By A.J
Abdul Karim Ali, an Anglophone peace activist currently in jail, has penned a fiery and emotional letter to Philemon Yang, Cameroon’s former Prime Minister and current President of the UN General Assembly.
In this letter, Abdul Karim accuses Yang of betraying his people by accepting the role of campaign manager for Paul Biya’s 2025 presidential bid in Bamenda.
Biya, at 92, is seeking an eighth term after 43 years in power, amid allegations of widespread atrocities against Anglophones, including killings, torture, mass incarceration, forced displacement, and village burnings.
Dripping with anguish, Abdul Karim recounts to Philemon Yang the long history of Anglophone grievances from the 1950s through the killings and abuses since 2016, calling out Yang’s silence and complicity during and after his tenure as Prime Minister of Cameroon.
He contrasts Yang’s hypocritical calls at the UN for ceasefires in Gaza and Ukraine with his refusal to condemn President Biya’s war on Anglophones at home.
Abdul Karim Ali has long advocated peaceful dialogue as the only solution to the Anglophone crisis.
However, in 2022, he was arrested in Bamenda after denouncing several military abuses against civilians in the Anglophone regions.
He was tortured, and detained without trial, and eventually sentenced by a military court to life in prison on charges of “Hostility against the homeland.”
Rights groups, including Amnesty International, call his conviction an affront to justice and a silencing of peaceful dissent.
