Southern Cameroonians and members of the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) Belgium branch braved the rains and went out demonstrating in front of the United Nations Office in Brussels.

The Delegation of the SCNC led by Morfaw Rene was received by the deputy director of the United Nations in Belgium, Mr Pierre Harle. In receiving a memorandum from the SCNC the deputy director said he would do well to transmit the memo to the UN scribe that same day. He said he regretted the death of PP Nwenti and other Southern Cameroons activist and expressed that the UN can not afford to have another blood bath in Africa .

Below is the extract of the memorandum from the SCNC to the United Nations Representation in Belgium.

Dear Sir,

We, the People of Southern Cameroons and Sympathizers of the Southern Cameroons Cause, hereby petition the United Nations Organization (UNO) through the SCNC-Belgium unit for remedy, mediation and EFFECTIVE DECOLONISATION of its former TRUST TERRITORY.

We, the Petitioners, invoke the jurisdiction of the United Nations and its organs by virtue of the provisions of the United Nations Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Declaration on the Right of Peoples to Peace, the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.

We, the Petitioners, representing ourselves and on behalf of the people of the former United Nations Trust Territory of the Southern Cameroons presently annexed, occupied and colonized by La Republique du Cameroun, and who meet the definition of a 'people' under Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and under Article 1 of the General Assembly Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and People; do here call attention to the fact that the People of Southern Cameroons are a peace-loving people. They are a dynamic, hardworking and pragmatic people; who, under the SCNC, have this far, resorted to a peaceful approach (“The Force of Argument, Not the Argument of Force”) in the struggle to resolve the issues of their subjugation and the subversion of their sovereignty. This approach has been in keeping with the UN Secretary General’s call for dialogue between La Republique du Cameroun and the people of the Southern Cameroons. As observed by Ebenezer Akwanga, one of those in the heart of this struggle who has suffered brutal torture and incarceration, “the intransigence of the annexationist La Republique du Cameroun is pushing the people of the Southern Cameroons to limits as may eventually result otherwise”.

The Southern Cameroons, a former United Nations Trust territory under the United Kingdom Administration, was subjected to “independence by joining” on 1st October 1961. On attaining her independence she was also “deceived” into a UN- sponsored federal union of two states of EQUAL STATUS with the former French Trust territory that had attained independence as “La Republique du Cameroun” on 1st January 1960.

The UN itself failed to implement Resolution 1608 which should have produced a new federal constitution that should have been ratified by the two governments and an ACT OF UNION that should have been signed by J.N. Foncha for the Southern Cameroons and Ahmadou Ahidjo for la Republique du Cameroun by which the union of two nations and peoples would have come into force. This UN failure facilitated the annexation and occupation of Southern Cameroons that had no army of its own by la Republique du Cameroun that had an army and was assisted from abroad.

In conformity with Art. 102 of the UN Charter, the Act or Treaty of Union would have been registered with the General Secretariat of the UN to make it an instrument of international law and thus binding. What happened in Southern Cameroons therefore is simply that as the United Kingdom, the UN Administering Authority packed out, withdrawing all her forces, la Republique walked in as a new colonial power. The so-called Federal Republic of Cameroon was a transitional stage

It must be understood that every colony or trust territory that under went effective decolonisation assumed its deserved seat at the UN and other international bodies as a sovereign state.

Every effort has since been made to completely erase the Anglo-Saxon heritage of the people of the Southern Cameroons in the political, administrative, judicial, educational and socio-cultural spheres. The people of the Southern Cameroons in this arrangement are treated as a conquered people with more than 70% of the administrators and civil servants, and 80% of military and security personnel in their territory being persons of “La Republique du Cameroun” origin. The report of the Special Rapporteur, Sir Nigel Rodly, submitted pursuant to the UN Commission on Human Rights Resolution 1998/38 captures some of the human indignities suffered by the people of the Southern Cameroons under la Republique du Cameroun.

Faced with the provocative challenge to their inalienable rights, their freedom and their dignity, the people of the Southern Cameroons have from AAC1 in Buea to AAC2 in Bamenda, and through the SCNC and other Southern Cameroons movements, resorted to a peaceful approach to the problem including the use of legal and diplomatic means without resorting to the use of arms in their struggle to restore their self identity, nationhood, sovereign independence and the practice of social justice. La Republique du Cameroun has responded to these peaceful approaches with fierce and brutal attacks characterized by arrests, incarcerations, torture and extra-judicial killings. La Republique du Cameroun even takes offense with the peaceful celebration of the anniversary when the UN declared the Southern Cameroons no longer a Trust Territory under British Administration as to make such celebration basis for the exercise of these human indignities.

Your Excellency, during your visit to Cameroon in May 2000, you prescribed “meaningful dialogue” between the government of La Republique du Cameroun and the leaders of the people of the Southern Cameroons. The SCNC endorsed your call for meaningful dialogue and appealed to you to use preventive diplomacy and guarantee the dialogue. The Government of La Republique du Cameroun has to-date not been willing to dialogue. Instead, there has been the intensification of brutal repression, systematic marginalization and dehumanization of the people of the Southern Cameroons.

(…)

We end this Memorandum by underscoring our unflinching support for the Southern Cameroons struggle in the words of U.S. President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy ‘Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty’ (the liberty here of the people of the Southern Cameroons).

We here request the UN to give this matter the serious attention it deserves and act without delay towards a speedy, comprehensive and final resolution of the Southern Cameroons Questions to avert the blood-bath La Republique du Cameroun has been provoking in Southern Cameroons.

Extract: Morfaw Rene