Southern Cameroons Interim Government

The African Commission’s Ruling in Gumne et al v. Cameroun : Digest and Comment

February 25, 2010

By Professor C Anyangwe

Nota: Some minds are probably not clear on what the African Commission decided in Communication 266, in part because of the length and wordiness of the ruling. Predictably, Republique du Cameroun itself, for dishonest self-serving political reasons deliberately misrepresents the ruling to its people, many of who seem indifferent to it or appear not to understand its import. What follows is an abridged version of the ruling. This synopsis and the comment appended at the end of it are intended to facilitate and further understanding of the matters in issue in the case and the decision that was arrived at. The text of the ruling, though abridged, is entirely in the words of the Commission itself. The headings in the text and the comment at the end are of course mine.

The Commission’s Decision on Admissibility

The admissibility of communications brought pursuant to Article 55 of the African Charter is governed by the conditions stipulated in Article 56 of the African Charter. This Article lays down seven (7) conditions, which must be fulfilled by a Complainant for a communication to be declared admissible. Of the seven conditions, the Respondent State claims that the Complainants have not fulfilled four, namely: Article 56(1), (2), (3) and (4). From the submissions of the Respondent State, there is an inference that Article 56(7) has not been fulfilled by the Complainant.

As to the condition that the Complaint must state the name(s) of its author(s):

The Respondent State submits that contrary to Article 56(1) of the African Charter, the victims of the alleged violations, indicated in the communication have not been identified. ... [T]he African Commission notes that the authors of the communication have been identified at page 1 of the communication and they are 14 in number. Their ages and professions have also been given as well as their addresses of service. Furthermore, the communication reveals that the authors of the communication are members of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) and the Southern Cameroons Peoples' Organization (SCAPO), organisations that were established principally to protect and advance the human and peoples' rights of Southern Cameroonians, including their right to self-determination. Article 56 (1) of the African Charter requires a communication to indicate its authors and not the victims of the violations. Thus the present communication cannot be declared inadmissible on the basis of Article 56(1). ...

Download SYNOPSIS OF RULING IN COMMUNICATION 266 IN THE COMMISSION'S OWN WORDSx

Communication 266/2003: Southern Cameroons vs. République du Cameroun

October 12, 2009

The extra-judicial killings of Southern Cameroons' nationals, the jailing of Southern Cameroonian infants, the repeated beatings and humiliation of the Southern Cameroonian elderly population have become routine and banalized.

Policies of the deliberate spread of HIV/AIDS in the Southern Cameroons territory, expropriation of Southern Cameroonian wealth, sabotage of Southern Cameroonian business initiatives, sabotage of Southern Cameroons' legal and educational structures and legacies, and other crimes being committed in the occupied Southern Cameroons by French Cameroun aka République du Cameroun under the tutelage of Paris, can only be brought to an end by the termination of France masquerading as République du Cameroun colonial occupation of the Southern Cameroons.

That these perpatrators of some of the worst crimes in the world are being supported and comforted in this inhuman enterprise by countries like Britain and the United States, does not quench one bit, the desire and will of the Southern Cameroons nation to become free and for her people to avail themselves to what the Almighty and even Charter of the UN ordains.

Paris, that ogre of a conductor in this macabre orchestra of death in the Southern Cameroons, her cousins in Washington and London and elsewhere in the European Union, must know, despite or inspite of themselves and their current interest in exploiting the resources of our homeland, that freedom will be ours.

Freedom will be ours, no matter what. No matter how many weapons Paris sells to Yaoundé. No matter how much training American GIs give Paul Biya's thugs of the BIR. No matter what British representatives in the most corrupt capital in the world, Yaoundé, parrot.

The moral gravity of the truth, justice and basic humanity can be seen bearing heavily on the African Commission of Human and Peoples Right (ACHPR) compromised Ruling on Communication 266/2003.

Despite the politics of the moment, the back room deals directed by Paris and Yaoundé at the African Union Commissioners; a sense for the basic humanity for the African population of the Southern Cameroons, a distinct people from that of République du Cameroun, triumphed just enough in the Commission's Ruling.

