Date 01/10/05
HIS
MAJESTY KING AND
H.E GUY VERHOFSTADT
A Petition from the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), Belgium on the Occasion Marking the 44th Anniversary of the Independence of the Southern Cameroons, a Former United Nations Trust Territory in West Africa under British Administration.
Your Majesty King Albert II and His Excellency Guy Verhofstadt, accept the warm and sincere greetings from the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC), Belgium. We wish Your Majesty a very long reign as King of Belgium. We wish to bring to the attention of Your Majesty and His Excellency Mr Prime Minister to the fact that our attention has been drawn to Six International, a Belgian company contracting with La Republique du Cameroun to build a bridge over the River Mungo; connecting La Republique du Cameroun and the Former United Nations Trust territory of the Southern Cameroons under British Administration, in replacement of one that was previously constructed to be symbolic of the 1961 UN negotiated but not satisfactorily completed union between the peoples of La Republique du Cameroun and the Southern Cameroons. Given Belgium’s position in the International community, we consider it our noble duty to call Your Majesty’s and His Excellency, Mr. Prime Minister’s attention to how the manipulation of the union by La Republique du Cameroun has left the people of the Southern Cameroons with mixed feelings about the symbolism represented in this bridge. If Six International, a Belgian company has accepted to reconstruct the bridge over the River Mungo and which bridge has become the historic symbol of the subjugation of the people of the Southern Cameroons, we consider it our duty to call Your Majesty’s attention to this prevailing subjugation. The bridge over the River Mungo christened “The Reunification Bridge” has come to symbolize for the people of the Southern Cameroons their subjugation by La Republique du Cameroun as began at the 1961 Foumban Conference from which the UN and the UK were absent, leaving the Southern Cameroons to its own while La Republique du Cameroun unchecked, began the manipulation of the subjugation process. The collapse of the bridge was seen in the Southern Cameroons as God’s sign of disapproval of La Republique du Cameroun’s manipulation of the UN’s well intended union and which manipulation has left the people of the Southern Cameroons feeling subjugated and exploited by their more numerous neighbors in La Republique du Cameroun. Other than the symbolism of subjugation this bridge represents to the people of the Southern Cameroons, it is also the gateway by which the natural resources plundered from the Southern Cameroons are carted into La Republique du Cameroun. Six International from Your Majesty’s kingdom cannot contract to rebuild this bridge without our bringing to Your Majesty’s attention the injustices the bridge represents to the people of the Southern Cameroons. The people of the Southern Cameroons have systematically been exploited, marginalized and discriminated against by the government of La Republique du Cameroun. They are constantly arrested and incarcerated, under sub-human conditions without charge or on trump-up charges, and in instances are victims of extra-judicial killings. In effect, the people of the Southern Cameroons have at the hand of the government of La Republique du Cameroun, been victims of political subjugation, economic exploitation and neglect, and a catalogue of human rights abuses. The government of La Republique du Cameroun has systematically been treating the people of the Southern Cameroons as though they are a conquered people. The average high school student in the Southern Cameroons knows the history of the Belgian Revolt as an example of the extent to which such human injustices can lead people to react to make themselves whole. Your Majesty’s kingdom administered for the United Nations its Trust Territories of Rwanda and Burundi up to when they each were granted independence. Your Majesty’s Government knows first hand in the case of Rwanda, the excesses to which unchecked human injustices can lead. We consider Your Majesty’s and His Excellency, Mr. Prime Minister’s Government to be better placed to understand the end to which the clouds of subjugation, exploitation and dehumanization as the embodiment of man’s inhumanity to man in the Southern Cameroons are likely to lead. It is in this regard of the understanding of your Majesty’s Government and in the light of Six International contracting with La Republique du Cameroun to rebuild the bridge over the River Mungo that we implore Your Majesty to put all possible pressure on the government of La Republique du Cameroun to reconsider its intransigence on remaining resolute in its subjugation of the people of the Southern Cameroons. Given the standing of Your Majesty’s Kingdom in the community of nations, we believe that Your Majesty’s Government can impress it on the government of La Republique du Cameroun to work with the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) in keeping with the SCNC’s motto of the “Force of Argument and not the Argument of Force” in the resolution of the Southern Cameroons Question before another human catastrophe on the scale of Rwanda or worse is created in that part of the world. We count on Your Majesty giving this petition the seriousness it deserves. Done in Belgium, this 1st day of October, in the year of Our Lord, 2005.
SIGN:
___________________________________ RENE MORFAW (President, SCNC-Belgium)
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