Troops disrupt Chief Ayamba’s "state" funeral

As earlier suspected, heavily-armed troops were last weekend deployed by the Yaounde authorities to disrupt the planned “state’’ funeral that was programmed for the fallen SCNC national chairman, Chief Ette Otun Ayamba.

A high-powered police squad from the Mobile Intervention Unit (GMI) in Buea stormed Mamfe on Friday July 25, 2014; the day which was programmed for Chief Ayamba’s corpse removal. Also stationed at the mortuary were gendarmes and soldiers.

The squad, headed by a Five-Star police commissioner surrounded Chief Ayamba’s premises; another took control of the mortuary at Besongabang, while the third besieged the hotel belonging to the main organizer of the funeral, Ako Abunaw. Over 300 Southern Cameroonians who had arrived and assembled at the hotel to get further directives were trapped inside the hotel.

Hon. Paul Ayah’s convoy that had taken off from Akwaya via Bahuru-Bamenda was blocked on the way while Southern Cameroonian activists who left Buea, Kumba, Mutengene, Tiko and Limbe were blocked at Bateke by heavily-armed security officers. Other accounts have it that those spotted entering Mamfe in groups were rounded up and detained.

The special coffin prepared by Diaspora SCNC militants abroad was blocked at Eyumodjock. The police seized the coffin and confiscated all the burial and funeral materials flown in from Europe and USA.

On July 26, 2014, all vehicles entering Mamfe from the Bamenda or Kumba end were stopped and thoroughly searched. Anyone found with SCNC literature, Chief Ayamba’s funeral program or Southern Cameroons flag was not only brought down, but made to sit on the tarmac and later transferred to an unknown destination. Chief Ayamba’s widow was coerced into signing an undertaking that there will be nothing of SCNC at the funeral, else the husband will not be buried. She was forced to make an announcement to this effect.

As the corpse left the mortuary, five police, gendarme and BIR vehicles, loaded with heavily armed men followed, rendering the occasion a veritable official funeral. Despite the intimidating presence of troops, freedom songs, dance, chanting and blasting of horns by bike-riders characterized the convoy from the mortuary to the compound.

Matters however came to a head when one of Chief Ayamba’s daughters took a photograph of the deceased; dressed in SCNC regalia and approached the police commissioner, hurling insults at him; challenging them to summon the courage by facing her. She not only gave them a dressing down but lectured them on the heroic deeds and acts of Ayamba as a fighter, a statesman and a true Southern Cameroons patriot. She threw more invectives at the authorities of La Republique du Cameroun for daring to deprive her father of a befitting burial.

Attempts by an overzealous pro-regime family member to stop the reading of Chief Ayamba’s biography hit the rock as Larry Ayamba seized the microphone and speedily read out the hero’s biography, skipping only sections that mentioned SCNC and the Southern Cameroons. The family succeeded to put the Southern Cameroons’ flag on the coffin while the Bahai family made the interment prayers.

It should be recalled that the funeral of Chief Ayamba was expected to see all SCNC factions reconcile and a new national chairman elected at the Mamfe rendezvous which unfortunately could not hold because of the troop-disruption.