BY NAOMI LUM
The government of the Federal Republic of Canada recently announced its intentions hold peace talks to negotiate and bring long lasting solutions to the crisis rocking the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon.
Despite this much welcome initiative by majority of Southern Cameroonians including those abroad believed to be fanning the ongoing crisis, the Yaounde regime has taken another step by opening fresh suits and investigations against alleged Anglophone activists. The government has multiplied manhunt to track them in order to prosecute and persecute them.
The trouble in the North West and South West Regions began in October 2016, when lawyers and teachers led protests calling for a two- state federation to preserve the Anglophone legal and education systems which they felt were being encroached upon by the francophone- led central government. The military’s heavy-handed response to peaceful calls for greater autonomy prompted Anglophones to form militias popularly known as Ambazonia Defense Forces, leading to armed conflict the following year.
Since 2017, the fighting has claimed over 6,000 lives in the Anglophone regions and displaced nearly 800,000 people, majority of whom are refugees in neighbouring Nigeria. Some have been left in constant tears either for the demise of their love ones or because their homes have been razed. These attacks have been so alarming that human rights groups across the board have concluded that Cameroon is no longer safe.
For years now, the government of Cameroon has been battling to arrest the situation, but tensions continue to intensify with civilian population in the two restive crisis-hit regions in peril, panic and pandemonium. Due to this confusion and fear of the unknown, many youths and businessmen, professionals of all walks of life continue to go underground.
The case of Likanje Karl Vasen Mokoko, a law graduate from the University of Buea, remains very pathetic. Reports from family sources say the whereabouts of their son, a human rights promoter and one-time President of the University Law Society, remains cloudy.
What caused the immediate escape of Likanje Karl to an unknown destination, was in December 2022. He was guest in one of the private radio stations in Buea. In that programme, he condemned, in the strongest terms, the attitude of the military. The military is reported to have taken advantage of the crisis, raided villages of the restive Anglophone regions, conducted mass arrests of innocent civilians, razed villages and homes to the ground, causing thousands to remain internally displaced while others saw themselves fleeing out the country.
Likanje Karl is reported to have termed the barbaric acts of the military as genocide.
THE SUN gathered that the military stormed the radio station and interrupted the programme. Likanje and the station manager were arrested and whisked to military detention facility where they were manhandled and placed under harsh inhumane detention condition for several days.
Likanje, like others, was accused for siding with those clamouring for the independence of Southern Cameroons, reasons the “war” is unending. He was equally coerced to disclose the names of those aiding and supporting the cause for secession.
Despite the fact that Likanje rejected all these allegations, he stayed in detention under degrading condition. A picture of some protesters who took to the streets to condemn the brutal killing by the military of an Anglophone journalist and human rights crusader, Samuel Wazizi, sometimes in 2021 in Buea, was presented to Likanje with his face singled out in the picture.
Reports say as plans were underway to ferry Likanje Karl to a more severe detention facility in Yaounde for him to later on stand trial at the military tribunal, like other alleged Anglophone activists who had stood trial and sentenced to life imprisonment upon framed up charges of terrorism, secession, hostility against the state and propagation of false information, Likanje, in his harsh detention facility, had no other option than to cry out in his vernacular.
His action is reported to have attracted the attention of one of the security operatives who coincidentally was his tribesman. This is how the officer, out of sympathy, did all his best to smuggle Likanje Karl late at night, from detention, to an unknown destination.
Family sources confirmed that Karl later contacted his father who rushed him to a clinic for medical attention. News of Likanje being declared wanted by the Yaounde regime forced his parents to negotiate his escape out of the country.
As we went to press family sources hinted that they are constantly under threats, and pressure from security operatives for them to disclose the whereabouts of their son, Likanje Karl Vasen Mokoko, for they will be arrested and tortured.
As the crisis continues to deepen, report of a survey released by a group of Human Rights Organisations in Cameroon indicates that lives of Anglophone activists remain risky. The Yaounde regime is sparing no effort in tracking down those it considers “agents of destruction”.
Even those abroad considered as activists and preaching against the marginalisation of Southern Cameroons by the Yaounde regime, have equally been declared enemies of the State of Cameroon and have been tagged for persecution.