UNITED KINGDOM: Ask Parliament to Step Up Efforts to Stop Atrocities by the Cameroon Military
Since 2017, the French Neocolonial regime in Cameroon has been waging a ruthless war against minority indigenous communities in it’s western region, known as Ambazonia or English-speaking Cameroons. The offensive was initiated to suppress mass peaceful demonstrations that broke out in October 2016 for the rights of the Ambazonian people to maintain control of their schools, courts and other civic institutions. The campaign has included massacres, extrajudicial killings, torture and other gross violations of internationally-recognized human rights.
On the first day of 2021, the US Senate passed S.Res.684 [1] which condemned the violence and called on the international community to maintain its efforts to hold human rights abusers accountable. Yet just 9 days later, on January 10, 2021, Cameroon security forces carried out another massacre of unarmed civilians in Mautu village. Eleven people were killed, including a child and a grandmother. The Mautu massacre must be understood as a rebuke to the efforts by the international community to hold Cameroon accountable for its crimes.
As MP Emily Thornberry argued in her address to the British Parliament on January 19 [2], the international community MUST respond by escalating the intensity of our efforts, not by backing down.
Please help step up the campaign to stop these atrocities by communicating the following two requests to the lawmakers that represent you. You can send a letter from any country by clicking on the red START WRITING button. The default letter ask lawmakers to:
1) Contact their representatives to the United Nations and urge them to press for a UN Security Council Resolution calling for an end to the violence and mandating the establishment of an Independent International Fact Finding Mission to determine the facts and circumstances of the ongoing gross human rights violations on the ground. The establishment of such a mission will have the immediate effect of dissipating violence on the ground and the saving of innocent lives as was the case in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Burundi, and most recently Libya.
2) Press for the triggering of the sanctions determination process against the units and commanders of the Cameroon security forces who are driving the military campaign against the minority English-speaking populations. Despite the relatively short life span of this procedure, there is already research by respected human rights organizations indicating its effectiveness as a deterrent against atrocities [3].
Ambazonians around the world are mobilizing to make these requests to their lawmakers, for the sake of the lives of their loved ones back home. We call on all people concerned with the protection of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people to do likewise.
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NOTES:
1- https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-resolution/684
2- https://twitter.com/EmilyThornberry/status/1351622394318901251?s=20
3-https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/global-magnitsky-act-represents-new-era-smart-sanctions
