By LUCY LIMA
A worker of Cap Sur L’Avenir (CAPSA), a non-profit youth-led organization which fights to Protect and Educate Young Boys/Girls is on the run following accusations of collaborating with armed separatists in Muyuka.
In a confidential dispatch to security services, Tanyi Roquecegnol Akwo, Subdivisional Officer for Muyuka Subdivision accuses 31-year-old Ngebwung Beltus Achianga of complicity with armed militias which are fighting to forge an independent English-speaking state in Cameroon, where the majority of the population speaks French.
In a bid to gain passage, aid workers are accused of collaborating with separatists. Local administrative officials urge aid groups to share information on the hideouts of separatists with state forces.
The noose has since tightened on aid groups and their workers in Muyuka following the gruesome murder of Comfort Tumasang.
On August 12, Comfort Tumasang a 35-year-old mother of two was gruesomely murdered in Muyuka. A video her beheading went viral on social media, provoking widespread condemnation.
Comfort’s mother, 63-year-old Mary Tumasang, said separatists accused her daughter of collaborating with the military as an informant. She said she supports the protest because she wants peace to return to Cameroon. She said she wants her daughter’s killers arrested.
She said when separatists came to her home, her frightened daughter, Comfort, did not hesitate to hand over her telephone as the fighters requested. She said 30 minutes later, she watched helplessly as Comfort was forced out of the house to a neighborhood called Sandsand Quarter. She said in Sandsand Quarter, the fighters tied Comfort to a tree but residents raised an alarm and the fighters fled, taking her daughter along. Comfort Tumasang was later found dead in a pool of her own blood.
Aid worker Ngebwung Beltus Achianga is accused for failing to share information with state forces which could have led to the arrest and prosecution of the presumed killers of Comfort Tumasang. Days after the killing, angry youths went in search of Beltus, burning down their family home in Makanga- Muyuka as accusations of collaborating with separatists gain grounds.
under security operative searchlight
Government military are known to have arrested Beltus earlier on in August 17th 2019 by military officers who accused him of being a spy for for the separatist fighters . He was tied him up to a and savagely beaten before , locked up and was released two days after because of the intervention of Major Laza of muyuka municipality.
This recent attack is just the latest in a long line of incidents in which aid workers have been attacked by English-speaking separatists fighting Cameroon’s military.
But separatists are not the only ones responsible for the attacks against aid workers and humanitarian operations that have been commonplace since the crisis began in late 2016. Government forces also bear responsibility. Aid workers have been victims of unlawful killings, abductions, harassment, extortion, and other abuses as supplies and property have been looted and destroyed. Humanitarian access has been severely hindered by the violence, as well as by deliberate actions carried out by the separatists and government forces and authorities.
Attacks against aid workers disrupt the provision of life-saving assistance and services to people in need.
Cameroon’s Anglophone regions face a serious humanitarian crisis, with over 650,000 internally displaced, and 1.8 millionrelying on humanitarian aid including 1.4 million people who lack reliable access to food.
Despite the call for a Covid-19 ceasefire by one of the separatist groups, Southern Cameroons Defence Forces (SOCADEF) in March – a move welcomed by UN secretary-general’s spokesperson – fighting in the Anglophone regions has not subsided.
Humanitarian workers play a vital role, often operating in difficult conditions to alleviate suffering. Government forces and all separatist armed groups should immediately end all attacks against humanitarians and other civilians, hold those who commit them to account, and allow unhindered humanitarian access.