BY LUCY LIMA
Tension mounts within families of thousands as Government forces have engaged in extrajudicial killings, arbitrary arrest, random looting, shooting, torture, molestation using disproportionate and discriminating force, abusing and arresting protesters, burning more than 300 villages, 600 houses, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, attacking hospitals beating and raping women and girls.
The traumatising situation is on the rise as the crisis in the North West and South West regions, rages on. Families are bearing the brunt of the unending crisis which morphed into an armed conflict since 2017.
The inhumane treatment meted on innocent civilians amidst the crisis is alarming and international bodies have been called upon to intervene and mount pressure on the government to solve the situation and assist all those who have been declared wanted and escaped due to the armed conflict.
At press time reports from Kumbo, Bui Division North West Region said the family of Lukong Bede Suiriliy, onetime Kumbo election observer under Elections Cameroon, ELECAM, is still perplexed about his whereabouts, which till date still remains cloudy. Lukong relocated to Buea from Kumbo for fear of Amba Boys’ persecution.
THE SUN gathered that following multiple attacks by separatist fighters on government forces in Buea, Lukong was unfortunately arrested by security operatives on September 27, 2018, a ghost town day when he stepped out to get some food. He was whisked to the Police Station, tortured and detained in a degrading inhumane condition for being a spy for the separatist fighters otherwise known as Amba Boy’s. Since then there has been no trace of him.
The family has expressed fears that if Lukong is arrested by government forces his situation will not be different from others who have been killed and buried in mass graves because of their suspected links with separatist fighters.
Lukong is reported to have relocated to Buea from Kumbo, in Bui Division, North West Region following instruction from his mother who expressed fears that he could be killed by separatist fighters if he monitored the announced 2018 presidential election since he had received a message from ELECAM as one of the Observers.
It should be recalled that it is not the first time Lukong Bede Suiriliy enduring arrest, torture molestation and detention in the hands of government forces amidst the Anglophone crisis. In late 2016 Lukong was arrested alongside other Anglophone protesters by officers of the National Gendarmerie and whisked to the gendarmerie brigade in Tobin, Kumbo, where they spend about three days in custody. Lukomg was released after money allegedly exchanged hands with the gendarmerie authorities while the others were transferred to prisons either in the Kumbo, Bamenda or Francophone Regions and till date noting has been heard about them.
Flashback of the crisis
It is also worth recalling that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over in 2016, when Common Law Lawyers and Teachers in the North West and South West regions went on strike, 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 and, for the redress of several issues concerning the English system of education respectively. In January 2018 when the Anglophone leaders in the likes of Sisisku Ayuk Tabi, Barrister Eyambe, Nfor Ngalla Nfor were arrested in Nigeria and extradited to Yaoundé Cameroons political capital the crisis morphed into an armed conflict.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defense forces dead, others internally displaced with some are living in bushes, while 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 with extrajudicial killings being regular occurrences.