INTERIM GOVERNMENT-IN EXILE, SOUTHERN CAMEROONS.
The Ministry of Defense of La Republique du Cameroun a few weeks ago sent out agents to seek partners with whom to "dialogue" what can only be imagined to be the future of the former United Nations Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons under United Kingdom Administration. The individuals they contacted are scheduled to meet with officials of the Ministry of Defense in Yaounde, the capital of La Republique du Cameroun, shortly. The Interim Government-in-Exile of the Southern Cameroons, views this move as a concerted effort to derail the determination of the people of the Southern Cameroons to free themselves from the brutal colonial occupation and exploitation of France imposed since 1961. The Southern Cameroons Interim Government-in-Exile asks that:
- No citizen of the Southern Cameroons allows his or her self to be recruited and used by the Defense Ministry of a foreign country against his or her own people.
- No member of the Interim Government-in-Exile of the Southern Cameroons, in particular, anywhere in the world is permitted in any way to participate in this futile pursuit to subvert our independence.
- Any Southern Cameroonian or member of the Interim Government-in-Exile who partners with the enemy against our people is going to suffer the same fate as the enemy.
The Southern Cameroons Interim Government-in-Exile notes that:
-La Republique du Cameroun and her sponsor, France, are not interested in negotiating our de-colonization, nor is it coincidental that it is the Ministry of Defense that has been made to champion these so-called negotiation. They are interested only in stopping our march to freedom, which they now fear is about to succeed. They know they cannot stop us by themselves, so the effort here is to recruit allies among our citizens to do their dirty work for them. It is just a continuation of the war on our people, our land, our resources, and our God given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of our happiness in the land of our birth. They are hoping to negotiate to remain masters in our land. We are fighting to be the masters of our land as God intended for us. This is not negotiable.
-The history of French atrocities in our country and elsewhere in Africa is a matter of public record. Their declarations in Brazzaville, Congo in 1944 and their determination to cultivate develop and implant armed agents among African populations through whom they can undermine African independence and progress is also well documented. Their blackmail and unconscionable "cooperation agreements" forced on Africans in order to make "the independence of France the only independence they'll want" remains the most vicious "agreement" only Adolph Hitler could have thought of imposing on any people and nation. France has been playing the role of Nazi Germany in Africa and on Africans for over half a century now but the world has turned a blind eye to it all as though the God who created the African did so for the pleasure of the Frenchman. We refuse to accept that we were created to live and die for the pleasure of the Frenchman.
-The Southern Cameroons can negotiate to have good neighbors, we can negotiate to have good friends, we can negotiate to have friends who are richer, more powerful and more influential than we are, we can even negotiate to have friends to whom we sometimes defer to, but we will never negotiate to have anyone remain or become the master in our land, and over our lives and destiny. Seeking to negotiate anything less than our total and complete independence from France is like asking Charles DeGaulle, during the Second World War to negotiate with Adolph Hitler and Marshall Henri-Philippe Petain to live in a Nazi-occupied France. Charles De
Gaulle could not, and neither shall we now. It is even worst for us because the local governor appointed to run our lives is not one of ours as Petain was a Frenchman. We just cannot negotiate anything less than total and complete independence.
-The French took over the territory of the Southern Cameroons in 1961, after the British transferred administering authority to France instead of giving it directly to the people of the Southern Cameroons as stated in article 76, subsection (b) of the United Nations Organizations Charter. Since 1961 France, with the aid of its armed and paid agents running the colonial state of La Republique du Cameroun, has abolished the government of the people of the Southern Cameroons, destroyed our economy, corrupted and undermined our social institutions, lay waist our economic infrastructure and disrupted any attempts at reconstituting and reconstructing our common existence as a people. France and La Republique du Cameroun have done this by using lies, bribery, intimidation, blackmail, imprisonment, torture and murder.
