By CYNTHIA BIH
Teachers, business persons and other civilians of various walks of life such as nurses and lawyers are bearing the brunt as the Anglophone crisis, which has escalated into an armed conflict in the North West and South West regions, rages on.
Many teachers, who have been accused of being among those who took part in strike actions carried out by teachers, are being arrested.
The separatists have also imposed a school boycott all over the North West and South West regions. Teachers who violate this ban and go to school to teach, are being abducted by separatist fighters, and are either killed or are only set free after the payment of huge amounts of money as ransom.
Meanwhile, business persons who provides services or sell goods to separatist fighters are being accused by the military of collaborating with and supporting the separatist fighters’ cause and struggle for the independence of the English-speaking regions into a country they have named Ambazonia.
Sources say the arrested persons are being tortured and detained under inhumane conditions. Some are reported to have died in detention.
For fear of their lives, many have fled and their whereabouts is not known. One case is that of Doris Chika Mbah, who was a teacher and later became a petit trader.
In November 2016 when Anglophone teachers staged protests across the North West and South West Regions, Doris Chika Mbah, who was a teacher in a private school in Bamenda, joined the protests. But the defence and security forces clamped down on the protest with brute force. Chika and other protesting teachers were arrested, tortured and detained under deplorable conditions without food.
Chika was later released weeks after. Because of the inhumane detention conditions, Chika is said to have contracted Tuberculosis. She is reported to have relocated to Buea in the South West Region, where she was treated.
After graduating from the university years after, Chika, in 2022, is said to have taken up residence in Muyuka, Fako Division of the South West Region, where she opened a petit trading business, selling food in small shop in the market.
Soldiers are said to have been frequenting Chika’s restaurant to eat. Because of this, separatist fighters labeled her as a blackleg and accused her of being an informant of the military.
Meanwhile, in September 2022, some separatist fighters are said to have forced her to cook food and serve them at her restaurant. Chika was forced to do so for several days.
However, some days later, the military is said to have stormed Chika’s restaurant, accusing her of sponsoring and supporting the separatist fighters, whose activities have been tagged as terrorism by the government. She was mercilessly tortured and later taken to the Buea central prison where she was detained under inhumane conditions.
Nonetheless, on Monday September 26, 2022 when Chika and other detainees were being transferred to the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde, she is said to have escaped when the vehicle in which they were being transferred had an accident at Mile 14 in Buea.
Since then, the whereabouts of Chika is not known. If rearrested, Doris Chika Mbah 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 outright, like many others who have been victims of extrajudicial killings within the context of the armed conflict in the North West and South West regions.
Flashback on rigin of crisis
It is also worth recalling that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over recently, when Common Law Lawyers in the North West and South West regions went on strike. They were demanding for the return of the federal system of government, redeployment of Civil Law Magistrates back to Civil Law Courts in French Cameroon, among other grievances. Not long after, teachers in the North West and South West regions also went on strike, demanding for the redress of several issues concerning the English system of education.
Things, however, got worst when Anglophones in both regions, who had been fed up with the unfavourable political and economic situation of the country, the use of French as the dominant and official language, and the marginalisation of the Anglophones, joined the strike.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defence forces dead, some 400,000 displaced with some living in bushes while over 30,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria where they are living as refugees.
Many houses, and even whole villages, have been burnt down in the crisis-hit regions.
The separatist leader of the self-declared Republic of Ambazonia, Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, and eight other close associates of his, who were arrested in Nigeria and extradited to Cameroon, are currently at the Kondengui maximum security prison in Yaounde, where they are serving life sentences.
Many other activists such as Mancho Bibixy, Penn Terrence, Tsi Conrad, among others, are serving jail terms at the Kondengui prison.
While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other western powers have called on the government to address the root cause through genuine and inclusive dialogue.