CAMEROONS: Reign of Terror

The next African nation to get its independence, on New Year's Day, 1960, is the French Cameroons (pop. 3,300,000), a California-sized, French-administered United Nations trust territory on the Guinea Coast, just east of Nigeria. But first it seems destined to go through bloodshed.

Four years ago, when rioting broke out there, the Union des Populations Came-rounaises—the nation's strongest political party—was blamed for it, and outlawed. The U.P.C. then broke wide open. A moderate, nonviolent wing split away from the terrorist faction, which fled to the hills. Under a "national reconciliation" policy, more than 650 convicted U.P.C. supporters received amnesty recently from the government of Premier Ahma-dou Ahidjo. But the terrorists, directed by Dr. Félix-Roland Moumié, an ingratiating and crafty little physician, got no mercy: while entire villages were moved down to roadside locations surrounded by stockades, French and Cameroonian patrols flushed guerrillas from the emptied hills.

Dr. Moumié himself fled the country after the 1955 riots, turned up ultimately in Cairo, and with plenty of money (from Russia and Red China, say his enemies) launched a campaign demanding U.N.-supervised elections before the Cameroons became independent, on the grounds that the present Legislative Assembly does not represent the will of the people. His plea was turned down by the U.N. Moumie proclaimed: "Freedom with violence is preferable to slavery without it," and his followers started practicing what he preached.

Violence, once sporadic, has now become frequent. In the port of Douala, biggest city in the Cameroons. terrorists recently attacked a police outpost and a movie theater. With pangas, they stabbed an Air France pilot to death in a bar, butchered a stranded European motorist with machetes on a lonely road, burned three planes on a banana plantation airstrip. In the capital city of Yaoundé, an armed band swooped down on La Renaissance Bar, murdered the French proprietor and his sister. In eight days 14 people died, seven of them Frenchmen.

As frightened whites began toting firearms and cutting down the high grass cover around their houses, Cameroonian and French security forces arrested more than a hundred Cameroonese. One of them, Simo Sirre, was convicted of killing 23 people, including a Deputy of the Assembly. Last week he and four compatriots were hauled out to the marketplace in the town of Bafoussam, and before a crowd of 3,000, summoned by trumpeting loudspeakers, were tied to stakes and mowed down by a twelve-man firing squad.

The French hoped that this show of force would have its effect, but earnest Premier Ahidjo had no illusions. "Moumié hasn't been disarmed," said he last week. "The leaders need time to reorganize. Trouble could come again in October or November."