**3. Data collection and interpretation**

*Education, Human Rights and Peace in Sustainable Development*

when they lost their freedom".

destiny, the May 1972 referendum was extended to all the people of la République du Cameroun. It was 'a creeping annexation than unification'. However, the dissenting voices of Southern Cameroonians rejecting the centralized United Republic of Cameroon were dwarfed by the wide majority of La République. Many Southern Cameroonians regard 20th May, - the national day of today's Cameroon – as a day

In 1984, Paul Biya removed one of the stars from the flag and changed the official name of the country to the Republic of Cameroon (La République du Cameroon), which Cameroon had before her unification with Southern Cameroon. Some Anglophones such as Gorji-Dinka, Bernard Fonlon and Carlson Anyangwe from the Southern Cameroon considered it as the dissolution of the 1961 union. Citizens from these regions, that is, the Anglophone regions, have been mobiliz-

ing against their marginalization by the Francophone-dominated government. They complain about chronic under-representation in all issues of national life, including political appointments and professional training. They argue that since their reunification, they have been treated as second-class citizens. Their vibrant economic and political institutions have been completely erased, and their educa-

Gorji Dinka and Albert Mukong: Southern Cameroonian nationalists who protested the ill-treatment of their people by the central regime were arrested and detained. Representatives of southern Cameroonians in the tripartite talks of 1991 proposed a return to the federation, but the leaders of La République du Cameroon ignored them. In 1994, John Ngu Focha and Salomon T. Muna both former Prime Ministers of the Southern Cameroons returned to the United Nations in New York and demanded separate independence for the Southern Cameroons. The mission to the UN preceded the All Anglophone Conference (AAC 1), which took place in Buea in April 1993 bringing together all Southern Cameroon citizens who unanimously called for the restoration of the statehood of the Southern Cameroons. A second All Anglophone Conference (AAC 2) was held in Bamenda in May 1994, at which the decisions of AAC 1 were reiterated and a reasonable time was given to French Cameroon to accept a return to the two state federations or Southern Cameroon would revive its statehood and independence. The implementation of AAC 1 and AAC 2 was however stalled by the brutal arrests and incarceration of the leaders of the AAC with several others

The ACC was renamed the Southern Cameroons Peoples Conference (SCPC),

When they felt their demands were met with contempt and total disregard, the SCNC took their case back to the United Nations led by John Foncha and protested against La République du Cameroun annexation of their territory. Their focus has been maintained on the restoration of the statehood of Southern Cameroon, and

Police routinely disrupted SCNC activities: On March 23, 1997, gendarmes killed about 10 people in a raid in Bamenda. The police arrested between 200 and 300 people, mostly SCNC supporters as well as members of the Social Democratic Front. In the subsequent trials, Amnesty International and SCNC found substantive evidence of the government torturing and using force on them. The raid and trial resulted in a shutdown of SCNC activities. On October 1, 1999, SCNC militants took over Radio Buea to proclaim the independence of Southern Cameroon but failed to do so before security forces intervened. After clashes with the police, the SCNC was

and later the Southern Cameroon People's organization (SCAPO), with the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC) as the executive governing body. Southern Cameroon National Council younger activists formed the Southern

Cameroons Youth League (SCYL) in Buea on May 28, 1995.

the government brutal repression has helped to unify them.

tion and judicial systems have being undermined and degraded.

**148**

escaping into exile.

In the age of smartphones, images or video-making has become less problematic as most people even in the third world possess a smartphone with a built-in camera. They take pictures of what is relevant to them in their daily lives. They usually film the remarkable, the extraordinary, the exceptional and not the ordinary or everyday activities [12]. From the onset of the Anglophone crisis, participants made many videos to expose the human right abuses of the military and they flooded the Internet. That was why the government cut-off the Internet in the English-speaking areas to stop them from circulating incriminating images.