Read the Ruling on Communication 266/2003 here:
Download ACHPR Comm 266-2003

Understanding the Southern Cameroons Question - Fact Sheet

1. The Southern Cameroons was part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the  Cameroons under United Kingdom’s Administration. The Trusteeship Agreement between the United Nations and the United Kindgom was signed on 13 December 1946.

2. The name, Southern Cameroons, comes from the fact that the British Administering Authority had divided the Trust Territory into a Southern and Northern part, even while the territory was still a League of Nations mandated territory. British Southern Cameroons was created by the British Order in Council of June 26, 1923. By this act of the colonial authority, the British Southern Cameroons became a distinct territory from British Northern Cameroons within the international system, and a unit of self-determination.

3. The Southern Cameroons therefore does not refer to the Southern part of the Republic of Cameroon, but the Southern part of the British Cameroons.

4. French Cameroon was a United Nations Trust Territory under France.

5. French Cameroons and British Cameroons were separate UN Trust Territories with separate agreements, and each governed separately by Article 76(b) of the United Nations Charter. Apart from the fact that they were former parts of an ephemeral German Kamerun that lasted just 30 years and which was formally dismembered by the Versailles Treaty of 1919, there was no other link between them, either in language, administration, culture, politically or otherwise. Each was being prepared for its own self-determination as per Article 76(b) of the UN Charter.

6. British Cameroons was ruled from Nigeria until 1954, when members of the Southern Cameroons in the Nigerian Eastern House of Assembly walked out and returned to Buea, capital of Southern Cameroons, where they formed a thriving parliamentary democracy which lasted until 1961. From 1954 then, the Southern Cameroons was self-governing, with its government, Prime Minister, parliament, judiciary and House of Chiefs. It conducted its first free and fair election in which power changed hands peacefully in 1959.

 7. On 1 January 1960, in application of Article 76(b) of the UN Charter, French Cameroons gained independence from France and became known as La République du Cameroun, or in English, the Republic of Cameroon.

Download FACT SHEET ON THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS QUESTION-SUMMARY FOR DIPLOMATIC USE

'NORTHERN CAMEROONS': Restoration Government’s Official Statement

28 May 2008

Cameroun Republic, the colonial aggressor occupying the Southern Cameroons, believes it is smart. In its continuing wretched attempt to fool the outside world and to deflect internal and international challenge to its colonization of the Southern Cameroons it has desperately tried to blackmail Nigeria to turn a blind eye to the hijack of the territory of the Southern Cameroons and its people by Cameroun Republic.

Lacking any legal foot on which to stand in regard to its theft of the Southern Cameroons it has gone knocking at Nigeria's door. It is begging Nigeria to help it formulate a response to Communication No. 2 filed against it by the Southern Cameroons in the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights. That pathetic request has been roundly rebuffed by Nigeria. Piqued at having been rebuffed, Cameroun Republic has decided to use the tool of blackmail, its well-attested stock in trade. It is now telling Nigeria that the Southern Cameroons is seeking to recover the erstwhile Northern Cameroons and that if Nigeria does not adopt the attitude of indifference to Cameroun Republic's colonial occupation of the Southern Cameroons then Cameroun Republic would raise what in its delusional mindset it sees as the spectre of secession of erstwhile Northern Cameroons from Nigeria. Cameroun Republic pretends not to know that there is not the remotest possibility of that happening in a thousand years or more. Speaking through its agents it makes occasional cacophonous utterances about erstwhile Northern Cameroons, fraudulently claiming the UN is now interested in reconstituting the British Cameroons Trust Territory and in granting it independence.

"Southern Cameroons" and the "SCNC": The Birth of Consciousness

August 17, 2007

Like the hard line French surrogate Hutus in Rwanda who carried out a French-sponsored genocide but lost power, the regime in la Republique du Cameroun, erected after the successful implementation of another French-sponsored genocide in the 1950s and 1960s and still in power, have remained absolutely intransigent to civilized calls for dialogue to bring a peaceful end to the brutal and illegal Franco-Camerounese occupation of the Southern Cameroons.

