BY CYNTHIA BIH
Cameroon’s military has continued to hunt persons suspected to have links with armed separatist groups or who support the Ambazonia revolution. Within the last month, several business persons have been taken into military custody without following due process and charged for conspiracy with armed groups.
In Fundong Sub division, Ndoh Claudia, a teacher and business woman who lives at Fujua in the outskirts of Fundong town where she constructed her family house has been in military detention for a week and half. She was arrested on Friday December 15, by the Company Commander for the Boyo Gendarmerie brigade after armed groups came to her area and mounted a control post 100 Meters from her residence.
Claudia on her part says she was in the kitchen cooking and was not aware that there was an Ambazonia fighters’ control post around. “We only heard gunshots and went into hiding as usual and about 20 minutes later, the military came led by the Company commander and I was arrested. The company commander said I and some of my neighbors were being arrested because we did not call the forces of law and order to inform them that there was a separatist control in our quarter. They asked me to pay FCFA 200,000 as bail” She told The SUN.
Like Claudia, Kekia Daniel Enow, A Cameroonian who was forced to leave Russia along side three of his Cameroonian counterparts due to risk of imprisonment in relation to his religious affiliations was arrested last week in Bamenda where he went to set up his IT shop.
Before now, Daniel had faced threats of arrest in 2017 when he joined hundreds of thousands of English speaking Cameroonians in peaceful protests against the government. Staying away from Cameroon for a couple of years and being convinced that things had gone back to normal. He came back to establish his business. Unfortunately for him, though he felt the threat to his life had subsided and he could quietly carry out his activities in Cameroon, he had continued to be under military surveillance.
He was picked up after haven received kicks and violent slaps from the soldiers that came to arrest him at the Bamenda Commercial Avenue behind the Total Energies fuel station where his IT shop in Bamenda is located.
The technician with whom Daniel was in the shop that day told The SUN Newspaper that “three well armed military officers alighted from a military pickup that slowed down in front of the shop, and made their way into the shop with the one ahead looking at a tablet while moving towards them. Then told his colleagues in French “c’est ici”, meaning its here, then asked us who among us was Daniel.” The technician said.
He went on to explain, “When they asked, Daniel said he was the one and they showed him his picture from their phone telling him they have been looking for him. The next thing I saw was violent slaps and kicks that landed Daniel on the ground calling him a terrorist. Afraid for my life, I immediately fell to the floor on my stomach with my hands raised up. After kicking and slapping him and accusing him of sponsoring terrorism from Europe, they dragged him like a bag of thrash and dumped him in their pickup then drove off.” The technician ended.
Daniel’s Lawyer told The SUN Newspaper that his client was taken to a hidden torture center in the Mile 8 neighborhood in Bamenda and tortured for hours before being allowed to call someone to ask for help and that was when he called him. “When Daniel called and was speaking like someone who was in deep pain and about to die very soon, I knew there was serious trouble and that I could not go alone. I showed up with an official from the National Human Rights Commission. Our intervention enabled Daniel to be released immediately but with caution.” His lawyer said.
Talking to The SUN Newspaper on phone, Daniel said, “before my lawyer arrived, the soldiers had extorted a bribe of FCFA 500,000 from me. Since I was setting up my shop, I had some money on me. It was the money that they asked me to pay before they could release me or they would take me to prison UP station from where I would be tried in the military tribunal for terrorism and that I risked going to Kondengui prison in Yaounde. I had no choice than to beg them and pay with all the money I had on me. For fear of my life and that of my lawyer I could not talk about the money they extorted from me when my lawyer came, especially because we were not in an official military station” He said. “My lawyer immediately asked me to get into the car, telling me, “we must leave Bamenda immediately.” We drove out of Bamenda in my lawyer’s car” he added.
Haven paid a substantial amount for his freedom; he was told he could be taken in for questioning at any time.
Like many young Cameroonians who have faced his fate, Daniel, if arrested may appear before the military tribunal in Yaounde and risks being transferred to the Yaounde central prison where most Ambazonia sympathizers are locked up since 2017.