Marcus F Abendong says ‘Senior UN official’ only bylined document scribbled by Yaounde in return for promotion
The principal argument in an article titled “The So-called School Resumption Lockdown: Why Cameroon’s Separatists Keep Getting It Wrong” bylined by a senior UN official identified as Julius Fondong was that the UN cannot grant independence to Ambazinia because of their pro-school boycott policy. This has sparked anger on the camp of the separatists, one of whose supporters has come in to set the records straight.
Replying to what he considered as a document dictated by Yaounde, Marcus F Abendong ,Journalist at large, insisted that the lockdown declared from 7th to 17th September is not intended to disrupt schools resumption as Fondong claimed but to send a strong message or reminder to the 2024/2025 United Nations General Assembly that resumes on September 10th about the continuing genocide in Southern Cameroons Ambazonia.
Abendong accuses Fondong who is a product of ENAM of thinking only about his promotion instead using the UN to help his suffering Anglophone brethren. For him, Yang Philemon, as President of the UNGA, had set the plan rolling to use international civil servants of Ambazonian origin within the UN system to thwart the ambitions of their own people in exchange for crumbs, promotion, just like the erstwhile firebrand Southern Cameroons activist, Simon MUNZU,had been used to fracture the struggle. Following is his reply in its entirety:
RESPONSE TO JULIUS FONDONG aka SIMON MUNZU Jr
By Marcus F Abendong ,Journalist at large
I just read a document circulating on social media titled “The So-called School Resumption Lockdown: Why Cameroon’s Separatists Keep Getting It Wrong”. The document authored by a certain Julius Fondong, (an ENAM-trained Cameroonian Civil Administrator and presently, a Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations’ Congo mission), has for purpose the dissuasion and discouragement of people from the Ambazonian independence quest and the encouragement of the ongoing pogrom/genocide, but the author’s real (hidden) agenda is to seek promotion within the structures of the United Nations system whose General Assembly will be presided by Cameroon’s Philemon Yang, beginning September 2024. This is my interpretation of the trash hurriedly scribbled by Julius Fondong or given him to byline. Read my arguments below.
Firstly, it is clear that Mr Julius Fondong bylined a document which was dictated or written by someone in the Yaoundé establishment. Evidence of this assertion is the fact that Mr Fondong makes reference to the lockdown declared by the government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia stating that the lockdown is meant to disrupt or stop School Resumption whereas that is not the case.
1. The lockdown earlier declared to run from September 2nd to 9th and now adjusted to run from the 7th to the 17th of September IS NOT intended to stop school resumption or to block schools from operating in the territory. The position of the Ambazonian government on schooling is clear; the government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia is not against schooling on the territory but it cannot guarantee the security of children. Consequently, the decision to send children to school or not relies on parents after they must have assessed the security situation of their specific vicinities. This is the position of the government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia for more than five years now. With such a clearly conceived and enunciated position from the government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, why is Mr Julius Fondong lying and for whose benefit? It should be noted that NO GROUP in the Ambazonian struggle is against schooling in the territory so it cannot be said that Julius Fondong got mixed up.
The well informed Julius Fondong, Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations, cannot be oblivious of the many attempts made by the government of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia to UNICEF, the UN specialised agency in matters of education to help Ambazonian refugee children and IDPs in Nigeria and on the territory acquire education. What effort has the Senior Political Affairs Officer made, even as a concerned international civil servant of Southern Cameroons origin, to get the body for which he works to help his own people in distress?
