameroons people especially women utilizing powerful weapons like rape and sexual violence, force deportation, killings, and imprisonment. They systematically rape women and girls, infecting them with HIV and other STDs since the prevalence of those diseases among the troops. They also habitually sodomize boys. These acts seldom come to the limelight because the victims are too traumatized to tell the story and many die in silence, while some commit suicide. They go into a locality, round up people, (aka Kale Kale) take them to their garrison or camp, and demand from relatives and parents payment of ransom money for each person as a condition for release. Another specialization of those troops is stealing, breaking into shops and banks, looting, plundering. It is their practice to kidnap for ransom. These troops tell anyone who cares to listen that they have been given a free hand to do in Ambazonia as they please and that they are bent on making as much money as they can before they leave. They destroy livestock, foodstuff, and crops in fields, all this to impose starvation and other conditions of life leading to death. Those troops are also known to poison sources of water in rural and semi-urban areas such as by dumping persons they have killed in those places which in rural areas are a source of drinking water and places for bathing and washing.

What are the aims of this military and civil campaign by the Cameroonian state against this region, for example in terms of suppressing Ambazonian political independence, artificially modifying the region into a Francophone one by violating the constitution etc.

It does seem, however, that the unavowed objective of the Yaoundé tribal dictatorship is to destroy the people of Ambazonia, procure their extinguishment as a people, the extinction of their territory as a geopolitical expression, and so steal the land with its huge and envied resources.

The systematic military and civilian campaign against these regions in the Republic of Cameroon is as a result of a half-century of discriminatory policies aimed at suppressing and assimilating the minority people of Southern Cameroons. The crackdown on descent using this scotch earth policy is to instill fear and force the people into submission. Their ultimate goal is to complete the failed assimilation of the Southern Cameroons people as acknowledged by President Paul Biya in Lyon, France in 2019. This whole campaign was engineered to complete the francophonization of the Southern Cameroons Anglo-Saxon traditions by the erosion of the common law system and education system.

On December 31, 2018, President Paul Biya declared during his end of year address to the nation that if his plea to “warmongers to lay down their weapons remains unheeded, the defence and security forces will be instructed to neutralize them.” The intent of this declaration is obvious and a wink to the military to prolong the armed conflict with the hope of defeating the Restorationist forces.

What is the role of African and global media in telling the story of Cameroon’s Anglophone regions? What is the story that we are missing here? If this story is told properly, what reaction do you hope to see?

The African and the global media have a critical role, to tell the truth about this armed conflict; first, by calling it what it is, that is to say, an anti-colonial struggle, a war of national liberation from colonial annexation and occupation and rule, like other wars of national liberation that have taken place in Africa.

On Sep 15, 2018 — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: wrote in the New York Times referring to conflict as “The Carnage of the Cameroons”. A conflict that the Government officials refer to people from this region in dehumanizing or degrading terms, such as “dogs” and “terrorists. Should not be this underreported by the media.

The conflict in Cameroun remains severely under reported and to a certain extent intentionally mischaracterized by both African and global media. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council, the conflict as the “most neglected” in the world and violence perpetrated mostly by the Cameroun Military has killed over 20,000 people, displaced more than 1.5 million internally, and more than 125,000 in refugee camps in Nigeria. More than 3.5 million people in the region are at risk of starvation and hunger. The media is missing and failing to hold the Cameroonian authorities to account for the human tragedy that is unfolding. It is difficult to rationalize why a conflict that has described by multiple human rights and reputable organizations both nationally and internationally has been under reported by both the African and global media. If we look at the press coverage of the coup d’état in Burma without the level killings, internally displaced and refugees or villages burnt down by the government military forces, we begin to wonder whether the is a conspiracy against the people of Southern Cameroons. It is disheartening the leader of the Restorationist Sisiku Ayuktabe is abducted in Nigeria with 10 of his collaborators, some of whom were refugees and asylum seekers were abducted and transferred to Cameroon against International Law and later tried and sentenced to life in imprisonment by a kangaroo military tribunal and yet the media remains muted. It is baffling that the Abuja High Court Judgement of the 1st of March 2019 that ruled that they should be returned to Nigeria, discharged, acquitted, and compensated has not been implemented and yet no one in media is asking the authorities questions. We believe that if the story of the conflict and carnage is properly and consistently told, it will expose the atrocities and generate global outrage and condemnation of the ethnic cleansing, genocide and crimes against humanity that are being committed by the Cameroun government. Proper coverage and characterization of the conflict will enable the proper understanding of the conflict and the enormity of the human catastrophe. Media coverage will focus global attention to the plight of our refugees and exposing the cruelty will increase the urgency of the international community to compelled both parties on to the negotiating table for a resolution of the crisis.

