By Norbert Wasso
Cameroonians based in Canada on Tuesday, September 10, 2024 staged a powerful protest against the ongoing conflict in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon between separatist fighters calling for secession and government forces.
The protest, which was organized by the Southern Cameroon Relief Organization, SCRO, saw the group of over 100 Cameroonians carrying banners and chanting songs, protest at the Cameroon Embassy in Ottawa, after a peaceful march that started at the French Embassy and a later stop at the United Nations High Commission for Refugees Office. The Cameroonian embassy was the last stop.
Organisers of the protest indicated that the objective of the protest was to “create awareness in Canada and around the world for everyone to know what has been going on in Cameroon for almost eight years now especially the killings, arbitrary arrests and intimidation of Anglophones in the North West and South West regions”.
The Cameroon Anglophone crisis is deadlocked. Eight years of clashes have killed over 4, 000, displaced millions and led tens of thousands to seek refuge abroad, but the government and the separatists are sticking to their irreconcilable positions. The separatists continue to dream that independence is just around the corner. In Yaounde, the government believes it can win a quick military victory. Meanwhile, moderates and federalists, who enjoy majority support, are unable to organise.
Many argue that to break the deadlock, Cameroonian and international actors should put pressure on the government and the separatists. Both sides must explore compromise solutions aimed at a level of regional autonomy somewhere between the secession desired by the separatists and the very slow decentralisation proposed by Yaounde.
There is currently no dialogue between Yaounde and the separatists. The latter are calling for talks to hammer out the practical details of independence in the presence of an international mediator. The government refuses to discuss the form of the state or reform of institutions. It proposes instead a decentralisation model With SPECIAL STATUS to the two Anglophone regions that grants neither adequate funding nor sufficient powers to local authorities (communes and regions).
The SCRO led by Dr. Valery Saningong, is calling for the release of the “face of the Ambazonia struggle, Sisiku Dr. Ayuk Tabe Julius” incarcerated at the Kondengui Maximum Prisons in Yaounde before any talks can go on.
SCRO, apart from creating awareness on the ongoing conflict which many think has been forgotten by the international community offers relief support to Anglophones who are victims of the current conflict, such as clothing, food, materials and healthcare.
There has been little significant progress towards finding a lasting solution for the now termed Anglophone Crisis whose most recent phase erupted towards the end of 2016.
The Government has used many strategies beginning with dialoguing with striking lawyers and teachers culminating in the Major National Dialogue in 2019 which led to giving the North West and South West Regions Special Status.
Force has also been exerted with the crisis blowing out to a full-scale war.
In the beginning
In November 2016 lawyers went on a strike in an effort to force the government to stop appointing Francophone magistrates who spoke no English and had no training in common law to preside over courts in the Anglophone regions. Teachers soon came out in support of the lawyers. They wanted the government to stop posting Francophone teachers who spoke no English to teach subjects other than French in Anglophone schools. During peaceful demonstrations in the cities of Bamenda, Buea and Limbe, the lawyers were roughly manhandled by government security forces. The use of force by the government opened up old wounds. It became a fight for the restoration of the federal system of government that was the promise when Southern Cameroons voted to gain its independence by joining La Republique du Camerooun. From there, it advanced into a fight for complete secession from La Republique.