In a press release dated May 3, 2019 and signed by SDF National Chairman Ni John Fru Ndi, the SDF says the European Parliament resolution on Cameroon contains issues the party has formally presented to the Biya government over the past three years. The two-page document is titled, “SDF position on the European Parliament’s resolution on the Anglophone crisis”.

“The SDF reiterates that the plaguing issues raised by the European Parliament on the Anglophone crisis are very genuine and had repeatedly been tabled by the SDF to the Biya government over the past three years,” Fru Ndi said in the press release, “Calls on the international community to bear witness to the alarming and deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Anglophone regions of Cameroon where genocide is in progress.”

The SDF salutes the European Union for raising awareness to the plight of the Anglophone populations in Cameroon by organizing a structured debate on the said crisis.

“The SDF further urges the European Parliament to take cognizance of the fact that the wounds of marginalization and second class citizenship for over 58 years are very deep on the Anglophone existence and cannot find lasting and sustainable solutions in such surface treatments  like a failed decentralization, a poorly diagnosed National Commission for the Promotion of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism, nor the commission for the unconditional surrender of Anglophones referred to as Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration Committee.

“Exhorts the European Union and all friends of humanity to apply the stipulations in the UN Resolution on the responsibility to protect and apply same to the Anglophone people in Cameroon for the degree of violation of humanitarian law is such that the Anglophones should benefit from the “protection of people” as opposed to the “protection of territory” applicable under normal conditions of sovereignty.

“The SDF joins the European Parliament to urge the international community, notably the community of the Central African states, the African Union and the UN to hold the Cameroon government to engage in a ceasefire and an all-inclusive dialogue in order to find a sustainable democratic solution to the current Anglophone crisis.”

The SDF says it noted with deep interest that on April 18, 2019 the European Parliament adopted a resolution in which, inter alia, it raised the following:

Decries the serious human rights abuses and breaches of international humanitarian law, resulting in the mass killings of thousands of Anglophone Cameroonians, the fleeing of tens of thousands of refugees as registered by the UNHCR in Nigeria, as well as the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons, the wanton burning and destruction of property, the closure of schools and hospitals as well as a general state of insecurity throughout the Anglophone regions.

Condemns in the strongest terms the excessive use of force by the defense and security forces, mass arrests, arbitrary detentions, torture, extra-judicial killings, forced disappearances etc.

“The SDF also followed with deep concern the purported response to the European Parliament on April 22, 2019, by the Cameroon government in which it laid claims to sovereignty and its responsibility to lead the Cameroon state, and in which it further argued that, “Cameroon internal issues can and should be resolved in Cameroon by Cameroonians themselves”, thereby advancing the old argument of non-interference in the internal affairs of a country., whereas it is a well-known principle enshrined in international humanitarian law that where human rights suffer grave violation, the public law notion of sovereignty gives way to international intervention and redress.

“Be that as it may, this stand of the Cameroon government had earlier been reechoed by the speakers of the Cameroon National Assembly and the Senate respectively, whereas neither the Cameroon Senate nor the National Assembly, through their instrumentality, had accepted to organize a structured debate on the crisis, in spite of the repeated calls by SDF and her Parliamentarians for such a debate.”