The story being missed is the fact that a neighboring country presumes, without any title or right under international law, to annex, occupy and rule a perceived small and supposedly weak neighboring country. That presumably ‘small and weak’ country. has a long history of separate identities. It had an international personality. It has firmly established international boundaries under treaty. It had a state structure and a government for about twenty years. All this cannot just be wiped out overnight. This has not happened anywhere in Africa or in any part of the world. It will not happen now. The media must denounce this latter-day imperialism raising its ugly head in Africa. There is a grave danger that if French Cameroun’s ambitious attempt at territorial expansion is not denounced and stopped, other African states with ambitions of territorial aggrandizement would be encouraged to seek to grab adjacent so-called ‘small and weak’ countries. Just think, for example, of Benin, Gambia, Eswatini, Lesotho, Djibouti, etc.

Do you believe France plays a role in enabling or instigating the Cameroonian state to suppress the Anglophone areas? Does this possibly feed into France’s larger geopolitical strategy for West-Central Africa? Do you think Francophone media has covered this story effectively?

France is not only the instigator. It is the driver of the French Cameroun colonization agenda since 1961, controlling and dictating events at every turn. On its own, French Cameroun would not have the audacity to pursue this colonial agenda. The irony is that Ambazonia was never a colonial territory of France. Ambazonia has never had ties of any nature with France. But France is seeking to have unimpeded access to the natural resources of Ambazonia and to expand its sphere of influence by the addition of 8 million people to its French Equatorial Africa. Historically, France sees its foothold on Ambazonia as somewhat compensation for Britain’s seizing of Quebec from France and incorporating it as part of Canada. France plays a major role in instigating everything that has happened in former British Southern Cameroons from the Independence vote at the UN on April 21, 1961, through the 1961 Foumban meeting, the work of the French Consular Service in Buea in Southern Cameroons from 1962, the 1972 reduction of former British Southern Cameroons to two Provinces of Republique du Cameroun, the 1984 unilateral return to the name of French Cameroun at independence.

The current genocidal war on our people is modeled after the French colonial war in Algeria. France has a role in enabling and instigating the Cameroon government to suppress/assimilate the people of Southern Cameroons. French colonial history has been that of assimilation. It is not a coincidence that US Senate Resolution 684 specifically called on France to act upon her former colony of Cameroun to end the conflict and engage in genuine and inclusive dialogue. The crisis is deliberately an afterthought in the Francophone media, hence their responses to the crisis have been calculatedly subdued.

France cannot afford to lose another territory to the ECOWAS and Commonwealth in the strategic security corridor of the Gulf of Guinea with huge economic implication and huge deposits of natural resources.

In the event of achieving some level of increased political autonomy or independence for Ambazonia, what do you think its economic and geopolitical strategy for interacting with its neighbors should be? Where does Nigeria come into all of this?

Our economic and geopolitical strategy will be to naturally align with the ECOWAS blog of nations and Nigeria in particular. Nigeria’s security, reputation, and international standing hinges on the resolution of this crisis. Nigeria cannot afford another open security nightmare at its Southern borders and particularly in the oil rich Gulf of Guinea. There are more than 3 million Nigerians in Southern Cameroons and the influx of returning Nigerians and refugees if this crisis continues to be neglected and spiral out of control will a human catastrophe of epic proportion.

Ambazonia intends to become a progressive democracy with well-defined and nurtured good enough governance institutions and egalitarian society for every person that lives in it. Our economic blueprint offers ample opportunities and enabling environment for capacity building and enterprises that engender livelihoods security, prepare our citizens as both positive shapers and makers of local and International Development Goals.

We are convinced that achieving independence by Ambazonia is in the best interest of global peace. We also believe that the sooner we achieve this, the better for the sake of human lives and livelihoods that are threatened, and sadly lost, daily in a conflict that is eminently avoidable.

You may be aware that Ambazonia, with a population of some 8 million people is bigger than 22 African countries that are currently independent members of the UN. Ambazonia is even bigger in size than 27 European countries that are members of the UN. Like nations of its size, among them Slovakia in Europe and, say Togo in Africa, Ambazonia geopolitical interests would be to live in peace with its neighbors. Our goal is to be the showcase of a thriving democracy in the heart of Africa established on the ashes of our advanced experience in democratic governance of the 1950s. The goal is for Ambazonia to practice such democracy that would make the 55th African nation to be at peace with neighboring states, namely Nigeria to our West and North and Cameroon to our East. In the south, we have Equatorial Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean.

Given its rich agrarian potentials on account of its lush forests, fresh-water, rivers, and access to the Atlantic Ocean, Ambazonia holds out the promise to be a food basket for its neighbors. This promise has been challenged by the genocide perpetrated on our people by Cameroon. Currently, Ambazonia continues to be a major supplier of fishes to its neighbors, particularly Nigeria.

Most importantly, we would like to reassure our immediate neighbors and the African continent generally, that Ambazonia will be a peaceful democracy dedicated to promoting its human resources through sound education, quality healthcare and robust agricultural development while committing to peaceful coexistence with its immediate neighbors.