(Bloomberg) -- Cameroon President Paul Biya said he will convene a national dialogue about the secessionist crisis in the country's two English-speaking regions that's forced almost half a million people to flee their homes.
The dialogue is meant to resolve the conflict by examining “ways and means of responding to the high aspirations” of the Anglophone population and will bring together a wide range of people including politicians, opinion leaders and armed groups, Biya said in a speech on state TV Tuesday. Government delegations will be dispatched to meet Cameroonians living abroad so that they can contribute to the discussions, he said.
It's the first time Biya has said he's prepared to engage with Anglophone activists, marking a turnaround for a government that had so far dismissed them as terrorists. Moderate leaders tried last year to convene the Anglophone community, but efforts to organize a conference were hindered by security concerns.
The only country in Africa with both English and French as official languages, Cameroon was split after World War I into a French-run zone and a smaller British-controlled area. They were unified in 1961, but the English-speaking minority has complained of marginalization for decades. Only in recent years did the struggle become violent.
Africa's second-longest serving head of state, 86-year-old Biya has been accused by moderate activists of allowing the crisis to spiral out of control by ignoring it in its early stages. The conflict erupted late 2016 after a heavy-handed government crackdown on protesters in the Northwest and Southwest regions, and worsened after the jailing at a secret location of a group of self-declared leaders of the Anglophone movement. A proliferation of armed fighters means that those demanding the area declares independence now don't have a united leadership.
Trying to show his goodwill, Biya also said he wanted to underscore that he had selected a prime minister from the Southwest region when naming a new government in January, as part of his policy to spread senior government appointments across the country's 10 semi-autonomous regions.
An alliance of separatists called the Southern Cameroons Liberation Movements rejected Biya's appeal in a letter on Wednesday, saying they won't participate in a “political circus.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Pius Lukong in Yaounde at plukong@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net, Pauline Bax
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