My personal experience brought me here

Cameroon is facing its greatest existential threat since creation in 1961. But this doesn’t in any way mean that under the fallacy of preservance of “National Unity”, ignoble crimes should be ignored or silenced.

Currently, no one is happy except a happy few who have created a nauseating profiteering ring that would soon be disbanded. What’s happening today in the Far North and more pronounced now in West Cameroon had happened in the East Cameroonian Bassa and Bamileke lands.

Where soldiers went around burning houses,looting and killing. It is only now that some sources are claiming via their publications that, almost 3 hundred thousand East Cameroonians were killed between 1958 and 1970. Do you know why it’s only being exposed now? It is because, the press wasn’t strong enough and obstruction of press freedom was rift. Unfortunately, the same is happening today and the current government just like Ahidjo in the past, has support from western countries.

Any native of Douala, know what happened at marche Congo. Those from Sanaga Maritime, Nyon and Keller, Nkam, Upper Nkam, Menoua and Mongo divisions who are not dishonest, know what I am talking about. But, I find it shocking that, offspring of people who were victims of the worst treatment in Francophone Africa after Algeria are jubilating at what is going on in Kembong, Otu and Kwakwa.

Some workout shame are propagating the narratives of the government, which one doesn’t need to be a Stanford or Harvard graduate to know they’re fake. The truth no matter how hard you try to conceal it almost always gets exposed. When I used to express my doubts at the wave school being burned down in West Cameroon, I was accused of siding with arsonists. Now, the authors have exposed themselves.

I know what oppression is all about because, I come from a family who had to leave its native region to sort safety elsewhere. Part of my family was decimated. Some where taken away by soldiers in two waves: 58 and 70. I don’t want Cameroon to go back to those dark days. My late grand father died because he was too afraid to go to the hospital, where he would have been either killed or taken to Tcholere or Mantum. His crime? He was a freedom fighter.

At 6pm, my mother told me: “we had firm orders from the military not to cook,for they never wanted to see fumes”. And there was this macrabe exercise of the display of chopped off heads of people, who were defending their homeland from occupation and from a man called Ahmadou Ahidjo, who with the aide of France usurped the presidency of East Cameroon. And contrary to state sanctioned propaganda, he also never wanted unification.

No one said anything then about those who were killed or who disappeared, those who dared, were either arrested or killed. And the icing on the cake, if I may say, they were given names. There’s a kind of McCarthyism gripping Cameroon. You have to praise the regime. You have to lie because you want to put bread and butter on your table. You have to insult your people in order to be accepted.

West Cameroonians never knew such horrible experience, that’s happening today.That colonial mentality of East Cameroon, inherited from France is still deeply engrained. Francophone Cameroonians are in urgent need for a second decolonisation. If not, how come that in 2018, war tactics of the 60s and 70s that depopulated entire areas are being implemented in West Cameroon ?

Based on my personal experience and history, I will never look the other way while innocent people are being killed. Threats and name calling won’t discourage me because I know that, what I am doing is beyond journalism, it is life saving. I also don’t need anyone to tell that I am wrong or right, for I know what I am doing and the consequences. Denouncing one ignoble crime saves the lives of hundreds. Keeping silent means that, you’re supporting the crimes that’s going and you will be held accountable here or in heaven.

Those who don’t want to report or who keep out the press from their activities, it is because, they want to commit crimes without witnesses.

Elie Smith