the Francophone-dominated central government became increasingly apparent. Political exclusion, economic exploitation and cultural assimilation were criticized more and more openly. In early 1985, Anglophone lawyer and President of the Cameroon Bar Association Fon Gorji Dinka circulated a number of essays and pamphlets arguing that the Biya government was unconstitutional and calling for an independent Republic of Ambazonia. Gorji Dinka became the first head of the Ambazonia Restoration Council. In May 1985, he was arrested, imprisoned, and then put under house arrest for three years before escaping first to Nigeria and then to the United Kingdom. In 1990, opposition political parties were legalized and John Ngu Foncha, the leading Anglophone in Cameroon's government, resigned from the governing party and encapsulated much of the dissatisfaction with the central government's attitude toward the Anglophone regions in his public resignation letter: In 1993, the All Anglophone Conference took place in Buea bringing together all Southern Cameroons citizens who called for the restoration of the federal system. At a second All Anglophone Conference held in Bamenda the call for the Cameroon government to accept a return to the two state federation was reiterated with some voices explicitly calling for secession. In 1995, over the objection of some Anglophone Cameroonians, Cameroon was admitted to the Commonwealth of Nations recognizing former Southern Cameroon's history as a British colony. During this period various independence and federalist factions joined to form the Southern Cameroons National Council, a pressure group which undertook initiatives at the UN, the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights, the Commonwealth, and with national embassies to bring attention to the region and Anglophone issues in Cameroon. In 2005, the Southern Cameroons/Republic of Ambazonia became a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation (UNPO) it was renewed in 2018. Due to harassment and arrests by the government, many leaders of he SCNC and other organizations fled the country. Both 1999 and 2009 saw symbolic declarations of independence by Ambazonian nationalists, which led to arrests but little concrete action. Increasing pressure for autonomy or independence reduced trust and engagement between the government and the Anglophone minority, with the result that by 2017 there was only one Anglophone among 36 ministers with portfolio in the Cameroonian government. Protests and civil war (2016–present) In November 2016, a number of large protests and strikes were organized, initially by Anglophone lawyers, students, and teachers focused on the growing marginalization of