BY SANDRA LUM
The crisis in the North West and South West regions, which has escalated into an armed conflict, continues to take new and ugly twists with many people, both civilians and soldiers losing their lives.
As the crisis rages on, there are persistent gun battles between defence and security forces and fighters loyal to the Ambazonia movement that has declared the independence of the English-speaking regions, christening it Republic of Ambazonia.
In a bid to bring the conflict to an end, the government, through the military has intensified its clampdown and manhunt for Anglophone activists both at home and in the Diaspora, and other sympathisers of the separatist cause, accusing them of being those fuelling the conflict.
In this light, some Anglophone activists residing in the Diaspora have been declared persona non grata and wanted as they are believed to have taken part in most of the peaceful demonstrations staged by the Ambazonia separatist leaders and other supporters living in the Diaspora. Some of them are being arrested at the airports as they return home willingly or are repatriated.
Many of those arrested are tortured and detained under inhuman conditions. Some have reportedly died in detention.
Repatriated Cameroonians go missing
It should be recalled that in November 2020, some 57 Cameroonian asylum seekers, who were repatriated from the United States of America, had gone missing after landing at the Douala International airport. They are feared to have been arrested at the airport by state security officers and taken to an unknown destination, where they were detained incommunicado.
In February 2022, Human Rights Watch, in a report, had said Cameroonian authorities subjected dozens of asylum seekers deported by the United States to serious human rights violations between 2019 and 2021.
The 149-page report had traced what happened to an estimated 80 to 90 Cameroonians deported from the United States on two flights in October and November 2020, and others deported in 2021 and 2019.
Human Rights Watch said people returned to Cameroon faced “arbitrary arrest and detention; enforced disappearances; torture, rape, and other violence; extortion; unfair prosecutions; confiscation of their national IDs; harassment; and abuses against their relatives”.
“The US government utterly failed Cameroonians with credible asylum claims by sending them back to harm in the country they fled, as well as mistreating already traumatized people before and during deportation,” Lauren Seibert, refugee and migrant rights researcher at Human Rights Watch, said.
“By returning Cameroonians to face persecution, torture, and other serious harm, the US violated the principle of nonrefoulement, a cornerstone of international refugee and human rights law,” Seibert added.
Diaspora activist declared wanted
Anglophone activist Arrey Epse Toumbiack Dorothy Oneke based in the diaspora has been declared wanted. She is said to have joined the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) in the year 2015 in Buea and contributed in the struggle for independence by raising awareness through the distribution of SCNC flyers, leaflets, posters, among others, to members of public.
Dorothy, and her husband, Toumbiack Heric Serge, who was also a staunch member of the SCNC, took part in many demonstrations carried out by the movement. The demonstrations were often cracked down with brute force by the military.
On September 16, 2017, Dorothy was arrested in Buea, alongside others, while attending a meeting of the SCNC. The meeting, we gathered, was to prepare for a public demonstration.
Dorothy and the other SCNC members were tortured and detained at the Buea police station. However, she was later released and warned to desist from activities of the SCNC.
Nonetheless, she is said to have continued with her SCNC activities even when the government banned the SCNC in January 2017. Dorothy and other activists are said to have continued clandestine operations until she was again arrested on October 1, 2017, together with her husband. They are said to have been manhandled by security operatives, detained and accused of belonging to a separatist terrorist movement.
However, after being released from detention, Dorothy is reported to have left the country in October 2018 for the United Kingdom, where it is reported she has continued her activism within the SCNC.
Meanwhile, Dorothy’s husband, Toumbiack Heric Serge, was not as fortunate. He was arrested on November 20, 2019 during an SCNC meeting in Buea. Toumbiack is said to have been tortured and detained at the police station in Buea. He later succumbed to injuries incurred from the torture and died at the Buea Regional hospital.
Dorothyand her husband’s house in Buea is said to have later been raided and burnt down.
As she continues her activism abroad, the government has declared Dorothy wanted. If arrested, Arrey Epse Toumbiack Dorothy Oneke will be tried in a military tribunal, under the 2014 anti-terrorism law, whose maximum punishment is the death sentence. That is if she is not killed like many others, who have been victims of extrajudicial killings within the context of the Anglophone crisis.
Dorothy’s continued SCNC activism in UK
It should be noted that the government is bent on arresting Dorothy because she has continued her SCNC activism in the UK. Dorothy has been taking part in SCNC demonstrations and protests in the UK, against the marginalisation of Anglophones and clamouring for the independence of Southern Cameroons. Meanwhile, she has also been writing incisive and critical articles, criticising the Biya regime and pushing for Anglophones to have a nation of their own. These articles have been published online on the website of the UK branch of the SCNC.
Because of her activities as a member of the UK branch of SCNC, Dorothy has become more notorious and the government of Cameroon has been monitoring her activities and will not neglect any chance it has to have Dorothy arrested and prosecuted, since the government has declared the SCNC a terrorist organisation.
The SCNC is one of the leading movements in the Anglophone struggle for independence. The protest and cries against injustice has been particularly loud within the UK arm of the SCNC under the leadership of its chairman Robert Tamanji. The SCNC ‘s decades long call for the restoration of the statehood of Southern Cameroons could not be ignored on 1st October 2023 as Robert Tamanji , Chairman of SCNC UK together with Dorothy and other activists, took to the streets of Westminster opposite no 10 Downing Street in London to publicly demonstrate and denounce the repressive regime.
Thus Dorothy and other SCNC UK members have been accused of being those financing the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions and supplying weapons to the separatist fighters. The government is therefore bent on tracking down all those identified as members of the SCNC.
Dorothy’s humanitarian actions towards refugees of the Anglophone crisis and persons internally displaced have also irked the government. Through Ayah Foundation, Dorothy and others had raised about FCFA 4 million to help refugees of the armed conflict. But since the government was not pleased with her activities, the government banned Ayah Foundation.
It should be recalled that, just like Ayah Foundation, the government had also banned the activities of international medical humanitarian organisation, Doctors Without Borders, accusing it of treating wounded separatist fighters.
The military had arrested two of the Doctors Without Borders staff in December 2021 in Nguti, Kupe-Muanenguba Division of the South West Region, while they were transporting a patient with a gunshot wound to a hospital. The military had said the patient was a separatist and the next month also arrested two more Doctors Without Borders staff members, accusing them of collaboration.
Meanwhile, on October 1, 2022, images appeared on social media where Dorothy and other SCNC activists in the UK were commemorating the Independence Day of Southern Cameroons. They were seen in the images demonstrating with placards condemning atrocities committed in North West and South West regions by the military, and advocating the independence of Southern Cameroons.