Jungle Terror

FRENCH CAMEROONS Jungle Terror Six months after the French gave internal autonomy to the French Cameroons, a California-sized land of steaming coastal plains, rain-sodden jungles and high savanna just above the equator on Africa's West Coast, native Premier Andre-Marie M'bida finds himself confronted with a reign of terror spearheaded by 5,000 hard-core Communist guerrillas-Led by a Prague-trained Communist named Ruben Um Myobe, first secretary of the Red-front Union of the Peoples of the Cameroons (UPC), the terrorists burst out of the jungles, burn grass huts, shanghai thousands of natives into the forest, murder those who will not go. Their demands are for immediate independence (France has promised only "eventual" independence), and through an exiled medical doctor and Red-trained politician named Felix Moumie, the UPC has carried those demands into the corridors of the United Nations in New York.

Premier M'bida, a devout Roman Catholic whose forehead is studded with blue tribal tattoos, journeyed recently into the heartland of the 120,000-member Bassa tribe, center of the spreading rebel movement. At Rebel Leader Um Myobe's birthplace, the Premier appealed to the natives: "Do not live like the Pygmies!" He urged them to come back to civilization, gave them ten days to come out of the jungle or be treated as rebels. By regrouping huts near roads, where they can be guarded, he hopes to maintain order, proceed with the slow evolution toward real and responsible independence. Last week, as M'bida's grace period expired, hundreds straggled back from the jungle. The UPC retaliated by burning half a dozen villages, killing scores of terrorized men and women.

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