28/07/2017

Media Release

Consortium Condemns Politicization of Leaders’, Others’ Trials, Blackmail on Clergy

Members of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CACSC have received with shock and total consternation, news that the new judge handling the case involving their leaders, Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba Aforteka’a, the leader of the Coffin Revolution- Mancho Bibixy and other activists; mainly lawyers, teachers, journalists and students claimed government did not know about the existence of the matter prior to the 27th of July 2017.

Such blatant falsehood right in the public place and before both national and international public opinion is a clear confirmation of what we have always reported that the government of President Paul Biya is built on make-belief, unrepentant lies-telling and unbridled bad faith. It is also indubitable evidence that our brethren abducted, captured and in some cases picked up like street criminals are in fact victims of a botched decolonization process, being tried in a kangaroo court on trumped-up charges.

It is also regrettable that the government, going through a certain “Consortium of Parents” is playing games with Bishops of the Bamenda Ecclesiastical Province of the Roman Catholic Church (covers the entire territory of Southern Cameroons), the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, PCC, and the Executive President of the Cameroon Baptist Convention, CBC, in the Bamenda and Buea courts of first instance.

The drama that took place last week, when their matters listed for the 24th of July in both courts got adjourned in the most unorthodox manner ever heard of, over an unexplained identical period of two months and to the same date- the 25th of September 2017, tells of government’s clear interference to teleguide proceedings in the law courts. In the case of Buea, the matter was adjourned on a Sunday through a radio announcement sent in by telephone, without even the courtesy to personally inform the accused persons and their counsels.

The Consortium vehemently condemns the ongoing harassment, abductions and kidnapping of Southern Cameroonians in Yaounde, capital city of la République du Cameroun. This far, hundreds of our brothers and sisters are uncounted for in Yaounde.
We are therefore seizing this opportunity once more to urge the international community, particularly the African Union, the United Nations and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to make haste and intervene to complete the decolonization process of the Southern Cameroons in order to avert a genocide being planned by Yaounde on our citizens come September 2017 as they are planning to force people against their will, to send their children to be untaught in schools flooded by French Speaking teachers.

The Consortium re-iterates its position that schools shall not resume in Southern Cameroons in September 2017 without the unconditional release of all Southern Cameroonian activists detained in prisons around the country, the granting of a general amnesty to all Southern Cameroonians on exile as a result of the crisis, the withdrawal of all French speaking instructors from Southern Cameroons schools and universities, the withdrawal of civil law (Francophone) magistrates from our courts, the effective implementation of the Anglo-Saxon education tradition at the universities of Buea and Bamenda as decreed by their founding documents, that government pays arrears of salaries to teachers of private schools who have been out of work for nine months, that the business community in Southern Cameroons be exonerated from any form of taxes for fiscal year 2017 because their businesses have constantly been interrupted for multifarious reasons and the total demilitarization of the territory of Southern Cameroons.

These conditions must be met before any schools can resume, while dialogue could be re-started in the presence of third parties; the United Nations, the African Union and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. If these conditions are not met, the Consortium, in collaboration with the Southern Cameroons Governing Council shall be forced to introduce a new school calendar that shall function according to the recommendations of the Southern Cameroons Education Board created recently.

Meantime, the Consortium regrets that rather than settle down to address the concerns of the people of Southern Cameroons, President Paul Biya has rather opted to spend the sum of 130 million CFA F from the tax payers’ purse to send three delegations of nine senior state officials on a lies-telling and manipulation mission to some African and Western capitals. Let it be known, that the era of sophistry and total deceit is over!

We are hereby calling on the peace-loving people of Southern Cameroons to ARM THEMSELVES BY STOCKING THEIR HOMES WITH FOOD STUFF BECAUSE WE ARE MOVING INTO A DECISIVE PHASE OF ACTIVE RESISTANCE. This phase will require a lot of sacrifice and we are urging you all to scrupulously respect the directives that will be dished out in the days ahead so that we can all stay safe.

God is with us!

For the Consortium,

Barrister Eyambe Elias Wilfred Tassang
Deputy Secretary General Programs Director