KNOW THE FACTS ABOUT THE SOUTHERN CAMEROONS’ CASE
RESTORATION OF THE STATEHOOD OF THE FORMER BRITISH SOUTHERN CAMEROONS

1. The right to sovereign independence and the restoration of statehood claimed by the people of the former United Nations Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons is a right grounded in international law, geography and history. It is not the product of fancy or mere wishful thinking. It is based precisely on the same international laws and customs that every independent state in the world, including the Republic of Cameroun that has annexed the Southern Cameroons, would rely on to justify its own existence. The Southern Cameroons case is a case for external self-determination and sovereign independence and not by any chance a case falling under domestic law.

2. The British Southern Cameroons is the Southern part of the former Cameroons under United Kingdom’s Administration. The UK signed the Trusteeship Agreement for this territory on 13 December 1946 with the United Nations. The Southern Cameroons is located in the Gulf of Guinea between the Federal Republic of Nigeria and la Republique du Cameroun. It has a population of more than 5 million inhabitants and is thus more populated than 60 UN Member States, 30 Commonwealth member nations and 18 African Union (AU) member States. It has a land size of 43,000 sq. km, making it larger in size than 30 UN Member States and 12 AU Member States.

3. The Southern Cameroons case for the restoration of its statehood and sovereign independence is founded on solid legal grounds, namely, the United Nations Charter: Articles 76(b) and 102; United Nations General Assembly Resolutions: Res. 1541 of 15 December 1960, 1608(XV) of April 21 1960), 2625 (XXV) of 24 October 1970; OAU (Organisation of African Unity) Charter: Article 2, the abolition of colonisation in all its forms on the African continent; the African Union Constitutive Act: Article 4(b), respect of boundaries acquired at independence; the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights: Articles 19, 20(1), 20(2); and principles of general international law, particular the principle of utipossedet is juris, which consecrates the idea that the boundaries of every state are the boundaries it inherited at independence.

4. The Southern Cameroons is an international territory; a former Trust Territory of the United Nations, demarcated by international boundaries and protected by international treaties. The treaties marking the Eastern border of the Southern Cameroons (the boundary which separates it from the Republic of Cameroon) were concluded between Britain and France; France, whose territory of French Cameroons the Republic of Cameroon inherited at independence. These treaties are the Milner-Simon Declaration of 10th July 1919 and the Franco-British Treaty of 9 January 1931.

5. The Southern Cameroons has never been and is not a part of the Republic of Cameroon. It is simply occupied through fraud, violence, intimidation and suppression by the Republic of Cameroon. The name Southern Cameroons does not refer in any way or manner to the southern part of the Republic of Cameroon. It refers only to the southern part of the Cameroons under United Kingdom’s Administration, since Britain had divided the Cameroons under UK administration into a northern and southern part.

6. The Republic of Cameroon, like the Southern Cameroons, was also a UN Trust Territory of equal status to the Southern Cameroons, each being guided towards its own separate destiny by its Administering Authority; for the Southern Cameroons, the UK; and for the Republic of Cameroon, France.

7. The Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroon each had a separate date of independence, determined by United Nations Resolutions. The Republic of Cameroon’s date of independence was 1 January 1960 and that of the Southern Cameroons was 1 October 1961, but it never achieved independence, due to the illegal occupation and annexation.

8. The Southern Cameroons gained autonomy as a self-governing territory under Britain from 1954 to 1961. It had its own constitution (The Southern Cameroons Constitutional Order in Council); a Premier; National Assembly, Judiciary, House of Chiefs, Civil service, multiparty political system, and a thriving democracy.

9. By the time the Southern Cameroons was illegally occupied, annexed and colonised by the Republic of Cameroon, the Southern Cameroons had had two governments: the first Premier was E.M.L Endeley and the second was John NguFoncha who defeated Endeley in a peaceful elections in 1959.

10. The Southern Cameroons was ruled as a separate part of the British colony of Nigeria from after WWII until 1961 when it was illegally occupied and colonised by the Republic of Cameroon on 1 October 1961.

11. When Nigeria achieved independence on 1 October 1960, the Southern Cameroons could no longer be ruled from Nigeria as before. It therefore became necessary, especially with the pressure for unconditional independence generated by UNGA Res. 1541 of 15 December 1960, to hasten the independence of the Southern Cameroons, for which she was more than prepared, given her self-rule since 1954.

12. Britain, based on the idea that the Southern Cameroons was poor and should not depend on the British purse, refused to grant the majority opinion on the territory for sovereign independence. Instead, Britain came up with the idea that the Southern Cameroons must achieve independence either by joining Nigeria or by joining the Republic of Cameroon. How could independence be achieved by being an appendage of some other country? Nevertheless, Britain got the UN to organise a Plebiscite on 11 February 1961 asking the people of the Southern Cameroons whether they wished to achieve independence by joining the federation of Nigeria or by joining the Republic of Cameroon. The vote went in favour of achieving independence by joining the Republic of Cameroon. This was quite understandable. There was a civil war raging in the Republic of Cameroon, which drove hundreds of thousands of its people to take shelter in the Southern Cameroons. When they saw the liberty there, they started drumming up ideas of unity and even joined Southern Cameroons political parties for that purpose. On the other hand, Southern Cameroonians felt oppressed in Nigeria. Without the choice of sovereign independence, they voted to achieve independence by joining the Republic of Cameroon.

