By LUSY LIMA
Since the Anglophone crisis, which started in 2016 with a strike action by Common Law Lawyers and Anglophone Teachers against marginalization metamorphosed into an arm conflict between security forces and separatist fighters, the Cameroon Government has been intensifying efforts to cut down logistic supply to separatist fighters.
Many suspected sponsors of the separatist fighters, commonly called the Amba Boys, have been arrested and placed under dehumanizing conditions in different detention facilities across the country, while some have abandoned their families, businesses and homes and are on the run.
A case in point is that of a supposed oil mill operator, David Nsuh Tangwin, based in Bekora-Ndian Division, South West Region of Cameroon, a village of 5000 to 7000 inhabitants, which has almost been completely razed due to repeated clashes between security forces and Amba Boys.
Report has it that, last December 2018, some separatist fighters attacked a military post in the Bekora village, wounded some security forces and vanished to an unknown destination. In response, security forces, who have more or less transformed the village into a military camp, came out and burnt hundreds of houses, as villagers fled for their lives. As if this was not enough, they launched a man-hunt for alleged sponsors of separatist fighters; arresting, molesting and transferring them to dreadful detention centres across the country from where they are levied charges related to terrorism and insurrection.
The SUN has it on good record that Mr. Nsuh Tangwin, whose name was on the list of suspected sponsors of the separatist fighters, was hinted by a military friend and he disappeared to an unknown destination leaving behind his family. It later filtered from family sources that David Nsuh’s oil mill was burnt down by irate military men, who have been touring the area almost every other day hoping to lay hands on him. David Nsuh Tangwin’s where about remains a guess work with many divulging that he possibly smuggled himself into Nigeria.
Meanwhile recent statistics place the death toll, since the crisis started in 2016, at over 3000 persons with thousands of houses and over 300 villages razed, 530000 persons identified as Internally Displaced persons, and over 35000 as refugees in Nigeria. It’s unclear if all those who have either left the country or their villages, shall ever go back.