We decided then to collect 30 videos to analyze them because they provide information that cannot be provided by other types of data. They are used as 'proofs of facts' and as it is often said, a picture or video is more, and different, than a thousand words because they contain much more visual information on bodily movement and include acoustic data. Although images are specific reality constructions, ambivalent, subjective and diffuse, their interpretation must be substantiated in words [13].

The videos collection contribute toward answering a research question and are interpreted by providing verbal accounts and linked to the theoretical concept of cultural dominance and media and information communication. The questions we asked concerning each of the videos were similar to those asked by Becker [14]: What are the acts of violence and human rights abuses in each video? How can they be interpreted and linked to our theoretical concept? What insight do they generate and substantiate? What different kinds of people are there? We link observations to theoretical concepts such as status, groups, norms, rules, and common understandings, deviance and rule violation, sanctions and conflict resolution.

### **4. The Ambazonia uprising**

The relationship that exists between Southern Cameroon and La République du Cameroon is one of two people, two inheritances, and two divergent mentalities: one struggles for its liberation, while the other suppresses and abuses its human rights or struggles to maintain control over it by using its mighty state military. They speak different languages with little or no rapprochement although they live in the same country. The various videos below clearly show the differences. The oppressors' troops speak in French, while the oppressed speaks in Pidgin English. A country divided predominantly by language although language is not the cause of the Anglophone crisis: it is the history of people. This shows the struggle between the two people and languages while one is resisting the onslaught and domination, the other is trying very hard to overcome and crush them. Having been oppressed for long, the oppressed is not willing to give up and the oppressor

is not willing to let her leave her unitary state, and then the struggle of two people stiffens. The government that has been in power for over 38 years does everything to suppress the uprising by sending its brutal security forces to harass the Anglophones who are striking for a just course.

According to Cameroon Concord News 2019 [15], "being Anglophone or francophone in Cameroon is not just the ability to speak, read and use English or French as a working language. It is about belonging to the Anglophone or Francophone ways including things like outlook, culture and how local governments are run. Anglophones have long complained that their language and culture are marginalized". They thought it necessary to protect their judicial, educational and local government systems. They wanted an end to annexation and assimilation and more respect from government for their language and political philosophies. They preferred a total separation by creating their own independent state if the government failed to listen to them.

According to www.Amnesty.org [16], "towards the end of 2016, the two Anglophones regions were rocked by demonstrations and strikes, initially led by lawyers, teachers, students, and eventually involving a wider section of the population. They protested against what they viewed as the growing marginalization of the Anglophone linguistic, cultural, educational traditions and systems in various sectors such as the failure to use the Common Law in courts and Standard English in classrooms, as well as the improvement of their representation in politics".

They decided to express their grievances by protesting. The protests began in the streets of Anglophone cities as thousands of Anglophone Cameroonians, from lawyers and teachers as well as irate youth, protested against the Francophone hegemony. Handfuls of videos show young men manifesting determination and strength for change in the Southern Cameroon-Ambazonia. They collaborated especially when one of them was shot because they were conscious of their marginalization. They knew the police would shoot them but they moved on. This shows that a disillusioned unemployed youth is very dangerous for the health of a country. They all hungered for independence and not even federalism that some elite would talk of. Although largely, but not always peaceful in nature, these protests were met with sustained repressions from the Cameroon authority and security forces. Some peaceful protesters were killed during the demonstrations; hundreds of people were arrested and detained without trial. Our objective in this work is to analyze the confrontation between the protesters and security forces using amateur videos secretly taken by the protesters.

#### **4.1 Cultural domination in the judiciary section**

The protest began on October 6, 2016, as a sit-down strike initiated by the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), an organization consisting of lawyer and teacher trade unions from the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. Barrister Agbor Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba and Tassang Wilfred led the strike.

According to Wikipedia [17], "the common lawyers of Anglophone Cameroon were said to have written an appeal letter to the government over the use of French in schools and courtrooms in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. In an effort to protect the English culture, they began a sit-down strike in all courtrooms on October 6, 2016. Peaceful marches began with marches in the cities of Bamenda, Buea, and Limbe calling for the protection of the common law system in Anglophone Cameroon and the practice of the Common Law sub-system in Anglophone courts and not the Civil Law as it was used by French-speaking

**151**

jobs.

