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| 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 8th 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.
