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Cameroonian families seek refuge in Obanliku, Nigeria, after fleeing insecurity in English-speaking parts of their homeland Photo credit;:UNHCR/Elizabeth Mpimbaza |
By Tang Abinteh
The massive internal displacement
and fleeing of English-speaking Cameroonians out of their country since 2017 as
a result of what is today known as the Anglophone Crisis is a serious cause for
concern.
Thousands of Anglophone independence activists
also referred to as Amba separatists, as well as other citizens living in the
Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon, negatively affected by the crisis
in one way or the other, have relocated to other parts of Cameroon for their safety,
as the two regions are battle grounds between separatists and Government forces.
Yet, thousands of others have even fled to
other countries such as Nigeria,USA, Britain and Canada, in search of protection
since what started as peaceful protests in late 2016 by lawyers and teachers
over corporate demands turned into deadly confrontations between separatist
fighters and government forces.
According to reports
from rights organizations and the UN, the
Anglophone crisis has left
thousands of people dead, property worth
billions of Fcfa damaged; more 120
villages burnt, over forty thousand Cameroonian asylum seekers in Nigeria, while more than half a
million people are internally displaced.
The Cameroon government,
in an early attempt to suppress the agitations for Anglophone independence, which it likened to a threat to the unity of the country, had on January
17,2017 banned the separatist group, Southern Cameroons National Council(SCNC) ,as
well as the Cameroon Anglophone Civil
Society Consortium (CACSC)headed by Barrsiter Felix Agbor Nkongho, which had
called for civil disobedience and anti- government protests against the Biya
regime’s alleged failure to appease the
protesting lawyers and teachers.
As Cameroon
intensified its crackdown on the separatists it even published a list of wanted
separatist leaders - some of them living abroad whom it accused of instigating
and sponsoring the fight of Anglophone independence.
Reportedly featuring on the government black list
were, among others, Chris Anu, Mark Bareta,John Mbah Akuroh,Tapang, Njungue Anu
Terence ,Cho Ayaba, and Eric Tataw.
Cameroon government’s
appeal for countries hosting separatist leaders to repatriate then to Cameroon so
they could be prosecuted instead pushed other young radical activists in the
country to go in to hiding or flee abroad.
Fresh reports talk of
the radical pro-SCNC Njungue Anu Terence (born on 31st December 1993,
in Mutengene-Fako Division),who had to abandon his studies at CCAST Bambili and
flee from Bamenda in the heat of the Anglophone crisis as reports of arrests, torture and deaths of young
separatists/ activists became rife in the Northwest region, considered as the epicenter for
Anglophone activism.
Considered a radical, Anu Terence who had once
been detained with other activists like
Tangyie Abah in connection with Anglophone crisis, was reportedly kidnapped in
2021 by unknown gunmen.
But upon his release
and fearing for his life, he is said to have disappeared
in June 2021, fuelling fears that he might have been killed by those who were after
his life.
Reports said security forces, on several
occasions, raided their family residence in search of him and the father who
was also a target, on suspicion that they could be hiding there,
The SCNC, which was created in i994, and was on
January 17, 2017 banned by the Cameroon
government, had as goal the restoration of the independence of Southern Cameroons-the
former British colony(today’s English-speaking
Southwest and Northwest regions of Cameroon)
The banned SCNC adherents have been, arrested,
prosecuted and jailed in Cameroon .
The Cameroon
government believes that it was the SCNC that fuelled the the eruption of the
2016 Anglophone crisis, so to take advantage of it to execute its agenda of a
separate state for Anglophones.
But President Paul
Biya has insisted on a “one and indivisible Cameroon” and vowed to crush the
separatists.
It should be noted
that the minority English-speakers of Cameroon (Southern Cameroons) were
formerly UN-trust territory, administered by Britain before the former gained
its independence on October 1, 1961 by joining La Republique du Cameroun, which
had on January 1,1960 been granted independence
by colonial France,to form what is today called the Republic of Cameroon.
