BY REGINA NGIE
As the crisis in the North West and South West regions, which has morphed into an armed conflict, rages on, residents in some localities in the conflict-hit regions have been caught between atrocities committed by Ambazonia separatist fighters and government’s clampdown on suspected separatists and sympathizers of the Anglophone cause with the use of defense and security forces.
Government has equally launched a manhunt for alleged activists siding with separatists.
The activists include members of the outlawed Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, a pressure group clamouring for the restoration of the independence of the former British Southern Cameroons. Lists bearing the names of these alleged activists are already making rounds in the hands of the military, as they have been placed under military searchlight and declared wanted since they organised several protests and organised fighters living in the bushes to pick up arms to fight against the military and state institutions.
After releasing a list of Anglophone activists in the Diaspora, who were targeted for arrest some time ago, sources say a fresh list of SCNC members and other activists both home and abroad has been re-established and those on the list targeted for arrest. More than a hundred names have reportedly been given to intelligence services.
It is against this backdrop that unanswered questions have been raised about the whereabouts of many SCNC and Anglophones activists who have disappeared amidst the ongoing armed conflict rocking the restive North West and South West Regions.
Reports say one of the SCNC activists, Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy, is amongst those who have been declared wanted by the Yaounde regime. It is worth recalling that because of the marginalisation, subjugation, and injustice meted on Anglophone Cameroonians, Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy decided to join SCNC in 2005.
She served the movement through sensitisation of the masses on the already executing agenda of Francophone Cameroon against the people, culture, statehood, legal system, educational system and way of life of Anglophone Cameroon and the need to fight against it. She did this through sharing flyers and calling on students to boycott certain activities.
All these made Stella Limnyuy become a target to the authorities as she suffered a lot of persecution largely because of her political opinion and her SCNC affiliation.
THE SUN gathered that she was arrested several times, first by the policemen in uniform on February 9, 2006 at the Bamenda Commercial Avenue while sharing flyers sensitising students not to participate in the National Youth Day of February 11, 2006, a day considered by Southern Cameroonians regrettably voted to join La Republique du Cameroun in a Plebiscite of February 11, 1961.
Wirsiy was whisked to the police station, molested, tortured and detained in an inhumane, degrading condition for three weeks and released after she signed an undertaking to desist from SCNC activism.
However, Wirsiy didn’t relent her efforts to see to it that the quest for the total independence of the former British Southern Cameroons is achieved.
On May 16, 2006 at the main entrance of the University of Bamenda while distributing SCNC flyers to students, she was arrested by policemen in uniform, detained for eight months under cruel inhumane conditions. She later miraculously escaped from Bamenda Central Prison.
Family sources hinted that Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy relocated to Buea and on January 25, 2009 was arrested during a police raid in the Molyko neighbourhood and was whisked to the police station where she was officially informed that she was declared wanted all over the national territory due to her SCNC activities and her escape from the Bamenda Central Prison in 2007.
After serious negotiations with Police authorities, we learnt, Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy was released after a huge amount of money allegedly exchanged hands and she immediately left the country.
After several years out of the country, and with the hope that her persecution and threat would have been over, Limnyuy came back to Cameroon. But upon her arrival in Yaounde in February 2019 she was arrested and detained at the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison.
THE SUN gathered that Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy put to birth in prison and a senior female penitentiary officer at the Kondengui prison took her to her house to serve as a domestic servant and for her to have the opportunity of taking care of her newborn baby out of prison.
Sources say Stella Limnyuy Wirsiy took advantage of this and went underground in 2020.
As we went to press, the military, with firm instruction from government, had launched fresh pursuit for her arrest alongside many others for them to be prosecuted at the Yaounde Military Tribunal on charges of secession, hostility and related offences and her support for the restoration of the independence of the former British Southern Cameroons.
The military keeps making impromptu checks at her Buea and Bamenda residential areas, just to arrest and prosecute her. Family sources have hinted that they are constantly harassed and molested for them to disclose her whereabouts which unfortunately, remains cloudy.