The Anglophone crisis and innocent victims

 Buea, August 2018: Protesting women  urge  return to peace in  restive Anglophone Cameroon{archives photo] 

By Che Nformuluh

It is  difficult to identify who the separatist fighters in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon are, especially when they are not carrying weapons. 

Many of these fighters have no uniform unlike Cameroon’s military and security forces that can easily be identified by their special wears, weapons and vehicles. When the fighters mingle with unsuspicious people, the lives of the later are in danger.

The story is told of a certain Lumnui Didler, a restaurant owner in Bamenda, who was on March 9, 2019 reportedly arrested and detained because separatist fighters, disguising as normal customers, regularly ate in her local restaurant. She was arrested with several customers.

Lumnui, born on June 23, 1986 and mother of one, was accused by security agents of feeding separatist fighters instead of informing the Cameroon government of their whereabouts.

 Even though she denied knowing any separatist fighters, she was still whisked away by the security agents. Exactly where she was detained  is not yet known.

Stories of innocent victims of the Anglophone crisis abound.

As deadly clashes between separatists and government forces continue in the two restive English-speaking regions of Cameroon, many of the separatist fighters in civilian attire mingle with the populations making it difficult for the regular forces to sort them out.

 As such just so many innocent people have been victims of military/police brutality. Some supposed non-separatist fighters have even been killed in the mistaken belief that they were separatist fighters; many others have been arrested and detained awaiting prosecution; even if at the end their lawyers would defend them to freedom, they must have suffered in one form or the other, without compensation. Pathetic, Indeed!

Many people are living in fear as anybody could be arrested on suspicion of being collaborators of the separatists, especially as Government is determined to crush the rebels.

Cameroon security forces often carry out raids in localities suspected to be hide-outs for separatists and a lot of casualties have been reported.

The separatist fighters are reportedly gaining grounds in spite of sustained despite efforts by the Cameroon Government to defeat them

Cameroon government reiterates that the country is “one and indivisible.” 

The Biya administration has accused Anglophone separatist leaders in the Diaspora such as Cho Ayaba ,Akwanga Ebenezer ,Eric Tataw, Tapang Ivo, and Chris Anu of attempting to divide Cameroon by fuelling  calls for the independence of Anglophones.

Common law lawyers’ and Anglophone teachers’ strikes sparked off, late 2016, what is today known as the Anglophone crisis. 

Hundreds of people have died following regular clashes between government forces and separatist fighters. 

In May 2018, US Ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Henry Barlerin,  in a press statement on the Anglophone crisis, accused Cameroon Government of ”targeted killings, detentions without access to legal support, family or the Red Cross and burning and looting of villages”

The US diplomat also blamed separatist fighters for “murders of gendarmes, kidnappings of government officials and burning of schools”

Since the eruption of the crisis in 2016, property worth billions of Fcfa has been vandalized; more than 30 thousand Cameroonians are seeking asylum in Nigeria, while hundreds of thousands of citizens  are internally displaced People(IDPs), giving birth a serious humanitarian crisis in Cameroon.