IN BRUSSELS, BELGIUM, THE ECHOES OF OCTOBER 1 WAS HEARD AT THE BRITISH EMBASSY
On October 1, 2007 at 4pm, Southern Cameroonians and some friends of the Southern Cameroons gathered in front of the British Embassy in Brussels to call on the British government to revisit their role in aborting the sovereign independence of the former British Southern Cameroons, a former League of Nations Mandate and United Nations Trust Territory under United Kingdom Administration.
The demonstration organized by the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) to commemorate October 1, 1961, the date the Southern Cameroons was to attain sovereign independence from Britain, included appeals to the British and the international community to forestall another bloodbath in West Africa by supporting the Southern Cameroons peaceful drive to end the annexation of their homeland by French Cameroun and France. Southern Cameroonians were joined by some members of the European Parliament as well as representatives of other organizations such as the Trans-National Radical party in Belgium according to reports.
Demonstrators carried signs that read: “Annexation is a Crime against Humanity and a Threat to World Peace,” “The Right to Self-Determination is a right and not a privilege,”
“We will not retreat, We will not Surrender, Independence is our Right!”
 Southern Cameroonians joined by other nationals in front of the British Embassy in Brussels
The territory of the former British Southern Cameroons, once a League of Nations Mandate, was a United Nations Trust Territory under United Kingdom Administration from 1946-1961. According the Trusteeship Agreements that was to effect the de-colonization process after the carnage of the second World War initiated by colonial conquest and occupation, the United Nations Charter under Article 76 (b), unambiguously stated the role and goal of the United Kingdom in relation to her administration in the Southern Cameroons as a trust territory:
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“To promote the political, economic, social, and educational advancement of the inhabitants of the trust territories, and their progressive development towards self-government or independence as may be appropriate to the particular circumstances of each territory and its peoples and the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned, and as may be provided by the terms of each trusteeship agreement”
In August of 1959, when the Commissioner of the Cameroons held a plebiscite conference that became known as the Mamfe Conference, research conducted published by Chem-Langhëë and Njeuma reveals that “secession [from Nigeria] seemed the most popular option, closely followed by Integration [with Nigeria]. Reunification [with French Cameroun or la République du Cameroun] was the least popular.”
In fact, the record showed that at the Mamfe Conference, the “freely expressed wishes of the people concerned,” the 33 representatives of the people of the Southern Cameroons attending the Conference voted overwhelmingly for sovereign independence: for “secession,” that is outright independence without any sort of association with neither the Nigerian Federation nor French Cameroun (la République du Cameroun). The vote was twenty-seven to six: “All eight Chiefs and Fons and eleven of the seventeen Native Authorities’ representatives supported secession [outright independence].”
When the United Kingdom, in qualifying as “expendable” a people, and violated international law and the expressed wishes of the people of the Southern Cameroons, and offered the people and territory of the Southern Cameroons to be annexed by France to their colony, la République du Cameroun, they obviously never counted on the eternal staying power of the wronged and maligned who will always seek justice and liberty.
 British Embassy, Brussels: The younger generation of Southern Cameroonians has taken their plight global
Forty-six years on, an inter-generational responsibility, an inherent collective genetic command, continues to inspire the people of Southern Cameroons to self-determination and sovereign independence, at home and abroad.
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