Fourteen years ago, in early April of 1993, in what can be considered to be the re-birth of the Southern Cameroons consciousness that led to the creation of a genuine Liberation Movement in the Southern Cameroons against French rule, which includes the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), SCYL and others, the Buea Declaration of the All Anglophone Congress was made. It began thus:

"We, the people of Anglophone Cameroon, from whom a representation of more than five thousand delegates coming from a total of thirteen regions which make our territory (Boyo, Bui, Donga-Mantung, Fako, Kupe-Manenguba, Liabelem, Manyu, Meme, Menchum, Mezam, Momo, Ndian, Ngonkitunjia) as well as the entire Cameroon, having in its midst experienced politicians and old traditional leaders, spiritual and religious chiefs, leaders of political parties, deputies and members of the Economic and Social Council, peasants, workers, students and elites of all professions, are assembled in Anglophone congress, at the Mount Mary maternity center in the historic town of Buea, this second and third day of the month of April 1993, with an aim of adopting a joint position of all Anglophones with regards to the national debate on constitutional reform which will soon open, as well as to examine other subjects which relate to our wellbeing and that of our descendants, our territory and the entire nation of Cameroon."

Download southern_cameroonsbuea_anglophone_congress_1993.pdf

The Legal Argument For Southern Cameroons Independence

"An annexed people is always for a king or an Emperor a matter of complex problems. For his own people are always divided on the annexation like the annexed people themselves: he always has sleepless nights over them until the annexed people free themselves by sword or by negotiation; for the ashes of annexation are never completely cold."

Nicolo Machiaveli

"The Southern Cameroons was given an international status in 1922 as a League of Nations Mandated Territory under British Administration. In 1931, the League of Nations requested Britain and France to landmark the international boundary between the British Cameroons and French Cameroun. So on 9 January 1931, the "Cameroons Boundary Commission" met in London. Under the supervision of the League of Nations. Administrators of the British Cameroons and those of French Cameroun landmarked the international boundary by building concrete cement pillar marks along the boundary: each landmark was the object of a specific topographic document which was co-signed by the administrators of both countries"

"We Reject the French Colony of La Republique Francaise du Cameroun"

Articulating Rejection

French Fascists And Another List

The Guardian Post Nº 2017 published last month, carries on page six an article titled: “Gov’t presses for deportation of SCNC diaspora activists.”

The IG Research Bureau is publishing the page six article as it appeared because it comes on the heels of the circulation on the internet of a list of Southern Cameroonian activists that France and la République du Cameroun are eager to see targeted for elimination.

In early 1994, it was reported that France’s surrogates in Kigali, Rwanda were circulating a list of potential targets for elimination; we know how that story ended. We also know that French military advisers like Jean Pierre Huchon who provided distinguished service to the genocidal regime Kigali has spent some time in Yaoundé in the past training those who safeguard France’s interest in their colony. Recently, after the rumored death of France’s colonial jungle agent, Paul Biya of la République du Cameroun surfaced, the specter of a list was again invoked; with Cardinal Christian Tumi, the Arch Bishop of Douala prominent amongst those to be eliminated. So serious were the allegations that the Cardinal requested and got a meeting with the Secretary General of la République du Cameroun’s presidency.

The people of the Southern Cameroons must heed the lessons of Rwanda yesterday, and Côte d’Ivoire today--the French and their African agents will stop at nothing to maintain the slave era exploitation that undeservedly and disproportionately benefits the French in what they fondly call their “reserved hunting grounds” in Africa.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE RESTORED SOVEREIGN SOUTHERN CAMEROONS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

*INTRODUCTION 2
*WHERE WE ARE GOING 4
*THE STRUCTURE OF OUR COUNTRY 6
*EDUCATION 7
-Natural Laws 8
-Self-Knowledge and Life Skills 8
-Time Management 8
-Teamwork 8
-Motivational or Inspirational Studies 9
-Nutrition 9
-Traditional Educational Subjects 9
*JUSTICE 10
-Independence of the Judiciary 11
-Protecting the Constitution 12
*REFORMING PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTATION 13
*CORRUPTION 14
-Complete Separation of the State and Political Parties 15
*WOMEN 16
*CHILD UPBRINGING 17
*TECHNOLOGY 18
*CARVING OUT A SPECIALISATION FOR SOUTHERN CAMEROONS OR GIVING SOUTHERN CAMEROONS A RELATIVE ADVANTAGE 19
*MIGRATION 20