Plight of families of Cameroon Separatists: A cause for concern

 

 

Women protesting in Buea on 29th August 2018 ,calling for an end to the Anglophone crisis/archives

By Tanji Wally

Since the eruption of the Anglophone Crisis in late 2016, thousands of Cameroonians (both civilians and soldiers) have been forced to their graves.

 The crisis, which started as peaceful protests over lawyers’ and teachers’ demands, suddenly turned bloody and deadly as separatists took advantage of the situation and started demanding the immediate independence of minority English-speaking Cameroonians.

 Northwest and southwest, the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon were formerly UN-trust territory, called Southern Cameroons and administered by Britain. Southern Cameroons gained independence on October 1, 1961 by joining La Republique du Cameroun, which had on January 1, 1960 been granted   independence by France.

But since becoming one country, English-speaking Cameroonians have been complaining of marginalization and discrimination against them by the majority French speakers.

As the Anglophone crisis rages on, hundreds of thousands of people, fearing for their lives are internally displaced and tens of thousands of others have fled the country to seek asylum in neighboring countries like Nigeria- and to Europe, the US and other parts of then world.

According to reports,the crisis has resulted to the deaths of over 4000 people. More than 200 villages have been burnt down and property worth billions of Fcfa destroyed in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions (Northwest and Southwest), where fighting between Cameroon forces and armed separatists is taking place.

The UN and rights organizations report that over 40 thousand Cameroonians fleeing the crisis are in Nigeria for asylum.

As Cameroon forces and separatist fighters engage in bloody and deadly clashes, terrified residents in battle areas run into to bushes and farms for safety.

Indeed, the escalation of the crisis has left families of separatists or suspects in pains, as homes have been raided by the security forces in search of armed separatists hiding. Many relations of suspected separatists have reportedly been killed, arrested, tortured or kidnapped.  Thousands of people now live in fear of the unknown.

Mbuh Zenita, a female Cameroonian student, born on 8^th July 1998 in Tiko, is a good example of someone who has suffered unjustly because his father Mbuh Wilfred is a suspected Amba fighter.

She did not only abandon her university studies in Buea as armed separatists called for school boycott and attacked schools and students, but she was in May 2021 reportedly detained, accused of knowing the whereabouts of her father.

 Zenita’s father is a cocoa farmer in Muyenge-Muyuka,a fief for Amba fighters.  Later released, Zenita has since been traumatized and according her relations she has gone in to hiding

There are many cases of people who are living in hiding having suffered persecution like zenita,who upon her release from  detention, vowed to leave the country for good if she had the means.

Mary Chumfor, who was a high school student in Bamenda, and now living in Mutengene, said   what she witnessed being done to relations of suspected Amba boys by armed men forced her to relocate to Mutengene for her safety.

With the on-going Anglophone crisis, there are many families complaining of losing their loved ones who had no connections with the separatist agenda; how one or two relatives have been tortured, kidnapped, detained or have escaped into hiding.

As the separatists keep fighting for the independence of Anglophones, President Paul  Biya ,who has ruled Cameroon since 1982 ,has reiterated that  Cameroon is one and indivisible and vowed to crush any rebellion against the unity of Cameroon.