BY SANDRA LUM
More youths caught in the web of the ongoing armed conflict in the North West and South West are fleeing to safe havens and most especially where the respect of human rights is prime as political witch-hunting and scores- settling has taken centre stage.
The Cameroon Government has, for close to seven years now, been battling to arrest the situation, but tensions continue to intensify with civilian population in the North West and South West Regions living in peril, panic and pandemonium.
Due to this confusion and fear of the unknown, many citizens in these regions continue to go underground. Government has equally launched a manhunt for alleged activists and citizens suspected of siding with separatists. The activists abound and lists bearing the names of those listed for arrest are already making rounds in the hands of military men. The suspects have been placed under military searchlight and declared wanted.
The residents of Munyenge, one of the restive villages amid the armed conflict in Muyuka Subdivision, Fako Division of the South West Region of Cameroon, is restless following the disappearance of one of theirs, Edwin Akumsi Fuh, since November 2024. His situation has been described as witch-hunting.
The farmer and businessman, who operated an off license (bar) in this neighbourhood, is even feared dead like many others who, because of military reprisal, went into hiding and nothing has been heard about their whereabouts.
THE SUN gathered that customers of Akumsi’s bar were surprised by the sudden appearance of unidentified gunmen, who later introduced themselves as the dreaded separatist fighters group under the banner of the “Mountain Lions of Fako”. They opened fire and killed two of the customers in the bar, who, after investigation, turned out to be military men in civilian clothing.
Edwin Akumsi Fuh, despite his efforts at alerting security at a nearby checkpoint about the incidence at his bar, was rather molested, tortured, arrested and whisked to the military camp in Muyuka. Akumsi Fuh’s efforts to prove his innocence fell into deaf ears of the military. They accused him of not only knowing the hideout of the separatists, but equally siding with them, and that he was the one who called the separatists to come and kill the soldiers in his bar.
Reports say Edwin Akumsi Fuh was molested, tortured endlessly by the military and detained in cruel, harsh, degrading and inhumane detention conditions for four days and was denied access to a Lawyer.
Akumsi Fuh is reported to have later escaped from the detention under circumstances that remain unclear, and went into hiding. He has been declared wanted by the military and his whereabouts remains cloudy.
The military keeps making impromptu checks around the neighbourhood in search of him and it is alleged that in desperation, the military razed his business premises, which doubled as his residence, to the ground.
Meanwhile the crisis situation in the North West and South West Regions, has caused many to migrate to French-speaking towns and villages in Cameroon, while others have fled to neighbouring countries where they are living as refugees.
Government forces have reportedly engaged in extrajudicial killings, random looting, shooting, torture, molestation using disproportionate and discriminating force, abusing and arresting protesters, burning more than 200 villages, 500 houses, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, attacking hospitals beating and raping women and girls.
According to the Cameroon Penal code if Edwin Akumsi Fuh is arrested, he will face charges of acts of terrorism, insurrection, hostilities against the state, and failure to report.
The Anglophone crisis began in 2016 with the teachers’ and lawyers’ strikes which later attracted the people of the two English-speaking regions of the country who had accumulated grievances emanating from marginalisation by the majority French-speaking part of Cameroon, inequality in employment, adulterations of the judicial and sub-system of education.