BY ALICE NJI
The government of Cameroon, through its security and defense forces, has not only launched a mass arrest for the organiser and participants who took part in a one-day successful seminar on Migrant Survivor Reintegration organised by the Cameroon Migrant Network, but has equally declared them wanted.
Cameroon Migrant Network is an organisation that supports Cameroon migrants in the GCC and assists survivors and returnees affected by the Anglophone crisis.
The seminar, which took place at Charvic hotel in Kumba, Meme Division of the South West Region on December 28, 2024, was facilitated by Manfred Mosaka Elangwe, CEO of Cameroon Migrant Network. It was attended by the close to 66 participants who exchanged and shared their experiences of the displacement, loss of family members, and destruction of properties linked to the Anglophone crisis that started in 2016 and later metamorphosed in to an armed conflict.
During the seminar the experiences shared by the participants were very pathetic. Manfred Mosaka Elangwe narrated how the armed conflict had caused untold hardship to many innocent families amidst the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions. He hinted that just like other family members who have lost their relations, his stepbrother, Mosaka Isaac Besumbu, was killed by the military.
At the end of the workshop, participants concluded that the military has caused untold hardship to many households by burning their homes and properties to the ground, shooting to dead many innocent civilians including children, pregnant women. They quoted the February 14, 2020 Ngarbuh Massacre where many children were killed at gunpoint by the military as the most horrifying incident.
The participants equally lamented the large number of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, including those who are refugees in neighbouring countries like Nigeria. They unanimously condemned this situation in Cameroon and called on the international community to intervene. Participants equally showered praises on the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, of Cameroon Migrant Network, Manfred Mosaka Elangwe, who jetted in from Bahrain just to organise the seminar.
They said the seminar has given them the opportunity to speak their minds by sharing their experiences amidst the armed conflict.
It is against this backdrop that the government of Cameroon, through security and defense forces, launched a manhunt for the arrest of the seminar organiser and participants who attended the workshop. The government holds that the seminar has exposed their draconian attitude in handling the crisis, especially atrocities committed by security and defense forces.
The first on target was the main organiser of the seminar, Manfred Mosaka Elangwe. The security and defense forces immediately summoned him for questioning. Reports say he was arrested, tortured and detained for eight days under cruel, degrading and inhumane detention conditions.
He was accused of supporting separatist fighters, inciting violence, advocating the outright separation between English-speaking and French-speaking Cameroon and opposing the government because he is a teacher, a member of the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, and a critical Human Rights activists.
Sources say despite Manfred Mosaka Elangwe’s argument that the seminar was just part of his humanitarian activities, he was severally beaten until he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital where he finally escaped on January 3, 2025 to an unknown destination.
Family sources said since Manfred Mosaka Elangwe, a frontline SCNC member since 2011 with a detention record in October 2011 when he was arrested while participating in the celebration of the Independence Day of Southern Cameroons, disappeared, the military has not only declared him wanted, but has equally been making impromptu search for him in their residence. This, the sources said, has caused them to live in psychological trauma as they are constantly being harassed and interrogated for them to disclose his whereabouts.
Family members are said to be having sleepless nights about the fate of Manfred Mosaka Elangwe. They say if the military sets eyes on him anywhere in Cameroon he will be arrested, detained or harmed like many other civilians arrested in connection with the armed conflict.
While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other Western powers have called on the government to address the root cause through dialogue. Also, prominent Anglophone lawyer and human rights activist, Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, has called on the government to dialogue, and to release all Anglophones detained and imprisoned.