Anglophone nationalism in Cameroon
In a memorandum dated March 20, 1985, the Anglophone lawyer and president of the Cameroonian Bar Association, Fongum Gorji Dinka, wrote that Biya's government was unconstitutional and announced that the former Southern Cameroons should become independent as the Republic of Ambazonia. Dinka was imprisoned the following January without trial and thus became a "martyr" to the separatist cause. The name Ambazonia was used to refer to the country's independence. The name Ambazonia was used in 1984 by Fon Gorji-Dinka (leader of the Ambazonia advocacy group), when the parliament and government of the Republic of Cameroon changed the name of the country from the "United Republic of Cameroon" to the "Republic of Cameroon", based on the name of the pre-reunification French-speaking Cameroon, the "République du Cameroun". For some, including Gorji-Dinka, Bernard Fonlon and Carlson Anyangwe, especially in the former British Cameroons, this meant the dissolution of the personal union of 1961. It was in this sense that from 1984 onwards, Ambazonia was declared as an intervention by the people of Southern Cameroon to restore the statehood of the former British territory of Southern Cameroon, which Ambazonia saw not as a fait accompli of a single Cameroonian state, but as an opportunity to engage the two states in a "constitutional review" of their relations after 1984. The Gorji-Dinka group believed that "by operation of law" there should be equal participation of the two states that formed the defunct federation in a new vision of relations between their countries (the Republic of Cameroon and Southern Cameroon). In the document, called the "New Social Order", Ambazonia's proposal for the Confederation of Independent Cameroon-Ambazonia Nations (CACIN) was summarily rejected by the Republic of Cameroon. Instead, the leader of the Ambazonia Restoration Council (ARC), Fon Gorji-Dinka, was arrested and tried for treason for demanding the continued sovereignty of "Southern Cameroonians" in the Republic of Ambazonia.