WASHINGTON, DC, 24 JULY 2018 – The former president of Ghana, Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings has called out former colonial power, France, the United Nations and the African Union for their greed, indifference, silence and lack of action as atrocities multiply in the war opposing Cameroon to the self-declared Republic of Ambazonia.
“I would like the UN and the AU to look into Cameroon’s case,” Rawlings said in prepared remarks delivered last Saturday in Greenwich, UK, during the 2018 Ghana UK-Based Awards.
“I will urge France and President Macron to seek a lasting solution that restores peace and equity to that part of the country” Rawlings said, referring to Ambazonia, formerly the English-speaking part of a UNsanctioned union of two countries, equal in status, formed in 1961.
According to Rawlings, the merger resulted in “a twin nation of two former UN Trusteeship Territories.” Parties to the now failed union have enjoyed relative peace for the past 57 years, he acknowledged, regretting that the situation “currently is deteriorating rapidly into a full scale (armed) conflict.”
The former Ghanaian president blamed the crisis on economic, financial and political greed and a lust for resources by “very greedy and selfish” persons and nations.
Rawlings blamed “the discovery of oil on the English-speaking part” (Ambazonia aka Southern Cameroons, independent on 1st October 1961) and greed to own all the income from those resources that prompted the Republic of Cameroon (independent on 1st January 1960) to recolonize an equal party to the union.
This is the “savagery of capitalism,” Rawlings said, citing Pope John Paul II and stressing that the world has known more of such ever since the end of the Cold War.
Once oil was discovered in Ambazonia, said Rawlings, “too many greedy, selfish people who want to own all the resources” by themselves violated any and all rules in the ethics or morality book. “They have to have it (the oil),” said Rawlings, “irrespective of whose blood has to be shed.”
As a direct consequence, argued Rawlings, the blood of innocent victims has been shed as atrocities multiply. The savagery, he said, is not hidden. It can be viewed by anyone by merely clicking on a mouse connected to the Internet.
Finding lack of inaction unacceptable and feeling the need to wake up the world to the atrocities in Ambazonia, Rawlings called out twice: “Let us wake up. Let us wake up,” he said.
“Mankind has had enough of this bloodshed over resources,” Rawlings said, as he reiterated his call on France, the United Nations and the African Union to make sure that they do not impose “superficial solutions on the English-speaking part of the country”.
[Sources: GhanaWeb.Com, DailyGuideAfrica.Com]
