BY TALLA AGHAA CHRISTOPHER
The report of a survey disclosed by a group of Human Rights Organisations in Cameroon indicates that the lives of activists of Anglophone extraction is now in danger.
Many of the activists have been arrested and placed under degrading human conditions in maximum security detention facilities across the country.
Many others have relocated to unknown destinations as their family homes and neighbourhoods have been on constant check by security operatives seeking to apprehend them due to their perceived anti-government opinions.
On the strength of untold human rights violations perpetuated by security forces, these collectives of Human Rights Organisations are recommending that people of goodwill should accord maximum security to any Anglophone activist who is on the run for fear of government persecution.
As tensions in the North West and South West Regions rage unabated, government has embarked on a protracted mission to fish out sympathisers and activists backing the now termed ‘Anglophone Crisis’.
The government has already considered them terrorists and numerous trumped up charges have been levelled against them such as propagation of false information, rebellion, revolution, secession insurrection and non-possession of National Identity Card.
Residences of activists whose whereabouts remain a mystery are under police search lights while some have been razed to the ground.
The case of Fonkeng Pascal Forchem who escaped from the country in 2019 after participating in a peaceful demonstration aimed at celebrating the Independence of Southern Cameroon has been revisited by the government and he is currently under police searchlight, family sources have hinted.
According to reports Fonkeng Pascal Forchem alongside other Anglophone activists in October 10, 2019 staged a demonstration in commemoration of the independence of Southern Cameroon in Kumba, Chief Town of Meme Division and while at the Kumba grandstand, they were confronted by forces of law and order. Security operatives opened fire on those who attempted to escape and arrested Fonkeng Pascal and other activists. They were given inhumane treatment at the detention cell until Fonkeng Pascal went into comma due to the torture he received from the police officers and was later taken to the hospital for intensive medical attention. Family sources revealed that Fonkeng Pascal only realised he was at the hospital. Fonkeng Pascal Forchem reports indicate smuggled himself out of the hospital through the window and left Kumba to Buea to meet his uncle thanks to the assistance of one his friend. Reports say his uncle helped him to leave the country since news of his imminent arrest and subsequent persecution was made public.
It should be recalled that many Anglophones have been apprehended in various military and police checkpoints after their phones had been searched and discovered therein messages videos, pictures and images of the killings of Cameroon Military by Ambazonian Defence Forces, ADF, forward as received not leaving out vehicles and placed incommunicado in draconian inhumane detention condition.
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.
Recent statistics by civil society organizations reflect the extent of the damage with horrific numbers. The death toll is on a perpetual rise while there are claims that about 200 villages have been burnt down in the two regions, and some 430.000 people remain internally displaced with a majority of English Speaking Cameroonians that have assumed the status of refugees in Nigeria.