BY LUCY LIMA
The Anglophone crisis started with a simple demand from Common Law lawyers and Anglophone teachers of the North West and South West Regions, under the banner of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, CACSC, in 2016, through peaceful protest against marginalisation from the central government, which they described as repressive.
They were demanding for the return of the federal system of government as agreed in 1961, redeployment of Civil Law Magistrates back to Civil Law courts in French-speaking regions, the redress of several issues concerning the English sub-system of education among other grievances. The crisis has taken a new twist.
Reports from across the North West and South West Regions all calls by the CACSC and the Anglophone community for the government to seek a peaceful resolution of the protest and grievances have been heeded by the government. Rather the regime of President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, through the Minister of Territorial Administration, Rene Emmanuel Sadi, went ahead and banned the consortium, and other constituted movements speaking on behalf of the Anglophones, like the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC. The government also shutdown internet in the two English-speaking Regions, arrested leaders of CASCS in the likes of Barrister Agbor Balla and Fontem Neba.
Torture, killings, arbitrary arrests are now the order of the day. Hundreds of those arrested are detained in degrading and inhumane conditions while others, who have been declared wanted, have gone underground and their whereabouts remains cloudy.
One of the staunch members of CASCS, Eugene Kibu Suilareng, who believes in the force of argument and not the argument of force, is amongst those who have been declared wanted by the regime. The teacher by profession, before his escape in July 2018, hinted to the press of the ordeal and trauma he passed through in the hands of the military and the armed militia otherwise known as the Amba boys.
Eugene Kibu Suilareng disclosed that he was arbitrarily arrested and tortured in 2017 by the defence and security forces simply because he is a teacher and a member of the outlawed CASCS. He further disclosed that when the crisis metamorphosed into an armed conflict with violent confrontations between the military and separatist fighters resulting to random killings and kidnappings for ransom by the separatist fighter, he, alongside his students and colleagues were abducted on Wednesday July 18, 2018 from school by separatist fighters and whisked to a bush in Kumba, Meme Division, South West Region. In the bush, they were tortured, stripped necked, beaten several times on grounds that they were blacklegs and traitors since they were still operating their school despite the school boycott imposed by separatists.
According to Eugene Kibu, the separatists demanded them ransom or they be killed as others. Kibu’s family is reported to have paid huge ransom before he was freed from separatist captivity.
As we went to press, family sources said that the defence and security forces have placed Eugene Kibu Suilareng in their security searchlight for his arrest and subsequent prosecution. Meanwhile, while the separatist fighters are constantly sending threatening messages to them to send money else they will abduct and kill Eugene Kibu.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defense forces dead, others internally displaced with some living in bushes. Over 30,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria where they are living as refugees, houses as well as villages have been razed to the ground allegedly by the military, with extrajudicial killings being a regular occurrence.
While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other western powers have called on the government to address the root cause of the crisis through dialogue, and to release all Anglophones unlawfully detained or imprisoned.