At least 45 Southern Cameroonians including women and children have been injured by soldiers loyal to the Biya Francophone regime in Yaounde on the Mamfe-Bamenda highway.

A Roman Catholic cleric cited sources in Kendem, Batibo and Bali as saying that 45 Southern Cameroonians were hit by bullets fired by Cameroon government troops fighting against Ambazonia Revolutionary Guards who recently blocked the main road linking Bamenda to Mamfe.

The prelate said that the 45 Southern Cameroonians had also suffered breathing difficulties due to inhaling French made tear gas used by the Cameroon government army soldiers against the Amba fighters in Kendem, Batibo and Bali.

Since the killing of two primary school pupils by Francophone army soldiers in Buea and Bamenda, Southern Cameroons has seen intensified clashes between Cameroon government troops and Southern Cameroons Self Defense Forces.

Also in Ekondo Titi, Cameroon government troops used live ammunition and bullets against students in Government Bilingual High School and blamed the attack on Amba fighters.

The war in Southern Cameroons has created a business empire for top military officers in Yaounde. About forty thousand Southern Cameroons civilians have lost their lives in this war. More than a million persons have fled to Nigeria and other countries as refugees, and millions have been made IDPs. More that 600 towns and villages and countless homes have been burnt down by French Cameroun troops. Hundreds of females have been raped (a good number deliberately infected with HIV and other STDs), scores of children killed in targeted killings, food and food crops and livestock destroyed to impose conditions of famine, water sources defiled and polluted to provoke a pestilence, and mass graves punctuate the landscape.

Genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity are being committed in the Southern Cameroons by French Cameroun military which systematically continues to kill women, teenagers, and even babies, the elderly, the infirm. Presidents Emmanuel Macron, Paul Biya and Buhari bears direct responsibility for these heinous crimes.

The UN Security Council has so far failed to assume its responsibility under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations to deal with French Cameroun’s colonial war in the Southern Cameroons. In the circumstances, it is not inconceivable that the Southern Cameroons abandons the self-defence posture to which it has so far restrained itself, in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. It may eventually go on the offensive and broaden its offensive posture by targeting economic and social infrastructure in French Cameroun that support that country’s war effort, in the same way social and economic infrastructure in the Southern Cameroons continues to be targeted by the French Cameroun army. The objective of this new offensive would be to bring it home to Macron and Biya that their fanciful claim that “l’Ambazonieestcamerounaise” (Ambazonia belongs to Cameroun) is a pipe dream and that pursuing it will be very painful for French Cameroun in 2022 in the same way as the French claim that “l’Algerieestfranaise” (Algeria belongs to France) was for France in 1962.  The people of the Southern Cameroons strongly reject any idea or suggestion, explicit or implicit, that the Southern Cameroons is an area under French influence given that the Southern Cameroons does not have and has never had any ties, colonial or otherwise, with France.  

By Fon Lawrence with additional reporting from the Camcordnews desk