In Cameroon, a five-day Meeting, due to the crisis in the Anglophone regions is to be solved begins. Since 2016, there are killed more than 3,000 people and 500,000 have been displaced. From Yaoundé Dirce Köpp.
File photo: government soldiers to Cameroon in the Anglophone
The aim of the Camair-line flight from Maroua, the economic metropolis of Douala is actually. But during a stopover in Yaoundé, the plane empties out considerably. Dozens of festively-dressed prefects, governors, traditional and religious leaders and other dignitaries climb out of in the capital of Cameroon. Your destination: the great national dialogue, which begins this Monday.
Hundreds of Cameroonians from all over the country and from the Diaspora, has invited the government to solve the so-called anglophone crisis, in the since 2016, more than 3000 people have died and around half a Million refugees have become.
It all began three years ago, on 12. October 2016, protested with a strike in Cameroon, the Anglophone regions of South West and North West: lawyers and teachers against a System that discriminated in their eyes, the English-speaking regions of the Central African country. The reaction from Yaoundé, a months-long Internet blockade, which fueled the conflict was.
Paul Biya has just been elected again, in spite of the crisis.
Meanwhile, the government of President Paul Biya in a half-hearted trying to calm the protesters: A listless dialogue and the establishment of a Commission for the promotion of bilingualism and multiculturalism go hand in hand with arrests and intimidation by the same government and its security forces. One of the most important Confidants of the President, Paul Atanga Nji, declared publicly that there were no anglophones Problem. The protesters were busybodies, which would be manipulated with money from abroad.
Poor Governance
Wrong, says the anglophone cardinal Christian Tumi, one of the most important religious voices in the country, the DW: “The reasons for the crisis lie in poor governance; the people are not involved in decisions. And they lie in the centralistic political System, the Jacobin System, which we have copied from France.” To date, France is not involved in intra-Cameroonian policy.
Decentralisation is one of the key words of the crisis. Reforms are already inscribed in the Constitution of 1996, and since 2002 there’s even a decentralisation of the Ministry. However, it has remained to date. “The anglophone Problem is as old as the United Cameroon”, says Presbyterian priest Thomas Mokoko Mbue. “Since 1961, there has been calls and petitions for a dialogue. But the government has refused to listen.” Until it was too late.
Cardinal Christian Tumi is complaining about a bad governance
A year after the first strike ballistic groups call out separately in the North West and South West of the 1.10.2017 the independent state of “Ambazonia”. The date is symbolic: Because in the 1.10.1961 in the French colonial period managed the East and the British managed the West were United to Cameroon. With this state, the “Ambazonians want to have to do” nothing more.
Between 200 and 2000 “Amba-Boys”
The conflict becomes increasingly brutal. Young men, the so-called Amba-Boys, are fighting in the Bush against the army. Schools, hospitals, entire villages are burnt down, people murdered, intimidated, kidnapped. More and more often, the term civil war falls. Both sides, the separatists and the army, laden with guilt.
How many “Amba-Boys” there are, it is hard to say. Estimates are between 200 and more than 2000. They split into competing groups, mainly from the Diaspora, in the United States and Norway. “Some of these Boys are not even 15 years old”, says Thomas Mokoko. “It’s heartbreaking that these young people, who are actually the Crème of our society, to die for a senseless war.” Only off-the-record insiders say that the government also consider a minimum of a militia under the. The Name of the Biya-Familiar Paul Atanga Nji drops in the connection.
Until the middle of September 2019, about three years and thousands of Deaths after the first claims, calls on President Biya to a “great national dialogue”. This should allow “to examine, in the framework of our Constitution, the ways and means by which the deep aspirations of the population from the North and southwest, but also in all other parts of our Nation can be answered”.
Call for a decentralization
The anglophone people lawyer Felix Agbor Balla, belonged to 2016 which triggered the Protest, calls for, it must be discussed during the five-day Dialogue in Yaoundé about the possibilities of a Federal state: “The crisis started with the demand for decentralisation. Without speaking about the form of the state, we will find a solution.”
Felix Agbor Balla wants that decentralization is spoken
The Presbyterian clergyman Samuel Fonki, one of the Mediators in the crisis, criticized the government ignored the conflict for a long time. “But now, after pressure from the outside, she wants to show the world that you are doing something: ‘Look, we can make dialogue!'” How to underline, speaks of a Minister behind the closed doors of a “big Show”; the last day of the Dialogue (4.10.) is provided for a Gala. A man of the Church Fonki, however, is certain: “If there is no external observer, it does not address the facts on the table.” The said Minister rejects but: no, you just wanted to talk brother to brother, without interference from the outside.
Whether and how the “Ambazonians” will be represented, is unclear: Although the government has sent invitations to separatist leaders abroad. However, many of them reject the dialogue as a “Biyalog” call and a “waste of time and taxpayers ‘money” to keep, as it is about the separatist leader Mark Bareta writes on Facebook. The government knew what it wanted to, the Anglophone, but nobody need to come to Cameroon.
Indeed, but many of the secessionists have in the Bush as in the Diaspora – probably afraid of what might happen to them. Some of them, like Ebenezer Akwanga, once escaped from a Cameroonian jail, have to fear to be arrested. Others do not have a valid residence permit in the country in which they live. According to various sources, the separatists leaders abroad also lose influence.
Diaspora groups could lose influence – here’s a rally in Berlin in 2018
Aid commitments depending on the outcome of the Dialogue
Many interview partners in Cameroon to see the danger that the conflict has stabilised, Then could years the English-speaking bandits make regions uncertain. Young people without perspective. To the East of the Democratic Republic of the Congo shows where it leads, if a conflict is neglected: There of militias to terrorize for decades, robbers, the residents. Your political ambitions are at the most advanced yet.
Günter Nooke, Africa Advisor of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, is currently in Cameroon, a picture of the situation and has spoken primarily with the English-speaking Church people. They enjoy the confidence of the Ambazonians, reject violence, but uncompromising. “We have here. in Cameroon, violence, crimes against humanity, by both sides, so the national armed forces, the army and the police, but also of those who claim to be fighting for the independence of the Anglophone areas,” said Nooke in an interview with DW “When you look at pictures of these terrible crimes of violence, it is not surprising that we deal in Europe with Cameroon.” At a Meeting with a representative of the government Nooke therefore made it clear that Germany pledges more aid to the success of the Dialogue follows.
For the Cameroonian President Paul Biya seems to be a however, is already clear: “The future of our fellow citizens in the North and to the South-West in our Republic”, told Biya at the end of his call for dialogue. A Republic of Ambazonia has no place.