The Southern Cameroons Interim Government says the 88-year-old Biya and the French Cameroun military will never be able to break the will of the Ambazonian people by intensifying aggression and destruction of British Southern Cameroons towns and villages.

Vice President Dabney Yerima said in a statement on Sunday that the regime in La Republique du Cameroun is neither able to shatter the will of Southern Cameroonians nor capable of weakening the Ambazonian resistance fighters across Southern Cameroons towns and villages by committing crimes and acts of aggression.

“The escalation of Biya regime attacks on both the Catholic and Presbyterian Churches is part of Yaounde’s continued aggression against the Southern Cameroons people and a desperate attempt to divert attention from the internal political crises in French Cameroun” Dabney Yerima said in the Sunday statement.

Why the people of Ambazonia are fighting

Self-determination under international law: The people of Ambazonia are fighting to vindicate their unquestionable and inalienable right of self-determination. They will continue to fight until self-determination is achieved. The right of self-determination is a norm of jus cogens. It is fortified by the internationally-secured territorial framework of the territory of Ambazonia, a framework standing firmly on two territorial treaty-based pillars.

Legitimate rejection of colonialism in any form, shape or manifestation: The fight of the people of Ambazonia also represents a strong and unyielding rejection of colonialism in any form, shape or manifestation. The rejection is consistent with international law which gives colonized people struggling for their liberation the right to the assistance of third parties.

Territory secured by boundary treaties: The territory of Ambazonia is safeguarded by international treaties. Ambazonia’s international boundary to the north and to the west down to the Bakassi Peninsula is well defined by, and is now demarcated on the basis of, the Anglo-German treaty of 1913 specifying the boundary between the British territory of Nigeria and the German territory of Kamerun. Ambazonia’s international boundary to the east is defined and demarcated on the basis ofthe Anglo-French treaty of 1916. The boundary alignment wasendorsed in 1919 at the Treaties of Versailles, confirmed by the League of Nations in 1922, and reconfirmed by the Anglo-French treaty of 1931 respecting the boundary between the British Cameroons and French Cameroun. The territorial integrity of Ambazonia is thus firmly secured under international law.

Title to territory and the principle of utipossidetisjuris: Sovereign title to the territory of Ambazonia belongs to the people of Ambazonia, and not to any other people. The people of Ambazonia are entitled to the integrity of their territory. And this means Republique du Cameroun, which achieved its independence from France on 1 January 1960, must respect the integrity of its own territory, respect the AU core principle of intangibility of African borders as obtained on the day of achievement of independence, and abandons its pursuit of the internationally wrongful conduct of territorial expansionism.

Historical parallels

There are illustrative historical parallels to the darkness that has befallen Ambazonia. The parallels are: Morocco’s occupation and attempt to annex the Western Sahara; Imperial Ethiopia’s occupation and attempt to annex Eritrea; Indonesia’s occupation and attempt to annex East Timor; and apartheid South Africa’s occupation, refusal to leave Namibia and attempt to annex it. Predictably, all these cases led to wars of national liberation. And in all of them each latter-day colonial occupier/oppressor lost.

By Isong Asu with additional reporting from Soter Agbaw-Ebai