*Uprising and Human Rights Abuses in Southern Cameroon-Ambazonia*

magistrates". They equally demanded for the creation of a common law school at the

In Africanews Morning call [19], Barrister Bobga Harmony declared that the government of Cameroon had completely ignored them, which was a violation of the right to self-determination. According to him, "since 1972, they have been a progressive, an inexplicable, illegal and illegitimate erosion of the common law." He regretted that Francophones had been replacing the Common Law with the French Civil law as if Anglophones "were a conquered people." The lawyers had complained for years through writing to competent authorities before realizing that if they did not take concrete actions, they would be swallowed up by the dominant Francophone system. So they held a Common Law conference on the May 9, 2015, which was followed by a second conference in Buea where they made a declaration

Although they had sent a communiqué to the presidency of the Republic of Cameroon, nobody listened to them. Instead of defending the Common Law lawyers, the Minister of Justice insulted them in the government newspaper: Cameroon Tribune. As a result, they protested and insisted to talk only with the president of the Republic of Cameroon or his properly mandated agent because they had exhausted all negotiation with the executive and the legislature. They had filed a petition to the national assembly and the senate and they were planning to file a petition to the constitutional council for the determination of the question of whether there had been any act of union between West Cameroon and East Cameroon. They planned to proceed to the international jurisdiction like the African Commission for Human and People's Right, the Human Right Commission if the government did not listen to them. Bobga Harmony said "We are going to seize the international community because these are grave abuses of human rights. The international community cannot fold its arms and allow us to be brutalized in

our land," Barrister Bobga Harmony said in Africanews Morning Call [19].

Teachers and the general public joined the lawyers in the strike. They reportedly opposed what was described as the "imposition of French in schools in Anglophone parts of the country." According to Catherine Soi reporting for Aljazeera [20], students battled on their own at school because even private school teachers had deserted classroom in support of the public sector teachers and so many classrooms and schools across Ambazonia were empty. They wanted the government to stop sending teachers who spoke only in French or Pidgin English. Even students supported the strike action because after completing school, they were unable to find

"For over fifty years Anglophone students have not been able to have a headway in Cameroon in most disciplined that bring about development: science and technology because the government has refused to train teachers for our schools,"

**4.2 Cultural domination in the educational section**

declared Tassang Wilfred over Aljazeera (2016).

More so, Francophones occupied all the juicy positions in the Supreme Court. Although Francophones had little or no knowledge in English and the Common Law, most of the magistrates and bailiffs in the Anglophone zone were Francophones. Anglophones lawyers were disgruntled of the domination of the Civil Law as if Cameroon was uniquely a Civil Law country. There was equally a problem of translating the Business law for Africa (OHADA) uniform acts, CEMAC code, and others because the Francophones wanted to assimilate the Common Law

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91053*

University of Bamenda and Buea [18].

sub-system.

reinforcing their position.

#### *Uprising and Human Rights Abuses in Southern Cameroon-Ambazonia DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.91053*

*Education, Human Rights and Peace in Sustainable Development*

Anglophones who are striking for a just course.

ment failed to listen to them.

secretly taken by the protesters.

**4.1 Cultural domination in the judiciary section**

is not willing to let her leave her unitary state, and then the struggle of two people stiffens. The government that has been in power for over 38 years does everything to suppress the uprising by sending its brutal security forces to harass the

According to Cameroon Concord News 2019 [15], "being Anglophone or francophone in Cameroon is not just the ability to speak, read and use English or French as a working language. It is about belonging to the Anglophone or Francophone ways including things like outlook, culture and how local governments are run. Anglophones have long complained that their language and culture are marginalized". They thought it necessary to protect their judicial, educational and local government systems. They wanted an end to annexation and assimilation and more respect from government for their language and political philosophies. They preferred a total separation by creating their own independent state if the govern-

According to www.Amnesty.org [16], "towards the end of 2016, the two Anglophones regions were rocked by demonstrations and strikes, initially led by lawyers, teachers, students, and eventually involving a wider section of the population. They protested against what they viewed as the growing marginalization of the Anglophone linguistic, cultural, educational traditions and systems in various sectors such as the failure to use the Common Law in courts and Standard English in

classrooms, as well as the improvement of their representation in politics".

