Brutality, Oppression & the Reign of Terror:The New Life in Ambazonia.

Within the just ended week, the political desk of BaretaNews undertook a political discovery tour of Ambazonia, especially to some of the hotspots. This was to ascertain how the population was fairing with life under the present state of emergency, terror and occupation by the colonial regime of La Republique du Cameroun. From Victoria to Tiko, passing through Buea, Muyuka, Kumba, Wone, Nguti, Mamfe, Widikum, Batibo, and finally to mainland Bamenda town, the atmosphere is the same. The people, from their looks are yearning for freedom, but the atmosphere under which they now live has stifled their voices. They can only speak freely in their houses and not in the public domain.

The political temperatures in these different towns are also alternating depending on the revolutionary activities ongoing there.

From Victoria to Tiko, while the people’s faces yearn for freedom, things appear to be normal with business activities ongoing and people living their daily lives, as if all is well. However, with these two towns being the base of colonial military activities, one could understand why the uneasy calm reigned.

In the Port City of Victoria, there are many colonial military training bases, cantonments and Barracks, where reinforcements from LRC often take their base, before being redeployed to key restive towns in the Southern zone of Ambazonia.

The whole city is occupied by these military families and other citizens of LRC, who have been ferried across the Mungo to usurp, from top to bottom, all the jobs meant for local Victoria citizens at the National Oil Refinery and other local service industries. It is therefore not surprising that, one cannot move a hundred meters in the city, without hearing the colonial language, French, being spoken with a lot of arrogance and pride.

Also, in the beautiful waterside town of Tiko, the atmosphere is not different from Victoria. Apart from being the processing town for Rubber products from across the different Rubber plantations in Ambazonia, the town is also host to an Amphibious Battalion of the colonial forces. Their presence is therefore very much visible in the town, as they parade the streets up and down in uniforms, wielding AK 47 rifles to intimidate and inject antirevolutionary doses into the masses.

In Buea, the Capital of Ambazonia, the Albert Mukong Avenue, formally known as mile 17 is calm, with business and transportation activities going on smoothly. However, a ride up to the administrative residential areas of the city, and the Ambazonia Prime Minister’s Lodged, will show you a town under colonial military siege. The Ambazonian ghost experience of the colonial governor last week, appeared to have awoken him from slumber, to put the town on Red Alert, as earlier instructed by his subordinate, the Station Manager of Crtv Mount Cameroon FM, Buea.

From Buea, the BaretaNews Political desk moved to Bamenda, passing through the usual hotspots of Muyuka, Kumba, Konye, Wone, Nguti, Mamfe, and Batibo.

By the time the team passed Muyuka and Kumba, the situation was looking calm. However, the shooting of a bike rider in Kumba later in the evening for not respecting a colonial flag, and the subsequent barn on the movement of bikes the next day by the colonial governor and slave, Paul Atanga Nji, sent tempers rising. We are told the situation on the roads to the villages of Munyenge, Ekata, Pendammboko and Malende in Muyuka etc, where only moto bikes are used, is getting gradually getting out of hand. Ambazonian youths, most of who are bike riders, are already setting up multiple road blocks to prevent any vehicular movements into these areas. The angry Ambazonians say they must share equally from the transport fare collected from the passengers by transport drivers or no vehicle ply their communities, since they have been refused the right to end their daily living through their moto bikes. We are therefore tempted to ask; by barning the movements of moto bikes into these villages, how will the colonial regime check this? Do they have enough courageous colonial forces who can March into these interior villages to prevent youth harassment of truck and “clando” drivers? Don’t they think they have inadvertently raised more soldiers for the revolution through the banning of moto bikes?

BaretaNews was told upon return that the situation was the same between bike riders and other transporters on the roads to Mbonge, Ekondo Titi and other surrounding villages.

As the team drove on along the Mamfe-Kumba highway, road side villages were all deserted, with some completely lying in ruins after the barbarism of colonial forces. School campuses look bushy, as the population have all disappeared into nearby bushes or transferred to nearby interior villages, after experiencing first hand brutality from the killer colonial agents. Such is the case in Wone, where the carcass of a timber truck burnt to ashes by restoration forces was seen standing by the road side of a deserted village. In Konye, the colonial forces have station an Armored Personnel Carrier (APC) at the entrance to the Konye Local Government building, wrapped in their green, red, yellow colonial flag and facing the road, ready to open fire on any intruder.

As the team moved on to Bamenda from a heavily militarized Mamfe town, the road looked very tense with heavily armed colonial forces in multiple road blocks, where the occupants of every vehicle are always expected to step down and walk pass the blockade, brandishing their colonial identity cards. Those who do not posses ID cards have no choice than to drop at least a bribe of 2000frs or remain in the custody of the colonial forces.

Arriving Batibo, the place is like an abandoned war zone. Colonial forces are seen littered around the place in their hundreds, with some standing on top of strategic buildings and fences armed to the teeth. The town and environment look deserted with just doted inhabitants spotted around the place. There is no sign of a taxi, not to talk of a moto bike. From the tensed atmosphere seen in Batibo, it was clear that something unusual has been happening there lately.

Arriving Bamenda town at 5:30, BaretaNews team was welcomed by a concluding ghost town, to boycott Women’s day celebrations. As businesses gradually opened their doors, they soon began shutting down at 7:30 PM. The team was told that life starts in Bamenda at 6AM and ends at 8PM. At 8:30 PM, colonial forces are already out, seizing taxis and moto bikes still working and giving snake beatings to passengers who cannot afford 2000frs to buy their heads.

Just about 12 hours after the colonial ban on the movement of moto bikes in some counties and local governments by the colonial regime, a colonial military truck drove into the city of Bamenda from probably one of the affected Local governments, fully loaded with hundreds of moto bikes, confiscated from young Ambazonians.

From Victoria to Bamenda, the BaretaNews team encountered 12 road blocks by the colonial forces in mixed controls. This means that the team and occupants of other vehicles had to step out of the vehicle 12 times before arriving Bamenda, from Victoria. The colonial forces have strategically abandoned the dangerous villages where they use to station themselves to harass Ambazonians, to the more secured towns with larger settlements. Certainly, the fear of restoration forces is the beginning of cautious measures.

For how long will the colonial regime sustain this status quo of intimidation, oppression, and the reign of terror in Ambazonia? They are in possession of the clock and Ambazonians are in possession of the time. Time Shall Tell

James Agbor, BaretaNews Political Analyst