The Anglophone Crisis: Fleeing for Safety

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 31^st 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.