They decided to express their grievances by protesting. The protests began in the streets of Anglophone cities as thousands of Anglophone Cameroonians, from lawyers and teachers as well as irate youth, protested against the Francophone hegemony. Handfuls of videos show young men manifesting determination and strength for change in the Southern Cameroon-Ambazonia. They collaborated especially when one of them was shot because they were conscious of their marginalization. They knew the police would shoot them but they moved on. This shows that a disillusioned unemployed youth is very dangerous for the health of a country. They all hungered for independence and not even federalism that some elite would talk of. Although largely, but not always peaceful in nature, these protests were met with sustained repressions from the Cameroon authority and security forces. Some peaceful protesters were killed during the demonstrations; hundreds of people were arrested and detained without trial. Our objective in this work is to analyze the confrontation between the protesters and security forces using amateur videos

The protest began on October 6, 2016, as a sit-down strike initiated by the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC), an organization consisting of lawyer and teacher trade unions from the Anglophone regions of Cameroon. Barrister Agbor Balla, Dr. Fontem Neba and Tassang Wilfred led the

According to Wikipedia [17], "the common lawyers of Anglophone Cameroon were said to have written an appeal letter to the government over the use of French in schools and courtrooms in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. In an effort to protect the English culture, they began a sit-down strike in all courtrooms on October 6, 2016. Peaceful marches began with marches in the cities of Bamenda, Buea, and Limbe calling for the protection of the common law system in Anglophone Cameroon and the practice of the Common Law sub-system in Anglophone courts and not the Civil Law as it was used by French-speaking

**150**

strike.

magistrates". They equally demanded for the creation of a common law school at the University of Bamenda and Buea [18].

More so, Francophones occupied all the juicy positions in the Supreme Court. Although Francophones had little or no knowledge in English and the Common Law, most of the magistrates and bailiffs in the Anglophone zone were Francophones. Anglophones lawyers were disgruntled of the domination of the Civil Law as if Cameroon was uniquely a Civil Law country. There was equally a problem of translating the Business law for Africa (OHADA) uniform acts, CEMAC code, and others because the Francophones wanted to assimilate the Common Law sub-system.

In Africanews Morning call [19], Barrister Bobga Harmony declared that the government of Cameroon had completely ignored them, which was a violation of the right to self-determination. According to him, "since 1972, they have been a progressive, an inexplicable, illegal and illegitimate erosion of the common law." He regretted that Francophones had been replacing the Common Law with the French Civil law as if Anglophones "were a conquered people." The lawyers had complained for years through writing to competent authorities before realizing that if they did not take concrete actions, they would be swallowed up by the dominant Francophone system. So they held a Common Law conference on the May 9, 2015, which was followed by a second conference in Buea where they made a declaration reinforcing their position.

Although they had sent a communiqué to the presidency of the Republic of Cameroon, nobody listened to them. Instead of defending the Common Law lawyers, the Minister of Justice insulted them in the government newspaper: Cameroon Tribune. As a result, they protested and insisted to talk only with the president of the Republic of Cameroon or his properly mandated agent because they had exhausted all negotiation with the executive and the legislature. They had filed a petition to the national assembly and the senate and they were planning to file a petition to the constitutional council for the determination of the question of whether there had been any act of union between West Cameroon and East Cameroon. They planned to proceed to the international jurisdiction like the African Commission for Human and People's Right, the Human Right Commission if the government did not listen to them. Bobga Harmony said "We are going to seize the international community because these are grave abuses of human rights. The international community cannot fold its arms and allow us to be brutalized in our land," Barrister Bobga Harmony said in Africanews Morning Call [19].