-Even the illusion of a union of two former states, La Republique du Cameroun and the Southern Cameroons that was set up to appease and deceive every one except themselves and became called the Federal Republic of Cameroon, was not respected. It metamorphosed to the United Republic of Cameroon in 1972. With each metamorphosis, we the people of the Southern Cameroons lost and France gained control of what was already ours. The last change came on February 4th, 1984: this time any reference to the union was gone, and La Republique du Cameroun came out of 23 years of what we now know was hibernation not death to replace the hope of a union of two states. Legal experts call this change secession from the union and the Interim Government-in-Exile of the Southern Cameroons calls it secession from the Union. This secession by La Republique du Cameroun left the Southern Cameroons with no choice but to return to its own independence, for in a divorce, one person cannot remain married.
-Since withdrawing La Republique du Cameroun from the ill-fated union, France has used armed agents to keep exploiting the resources of the Southern Cameroons, and deployed its paid agents from La Republique du Cameroun to impose colonial institutions on us and administer colonial laws.
The Interim Government-in-Exile and the people of the Southern Cameroons are aware of what we are up against. In 1993 the French Government awarded 50 million French Francs to La Republique du Cameroun for military hardware in what French insiders have called "materiel militaire de repression" (Military weapons of repression). We are aware of the work of General Jean Pierre Huchon, the head of military operations in the French Ministry of Cooperation, the ministry in charge of French colonial control in Africa. We are also aware of the work of General Jacques Dewatre in Yaounde, Cameroun; brought in after an aborted coup d'etat by French intelligence against Paul Biya in 1994. They both have prepared the army of La Republique du Cameroun for the types of massacres that occurred in French colonial states like Rwanda, Chad and Congo-Brazzaville in the 1990s. Jean Pierre Huchon has been implicated in all these massacres, and in 1994 General Jacques Dewatre was given the job to "de-mine" La Republique du Cameroun's army. "De-mining " being French colonial speak for a hyper-ethnification of the military structures of French colonial states. This creates a state of permanent dissention and distrust and leaves the French-installed government free of threats and France in total control. France’s instrumentalisation of tribalism in Africa is part and parcel of her crafty role of colonial control.
However, the only thing we tell them in their preparations to meet us is to double their efforts because they are going to have more that 800.000 people to massacre this time around. Until the last drop of blood in the veins of the 6 million Southern Cameroonians-on-Ambas is spilled, an inch of our land will not remain in enemy hands by the time we are done. Only cowards die a thousand times before they finally meet their maker. Intimidation and murder is no longer a weapon against us. We will die like honorable men and women fighting for what we believe, or we will live like God intended for us.
In September of 2003, the sons and daughter of the Southern Cameroons, driven by the cruelty that continues to reign in our country met in Minnesota, USA and for the first time in the history of the Southern Cameroons formed an Interim Government to lead the people of Southern Cameroons to end, by any means necessary, France's brutal colonial occupation and exploitation. The time had finally come, when the people of Southern Cameroons said they had enough.
We are also God's children and have a right to be here on earth. We have a right to the land and resources that God bestowed on us. Now is the time to accept our responsibilities, take back what is ours and give to ourselves what free people all over the world have given to themselves. It is our God-given duty, and it is our God-given right to do this. We will live to do this duty and enjoy these rights or we will die cheerfully fighting for them. It is this determination that has now moved the French and their colonial agents in La Republique du Cameroun to "negotiate" in order to maintain their illegal occupation of our land after decades of ignoring our calls for them to peacefully do the right thing.
We welcome an honest negotiation with France and who ever they send to represent them. For such a negotiation to take place:
1) All our citizens held in La Republique du Cameroun jails must be released.
2) Any talks must take place only on neutral ground.
3) Talks can only be on separation or withdrawal from our territory.
4) Only the Southern Cameroons Defense Council of the Interim Government can select and send representatives to any negotiations. Any people hand picked by La Republique du Cameroun do not speak for the people of the Southern Cameroons in any way shape or form.
The days of the John Ngu Fonchas and Fumban-type conferences are gone, never to come back in our land. We shall never again allow any Fumban-type conferences to take place anywhere the business of our people is discussed.
Done in Minnesota, USA
January 19, 2004
Augustine Ambe
Secretary for Media and Communication
Southern Cameroons Interim Government-in-Exile
