BY TALLA AGHAA CHRISTOPHER
The North West and South West Regions of Cameroon have been restive for about three years now. What started as a Common Law Lawyers and Anglophone Teachers protest is now known as the Anglophone Crisis with the call for the creation of an Ambazonian State by secessionist and separatist fighters.
As tensions in the North West and South West Regions rage unabated, government has embarked on a mission to fish out sympathisers and activists backing what is now termed Anglophone Crisis. The government has already considered them terrorists and numerous trump up charges against them such as propagation of false information, rebellion, revolution, secession insurrection and non -possession of National Identity card.
A survey report disclosed by a group of Human Rights Organisations in Cameroon indicates that the lives of activists of Anglophone extraction are now in danger. Many of the activists have been arrested and placed under degrading human conditions while in detentions while others have relocated to unknown destinations as their family homes and neighbourhoods have been on constant check by security operatives to apprehend them due to their opinion which is anti-government according to the government. This is why these collectives of Human Rights Organisations are recommending that people of goodwill should accord maximum security to any Anglophone activists who is on the run for fear of government persecution
Residences of activists whose whereabouts remain a misery and are under police searchlights have been razed to the ground.
The tales of James Nkeze Awung, a teacher by profession and Mbeayi Gregory Ngu one time worker at the Azi Hospital, Menji in Lebialem division of the South West region, are very pathetic.
The government has apparently open investigation especially as their whereabouts, going by family sources, remain bleak and there is every indication that if found they will be persecuted and handed life jail terms.
Reports hold that James Nkeze Awung, who had suffered several arrests and molestation by the military, had no option than to escape on May 9, 2018 as him among others were being transferred from Mbanga to Douala by the police.
It should be recalled that James Nkeze Awung was apprehended in Fiango Kumba in the South West Region, while transporting his mother’s plantains to the market and whisked immediately to Mbanga in the Littoral Region. Few days later after serious torture and degrading treatment by the security, James Nkeze Awung and many others while in a truck en route to the dreaded New Bell Prison in Douala, jumped out of the truck and dashed into the bush amidst gunshots from the military transporting them to Douala.
Another victim of circumstance in the ongoing Anglophone crisis is Mbeayi Gregory Ngu. As a worker with the Azi Hospital in Menji South West Region, he joined colleagues to protest in September 2017, against the mass influx of Doctors of French-language expression posted by government in the area who couldn’t communicate in the purely dominant English-speaking area.
Reports from Menji say immediately after the protest, Mbeayi and other protesters were arrested and detained for several days under inhumane conditions. Though they were released after serious negotiations, Mbeayi Gregory Ngu and other colleagues went ahead to stage another protest. They were arrested and molested and due to the inhumane treated Mbeayi was admitted in a Buea-based clinic for two weeks. For the sake of his people Mbeayi relocated to Essoh Attah village and engaged his services as a volunteer in Essoh Attah Health Centre. Mbeayi will himself be a wanted man when the military came looking for him on allegations that he had administered treatment to an alleged separatist fighter whom the military had shot.
After about 15 days in hiding, Mbeayi was informed that soldiers have been constantly looking for him. Though he escaped to Yaounde, unfortunately following the October 2018 post-presidential elections protest in January 2019 by some sympathisers of an opposition party who claimed their victory was stolen there was mass arrest by the gendarmerie which saw Mbeayi equally arrested. Mbeayi and others, this reporter learnt, managed to escape after struggling with the security on their way to the Yaounde central Prison, though two other arrested protesters were shot dead by the military during that scuffle. Ever since this incident Mbeayi Gregory Ngu has remained in the search books of the security all over the national Territory.
Recent statistics by civil society organisations 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 thousands having fled to neighbouring Nigeria where they are living as refugees.
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.