2. The real objective of the said lockdown is to send a strong message or reminder to the 2024/2025 United Nations General Assembly that resumes on September 10th about the continuing genocide in Southern Cameroons Ambazonia. Mr Julius Fondong, Senior Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations, in trying to refute the fact of genocide, uses the destination of fleeing Ambazonians to justify his aberration. Having worked with the United Nations in conflict areas, Julius Fondong should be accustomed to victims of war escaping bullets by taking refuge in the nearest available area, even in enemy territory where they most often get trapped. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, defined genocide as the killing of a person “because of who he is” not because of what he has done; that is what is happening in the Southern Cameroons at the moment; people are being killed because they are Southern Cameroonians. Civilians, babies, children going to school, returning from school or in school are killed by Cameroonian soldiers in cold blood for wanting to be who they are. Julius Fondong who apparently, suffers from selective amnesia, does not remember that many international organisations and eminent journalists and observers have described what is happening in the Southern Cameroons as genocide, the most recent being a TV5 Monde panel earlier this year. In a bid to put pressure on Ambazonians to capitulate, LRC trained soldiers have killed thousands of civilians and Mr Julius Fondong who seems to have exact documentation and figures deliberately avoided it. The Kwakwa, Pinyin, Ngarbuh, Bali, Babanki and other massacres; the Ekondo-titi and Kumba school shootings were all perpetrated by LRC soldiers and not by Ambazonian separatists. Julius Fondong knows this very well but avoided mentioning it.
3. Fondong quoted Kofi Anan as telling SCNC leaders in IRIC Yaoundé that the decolonisation process ended for Southern Cameroons in 1961 as if to say the chapter is closed. Logically, Namibia, Eritrea and East Timor should have been told that their independence/decolonisation processes ended the day they were attached to South Africa, Ethiopia and Indonesia respectively. The three above cited countries are independent today thanks to the United Nations. If the UN conducted referendums that led to independence, then it can be said that the UN granted them independence. Yes, it does grant independence and will soon do so for Southern Cameroons because its decolonisation process did not go through as prescribed by Resolution 1608 and because its own charter was violated. Worse, Julius Fondong claims that independence can only be acquired through referendums and plebiscites but that is not true. South West Africa, now Namibia, got her independence through the Hague and not referendum or plebiscite. The ICJ Advisory ruling of 21st June 1971 in rectifying the calamitous wrong done to these people by attaching them to South Africa, asked the latter to withdraw from the territory. Consequently, Namibia held elections in 1989 which SWAPO won, securing majority seats in the Namibian parliament leading to independence in 1990 without a referendum or plebiscite. Julius Fondong should know better.
As a political affairs officer in an organisation whose modus operandi is diplomacy, characterised by double speak and codes, Mr Fondong should know that the venue to convey a contrary message about the independence of Ambazonia was not IRIC Yaoundé. Fondong’s deliberately biased communication ignored the ruling of the African Commission which recognised the Southern Cameroons as a people with a territory and a culture and requested Yaoundé to dialogue with them. He ignored the fact that an earlier Southern Cameroons delegation to the UN had been told to fight if they really wanted independence. Even in Manhattan, such a message could only be conveyed in the corridors and not around the table.
4. In his attempt to dissemble and mislead, Julius Fondong failed to make allusion to the visiting UN mission to Yaoundé in 2010 during the golden jubilee celebrations of LRC’s independence. During the visit, the Aboutrika-led delegation handed over two maps to President Paul Biya of Cameroun-the map of LRC at independence on January 1 1960, and the map of Southern Cameroons. This wasn’t a very veiled communication even by United Nations/diplomatic standards. Do these facts of history not mean anything to Mr Fondong?
If the matter is this clear, why did Julius Fondong set out to disgrace himself? Certainly, Mr Philemon Yang has set his plan, Yaoundé’s game plan, rolling; to use international civil servants of Ambazonian origin within the UN system to thwart the ambitions of their own people in exchange for crumbs, promotion. Yaoundé did it in the past with the erstwhile firebrand Southern Cameroons activist, Simon MUNZU, and fractured the struggle. They are at it again but this time with a very dim-witted fellow cum Political Affairs Officer at the United Nations. Yaoundé still believes that it can use Ambazonians to thwart the legitimate aspirations of the territory’s peoples but it is too late. Wait for your elevation Sir but Southern Cameroons Ambazonia will happen.
The truth is that nobody should ever have expected anything better from anyone trained in ENAM, be they judges, civil administrators, tax collectors etc. These are trained and formatted to always put their personal interests before the people. ENAM trainees are the reason Cameroon is where it is today; corrupt, rotten and putrefying.
Shame on dissemblers.
