President Paul Biya is gaining international notoriety for torturing and murdering hundreds of Southern Cameroonians. Biya believes ruling with an iron fist is going to keep his country, divided by ethnicity and the Anglophone problem intact. However, his actions bespeak a tyrannical despot who is stopping at nothing to punish those who opposed him and those clamoring for political change.

Prosecutors at the International Criminal Court already have hundreds of crimes to choose from, these are some of Paul Biya’s most heinous.

Reprisal against Bamenda County

In 1992 following the launching of the Social Democratic Front, SDF, Biya ordered the Francophone dominated army to punish the entire city of Bamenda. More than 80 fighting-age men were apprehended and never heard from again.

Approximately a hundred other townspeople, including children, were rounded up and taken to prison in French Cameroun, where many were tortured. After a year or more in prison, many were abandoned in Yaoundé.

Though Paul Biya’s 1992 reprisal against Bamenda is considered one of his lesser-known crimes, Cameroon Intelligence Report wants it to be chosen as the first crime for which he must be tried.

The Kumba Onslaught

Following the destruction of a drink depot owned by Brasseries du Cameroun in Fiango Kumba, Paul Biya’s regime carried out the Kumba campaign against the large North West population in Fiango.

The purpose of the campaign was to reassert Chief V.E. Mukete and Biya’s ruling CPDM party control over the area; however, the real goal was to eliminate the North West majority population problem in Kumba permanently.

The campaign consisted of eight stages of assault, where up to 1000 Francophone troops attacked the area, rounded up civilians, and razed houses. Once rounded up, the civilians were divided into two groups: men from ages of about 13 to 70 and women, children, and elderly men.

Some of the men were then shot and buried in mass graves by the Mukete Thugs.  The women, children, and elderly were forced to return to their area of origin in the North West province.

Hundreds of North westerners fled the area. Many people consider the Fiango-Kumba campaign an attempt at genocide.

Attacks against Southern Cameroonians

Ever since the beginning of the Southern Cameroons revolution, the French Cameroun army has used combat helicopters and massive deployment of troops to wipe away Southern Cameroons villages.  It is estimated that the Francophone dominated army has staged airstrikes on 14 villages in Manyu Division, with the largest of these attacks occurring in Agborkem-German.

The Francophone army rained down volley after volley of tear gas filled with a deadly mixture of mustard and nerve agents on Akwaya and Eyumojock. Immediate effects of the chemicals included blindness, vomiting, blisters, convulsions, and asphyxiation. A long-term effect includes permanent blindness, cancer, and birth defects.

Invasion of Bamenda, Jakiri and Mamfe

French Cameroun troops have invaded and are currently occupying Southern Cameroons territory. The genocidal intent of French Cameroun leaders in the prosecution of the genocide and crimes against humanity against the Southern Cameroons has consistently been expressed during their official functions and through news networks under their control. Unlike genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes that were committed in some parts of the world by carefully sophisticated institutional frameworks and death squads, the planners, commanders and executioners of the genocide of the Southern Cameroons have publicly taken credit for their brazen acts of criminality.

They deployed and commanded the criminal death squads and praised them for the cruelty with which they have been executing the genocide and sundry international crimes against Southern Cameroonians :  The unexhaustive list of  criminals and persons who bear the greatest responsibility for the international crimes committed against the Southern Cameroons are,  Paul Biya,  President of French Cameroun,  President of the National Assembly of French Cameroun, Cavaye Yegui Djibril, President of the Senate of French Cameroun, Marcel Niat, French Cameroun’s government spokesman Issa Tchiroma Bakary, Minister of Justice, Laurent Esso, Minister of Higher Education, Fame Ndongo, Minister of Defence,  Joseph Beti Assomo,  Minister in charge of Missions at the Presidency, Paul Atanga Nji,  Minister of Post and Telecommunications, Minette Libom Li Likeng Governor of the South West, Bernard Okalia Bilai, Governor of the North West, Adolphe Lele Lafrique, Minister of State in charge of the Gendarmerie, Jean Baptiste Bonkam, Delegate General in charge of National Security, Mbarga Nguele Martin, Army Chiefs of French Cameroun and all their proconsuls so-called senior SDO.s , Mayor Ekema Patrick Esunge, CRTV, Vision 4 television, Cameroon Tribune, French Cameroun Military Court, and the CPDM party etc.

The April 6^th Coup

At the end of the 1984 April 6^th coup against Mr. Biya, soldiers from the North rebelled against Biya’s regime. In retaliation, Biya brutally suppressed the uprising, killing hundreds of Muslim soldiers and systematically ruined the way of life of the respective families. Most of the young soldiers from Garoua were forced to flee and their way of life decimated.

We of Cameroon Intelligence Report believe that Mr. Paul Biya will be found guilty of crimes against humanity in regards to the reprisal against Manyus.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai