BY Lusy Lima
Despite the successful Major National Dialogue that took place in Yaounde from September 30 to October 4, 2019 to resolve the Anglophone crisis that has been rocking the North West and South West regions for over four years and counting, situation seems to have not changed.
Armed conflict between the separatist fighters and the defence forces still rages on with multiple deaths still recorded on both sides, houses razed to the ground, villages burnt down with impunity and Internal Displaced Persons, IDP’s, on the increase. The government is sparing no effort at tracking down those it considers agents of destruction. This is despite repeated calls for all protagonists to embrace peace for a better and new Cameroon.
Cameroon, which was once internationally praised as one of the most peaceful countries in the world, is now struggling to cope with untold causalities from what many qualify as an unrelenting and insidious conflict.
Despite all these, the government has established a fresh list of alleged activists targeted for arrest. This list is reported to have been given to intelligence services for action. Amongst the alleged activists who are on government blacklist and are target for arrest anytime they set feet in Cameroon, include Norway-based self-proclaimed Ambazonia leader, Ayaba Cho, Capo Daniel alongside other alleged activists like Sylvie Keafo-on and Nyugha Melvis Nahbum.
Sylvie Keafo-on is a holder of a Master’s degree in International Relations with specialty in International Marketing from the International Relations Institute of Cameroon, IRIC, Yaounde. Her ordeal with the military is pathetic. She is reported to have left the country in March 2023 after being underground for fear of the unknown due to military molestation, torture and detention under harsh and inhumane conditions.
THE SUN gathered that her ordeal with the defense forces started in Bamenda, one of the restive zones in the North West Region amidst the ongoing armed conflict while she was a worker with the International Centre for AIDS Care and Treatment Programme in the North West Regional Office. Reports say during military raid of a neighbourhood, they equally attacked their facility on grounds that the separatist fighters have killed their colleague and was hiding the neighbourhood. Sylvie Keafo-on was accused of being a spy, collaborating with the separatists to overthrow the government.
They were arrested, molested and items including her cell phone confiscated by the military and taken to the police station. While at the police station, reports say Sylvie Keafo-on was placed under harsh detention condition and almost raped. Her family was accused of promoting lockdown and school boycott. He two cousins were thus arrested with their residence razed to the ground by the military.
At the Bamenda legal department fresh accusations were made against Keafo-on as being one of the girlfriends of the dreaded separatist fighters known as ‘General’ Rambo.
However, she was granted bail meanwhile investigations on her alleged involvement in the crisis were still ongoing.
Sylvie Keafo-on, days later, received a call from a certain Sergeant Frank, accusing her of being the brain behind the lockdown leading to the celebration of Youth Day. The said Sergeant Frank is said to have told her that he knows her location, thus is ready to assassinate her. This thus caused her family to facilitate her escape out of the country.
At press time, family sources confirmed that her whereabouts remains cloudy even though security operatives keep making rounds around their neighbourhood to apprehend her.
Another pathetic case is that of 31-year-old Nyugha Melvis Nahbum. Even though her whereabouts remains cloudy since December 2021 the military has has re-launched a manhunt for her to be arrested and subsequently prosecuted.
Reports hold that Nyugha Melvis Nahbum, owner of a documentation shop in Bamenda in the North West Region, sometimes in April 2021, was apprehended by the military in her shop, while she was producing some Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, flyers brought to her by some two boys.
Nyugha was tagged a separatist, whisked to the police station where she was molested, tortured, detained under deplorable conditions. Just like other women she met in detention, she was raped many times by the security officers on duty until she went unconscious in one of the rape incidences.
Nyugha Melvis Nahbum, who has now been listed as wanted by the military, family sources say, escaped from detention thanks to the help of an officer who realised that she, alongside other inmates, were to be transferred to dreaded Kondengui central prison in Yaounde and to subsequently stand trial at the Yaounde Military Tribunal, like all other Anglophones charged on alleged terrorism offences.
The country is now considered unsafe by many Anglophones in the diaspora who fear arrest or death if they return to the country. 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.
Also, prominent Anglophone lawyer and human rights activist, Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, has called on the Government to dialogue, and to release all Anglophones unlawfully detained or imprisoned.
French president, Emmanuel Macron, had once promised to exert “maximum pressure” on President Paul Biya to end Cameroon’s human rights violations. But the war still rages on and extrajudicial killings are still rampant. National and international human rights organisations have condemned, in very strong terms, the atrocities.
It should be recalled that Common Law lawyers went to strike in October 2016 to protest government attempts to annihilate the Common Law practice in a constitutionally bilingual and bi-jural Cameroon. The strike lasted for over a year. Anglophone teachers in the country joined the strike on November 21, 2016 to uphold Anglo-Saxon values under threat in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions.