How torture of students inflamed Anglophone Crisis

By Nfor Muluh  

The year 2016 has gone down into history as the year minority English-speaking Cameroonians- otherwise called  Anglophones, who constitute about 20% of Cameroon’s 24-million population,  exploded in anger and said “enough is enough” against their perceived  marginalization by  the majority-Francophone government ,thus ushering in what is  now known as the Anglophone Crisis. 

Arrested UB students being whisked away by gendarmes on 28th Nov.2016

   The crisis started when common law lawyers in October 2016 embarked on street protests to push the Biya regime to attend to their long-submitted professional concerns but were instead rough-handled and brutalized by state security forces. Then on 28^th November  same year , students of the Anglo-saxon University of Buea staged a peaceful on-campus protest against addition of charges for procuring result slips but  the university management invited anti-riot police who quelled the protest, brutalizing, torturing and detaining students.

      According to the Center of Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA) on its website, “The right to education was attacked the moment Dr Nalova Lyonga, then Vice Chancellor, ordered the deployment of at least or about a hundred anti-riot police and gendarmes within the campus to disband peaceful protesters.

“On that day, at about 11am, students were chased from the university campus into the streets and were arrested, severely beaten in public and asked to roll in mud.”

     According to a 28^th November 2018 article on CHRDA’s website titled “Torture of University of Buea Students: Two years after,

“Over 85 students were victims of one or more acts of torture, hundreds of students abandoned their hostels and dropped out of school that year and moved out of the university town for fear of repression; over 14 student hostels having about 140 rooms were all considerably vandalized and rendered uninhabitable by the state security officers who did not only destroy the doors of over 90% of these rooms but did not also hesitate to use tear gas into student rooms, forcing some to open their doors which enabled them loot personal items, brutalized their occupants in their bedrooms and in the streets regardless of their gender.”

Plight of a female student.

Miss Zita Ouanzie Tibeme,(born on October 8th ,1998) was a female biology student and active member of the university’s  students union(UBSU)..She was among the tens of protesters tortured by anti-riot police and arrested in Buea in connection with the November 28^th ,2016 on-campus protest.

    Upon release after several days in detention, with the assistance of his family and counsel, Tibeme,a  rights advocate, was admitted to the hospital for body pains and injuries she sustained during the raid. 

“I hate to recall what I went through in the hands of security agents whose priority should be to protect lives”,Tibeme is quoted as telling a friend, who visited her in the hospital.

  The UB protest, coming after the lawyers’ protest, placed the released UB students under suspicion of   having pro-Anglophone independence sentiments and thus they were reportedly monitored by security operatives as the Anglophone crisis escalated

   Fearing possible arrest since the Government likened the activists to terrorists, Miss Tibeme is said to have gone into hiding in the Northwest region of Cameroon, a move which if not taken, according to reports, she might have been re-arrested. 

 Security agents are said to have stormed their family residence in Bamenda asking of her whereabouts.

Terrorism is punishable with up to the death penalty in Cameroon. 

With the ongoing Anglophone crisis, many have activists/ suspects been arrested, prosecuted and jailed, a situation that has forced many others including students to flee the country.

The torture of the protesting UB students angered the entire Anglophone Community and pushed thousands of English-speaking students to be very active, in different ways, in the fight for the independence of English-speaking Cameroonians.

But the Biya government has insisted that Cameroon is “one and indivisible” and described those advocating separation as terrorists, who must be dealt with accordingly. The Cameroon Government has openly accused Anglophones rights campaigners in the Diaspora of instigating and sponsoring the fight for the independence of Anglophones and has since been updating its lists of wanted people. 

 Leading Anglophone rights activists in the Diaspora such as Chris Anu, Mark Barata,Cho Ayaba,Tapang Ivo,Akwanga Ebenezer and  John Mbah Akuroh  are reportedly on the wanted list of state security .