13. The meaning of the Plebiscite must however be clearly understood. The Plebiscite was neither a promise made by the people of the Southern Cameroons to the Republic of Cameroon nor the act of joining. It created no bond with the Republic of Cameroon and gave her no rights over the Southern Cameroons. The Plebiscite was simply a mechanism used by the UN to discover the intention of the people of the Southern Cameroons. It was a mere declaration of intention. The Republic of Cameroon, as well as Nigeria, were third parties to the process. The Plebiscite consultation was exclusively between the UN and the peoples of the Southern Cameroons. Only after knowing the intention of the people of the Southern Cameroons through the Plebiscite process, could the UN and UK now take measures to effect the joining, following due process laid down by the UN Charter.

14. As a follow-up to the Plebiscite, the UN met on 21 April 1961 to adopt Resolution 1608(XV), the resolution on the southern Cameroons independence and subsequent joining with the Republic of Cameroon. The General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for the Southern Cameroons to achieve independence on 1 October 1961. But surprisingly, the Republic of Cameroon, the proposed party to the joining, voted against Southern Cameroons’ independence and by implication against union. Paragraph 5 of Resolution 1608(XV) specifically called for a post-plebiscite conference between the UK, Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroon for the purpose of implementing the policies agreed upon by the two parties. Paragraph 5 reads: “Invites the Administering Authority, the Government of the Southern Cameroon and the Republic of Cameroon to immediately engage in talks in view of taking, before 1 October 1961, necessary measures for the implementation of policies agreed on and declared by the parties concerned”.

15. This was the paragraph whose implementation would have led to a valid legal union between the Southern Cameroons and the Republic of Cameroon, in accordance with Article 102(1) of the UN Charter. Unfortunately, it was never implemented and is still awaiting implementation up till today. In the absence of a Union Treaty, we are faced with the reversal of the decolonisation process in the Southern Cameroons.

16. Despite this failure to implement the pertinent UN resolution on union, and despite the Republic of Cameroon’s rejection of Southern Cameroons’ independence and joining with itself in Resolution 1608(XV), on 30 September 1961, at the termination of the Trust over the Southern Cameroons on 1 October 1961, Britain betrayed the Southern Cameroons! Instead of handing power to the duly elected and functional government of the Southern Cameroons under Premier Dr. John NguFoncha, Britain, the Administering Authority, handed sovereignty illegally, in violation of all UNGA Resolutions, particularly Res. 1608(XV) of 21 April 1961, to the Republic of Cameroon! The Republic of Cameroon is therefore holding the Southern Cameroons simply as what is known in the Law of Trust as an Executor de son Tort, a person who holds trust property illegally.

17. The facts of the Southern Cameroons story of how its statehood came to be suppressed are therefore clear and straightforward.

18. The violence, the massacres, the intimidation, kidnappings, torture, wanton arrests and lawlessness which have been exercised by the colonial government in Yaounde against the people of the Southern Cameroons, in order to suppress and hide the facts, stand on their own as separate crimes.

19. France, whose territory of French Cameroons the Republic of Cameroon inherited at independence, never contested the boundary with Southern Cameroons. Instead, she entered into treaties with Britain to mark and demarcate that boundary. On what basis then is the Republic of Cameroon, successor state to French Cameroons, contesting that boundary?

20. As matters stand, Republique du Cameroun has flouted every single one of the United Nations Resolutions and Charter provisions governing the peaceful relations between peoples, particularly UNGA resolutions concerning the Southern Cameroons.

21. The Southern Cameroons case is not a question of propaganda and narration, but of concrete proof that meets the standards of international law. Boundary disputes cannot be settled by mere narration, but by providing the proofs that meet the standards required under Article 102(1) of the UN Charter. The people of the Southern Cameroons challenge La Republique du Cameroun to produce the smallest proof of how, when and by what instruments of international law, it lays claim to the territory of the Southern Cameroons.Republique du Cameroun is called upon to show cause why the people of the Southern Cameroons, who were self-governing from 1954, should surrender their territory to be ruled by foreigners from Republique du Cameroun or show cause why the Southern Cameroons should not be ruled by Southern Cameroonians but by foreigners as if they were mere inanimate fixtures in their own territory!

22. We assert the absolute right that no one can have a greater right over the territory of the Southern Cameroons than Southern Cameroonians themselves, the owners of the territory. Republique du Cameroun cannot have its own territory, which no one disputes and cross its boundaries illegally to suppress and dominate the people of the Southern Cameroons! The right of the people of the Southern Cameroons over their own international territory cannot be displaced, by any stretch of the imagination, by the foreign country of Republique du Cameroun! These are matters of common sense. No one surrenders his own house to his neighbour!

23. Republique du Cameroun alleges a union with the Southern Cameroons, yet strangely, it refuses to recognise the existence of that partner with which it purports to have entered into a union. It cannot show the terms of the union, nor any agreement that produced the union. This absurdity in itself is proof of its colonisation since the alleged union is shown to have simply been a ploy to annex the Southern Cameroons.

24. The people of the Southern Cameroons challenge Republique du Cameroun to cite one single article of the African Union Constitutive Act; the UN Charter; the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, or any instrument of international law which gives it sovereignty over the territory of the Southern Cameroons. Instead, it diverts attention by talking about bilingualism, and such irrelevant things.

By Denis Atemkeng
For BaretaNews