By Sanda Agbor
Human rights groupings in Cameroon and beyond have continue to raise concerns this 2023 about the grim human rights situation in the Northwest and Southwest regions of the country.
The human rights groupings that have been monitoring the crisis since its outbreak in 2017, in their recent reporting, have decried the unending spectre of enforced disappearances of persons, arbitrary arrests of some, kidnappings for ransom of others by fighters of the pro-independence of the two English speaking regions of the country, among others.
They maintain that if nothing is done to end the conflict, more and more people in these two regions will continue to flee for their safety as the lives of most people in the conflict hit settlements are no longer safe because of the untamable atrocities and threats to the very existence of the lives of the people living within these conflict areas.
The Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, CHRDA in its 2023 Report about the unending conflict had this to say:
“In 2023, CHRDA monitored and documented significant human rights violations by government forces, separatists fighters, Boko Haram Insurgency groups, armed Fulani groups. These atrocities continue to claim lives and affect people’s safety and livelihoods in the Northwest, Southwest and Far North Regions of Cameroon…The horrific effects…and abuses affected mostly those in the hinterlands especially in the Northwest and Southwest Regions. Some of these violations and abuses included arbitrary killings, enforced disappearances, torture, arbitrary arrests and detentions, delayed litigations, harsh conditions in detention centers, abduction and physical abuse, arson, gender-base violence and ransom taking, restrictions on rights to free movement…”
The gravity of the high level of violations being perpetuated both by government forces and separatists forces on unarmed civilians is just the reason why many persons in the two regions have either been forced to flee or simply disappear for their safety. The trouble is that since some disappear after having been kidnapped or arbitrary arrested and locked up, sometimes, incommunicado for months, bit is difficult to ascertain about the whereabouts of some of the disappeared cases.
This reporter, in November, 2023, following reports made by some concerned family members, learned of the disappearance of one woman and her daughter, a state registered nursing student, who were resident at Wututu, village location in the Buea Sub Division, Fako Division of the Southwest Region of Cameroon.
Ms Evenye Lifofe Florence, a single mother of three, who happened to have lived in Wututu for quite some years before the outbreak of the crisis, is said to have been a cooked food seller.
Thus, her children, like her eldest daughter, Lenou Mokam Ndolo Favour, a 21-year-old nursing aid student, had become accustomed to help her sell when they close from school.
But, Ms Evenye, the family says, was forced to flee Wututu sometimes in 2023 to an unknown destination owing to incessant threats to her life and that of her kids from both the Government forces and Separatists fighters within the Wututu Community.
How The War Started
It is worth noting that this conflict started off in late 2016 as a result of a series of grievances that were raised by Anglophone lawyers and teachers about some of the maltreatment that people of the two regions that make up the former British Southern Cameroons were facing. The failure of the French dominated Government of Cameroon to resolve the grievances raised by the above-named groupings soon led to a full blown war as some activists of these two regions known as the Ambazonia Separatists fighters to pick up arms against the Government that had equally resorted to use military might to quell the situation.
And as the fighting has been raging since this 2016, most of the armless civilians are the ones who have been the most affected as they now are caught in-between the fury of the two fighting parties.
Ms Evenye, as already stated happened to have been a cooked food seller in the Wututu area which is one of the village localities that Separatists fighters happened to have set up one of their bases when the conflict started.
Thus Ms Evenye, family members said, had been complaining to them that her food selling business which she was using the proceeds to support her family was no longer going well. She happened to have hinted to them that she was now, before she disappeared, facing threats to her life from both the military and the Separatists fighters. While the military, it is said, happened to have accused her and her daughter of cooking food and feeding the Separatists, the Separatists were accusing her in like manner. This situation, the family maintains, is believed to have forced her to flee with her first daughter. But they are worried about their current whereabouts and wonder if she is safe where she is. For the daughter who is a nursing student, it is feared that she might have been abducted as there are cases where the military had either arrested or abducted health personnel on the flimsy excuses that they were giving treatment to wounded Separatist fighters.
Thus, it is a wholesome concern in the two regions of Cameroon as thousands of civilians, for the past few years have had to either been killed, arrested, falsely accused, tortured or detained under very inhumane conditions by Government forces on the pretext that they have been aiding or failing to provide information about the whereabouts of the Separatists fighters or Amba fighters as they are otherwise called.
Meantime, on the one hand, the Amba fighters have targeted innocent and armless civilians with rape, unexplained adoptions of some to their hideouts in the bushes where they are tortured, killing of others on the obnoxious excuse that they, as well, have been assisting Government forces either by way of selling food to them or other useful items.
Young girls in some of the localities have had to be brutally eliminated often on unverified claims that they were either dating government soldiers or leaking information to them about the whereabouts of they, the Separatists.
A case in point is that of Comfort Tumassang, a young girl, who was killed on August 11, 2020, in Muyuka, Southwest Region of Cameroon by Separatists fighters. They had accused her of having befriended the military and, thus, was said to have been aiding them with intelligence about the in-and-out of the Separatists.
Thus, the above scenario, as family members fear, is enough to have forced Ms Evenye and her daughter, Ndolo Favour to disappear sometime back in November, 2023.
And their disappearance just
adds to thousands of others who have had to flee Cameroon from the Northwest and Southwest Regions of the Country over the past few years.
The International Crisis Group in its 2022 report holds that:
“Years of fighting between Separatists and the state in Cameroon have hit women hard, uprooting hundreds of thousands…clashes between separatists and security forces have displaced hundreds of thousands, the majority of whom are women and children.”