On Tuesday, January 12th, Fru Nkimbeng will speak about the history and current status of the conflict in Southern Cameroon.
The Lyceum recording of the event is available at this link:
https://youtu.be/OXv02-o9sRw
The origin of the silent genocide and forgotten war in the Southern Cameroons
The name Cameroon came from the Portuguese idiom “Rio dos Camarões” In the 14th century, the Portuguese explorer Vas co da Gama sailed to the gulf guinea or Ambas-Bay “Ambazonia” and found many shrimps in the rivers and called it “Rio dos Camarões” meaning Rivers of shrimps.
In 1848, European nations met at the Berlin conference in Germany to partition Africa without the consent of Africans. Germany took Burundi, Cameroon, Togo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Namibia.
In 1920, World War One ended with the defeat of Germany and the loss of all her colonies at the Treaty of Versailles in France. German Cameroon was divided into two trust territories of the League of Nations and administered by Britain and France.
In 1946, the League of Nations ceased to exist with the creation of The United Nations. The two territories of Cameroon became the UN Trust territories administered by Britain and France. France administered the bigger portion of Cameroon.
The Trust Territory of the Cameroons under French administration achieved independence as the Republic of Cameroun on January 1, 1960 with Green-Red-Yellow as colors of the flag.
The Trust Territory of the Cameroons under British administration somewhat smaller than the French Cameroons was administered in two parts (Northern Cameroons and Southern Cameroons). Following a plebiscite, Northern Cameroons became part of Nigeria in May 1961 and Southern Cameroons was given one option to join the Republic of Cameroon in October 1961 to form two autonomous federated states called Federal Republic of Cameroon with Green-Red-Yellow and Two Stars, with two equal legal and linguistic systems: French civil law and English common law system.
In 1972, French Cameroun carried out an illegal unification, changed the name of the country to United Republic of Cameroon, and changed the flag to Green-Red-Yellow with one Star, and a French unitary civil law domination over the English common law system.
In 1984, the president unilaterally changed the country name to The Republic of Cameroun the name of French Cameroun at independence gradually eroding and absorbing the identity of British Southern Cameroons.
In 2016, common law lawyers, teachers and all of the Southern Cameroon peacefully demonstrated and the President ordered his army to shoot and kill protesters. The leaders went underground and many fled into exile in foreign countries. Hundreds of thousands of people displaced as refugees.
On November 30, 2017, the President declared war on the peaceful people of the Southern Cameroons aka Republic of Ambazonia and began a genocidal ethnic cleansing in Southern Cameroon. There are over a million IDPs, hundreds of thousands of refugees and a complete shutdown of schools and medical service and civil order in the Southern Cameroons. No schools have been open in Southern Cameroon since 2017.
The international community is silent to one of the world’s human tragedies and genocide. Thirty-five years ago, our first PM of blessed memory advised the militant Southern Cameroonians not to start a struggle prematurely. He told us to go to school and study and prepare ourselves for the right moment to fight to reclaim our nation and restore our dignity. Our forebears were right.
Fast forward forty-years today our forebears were prophetic that it is easier to crush a serpent in the egg then when it is hatched. We the children of Ambazonia, are scattered all over the world like the stars in the skies and ready to fight to restore our nation, human dignity and right to existence.