BY SANDRA LUM
A long and arduous search for activists backing the Anglophone crisis is underway as the ongoing unrest in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon rages on.
Faced with this deteriorating socio-political condition and other security concerns, the Government has, in a desperate attempt to calm the trouble waters, multiplied efforts at apprehending those considered the brains behind the crisis. This has caused many, especially Southern Cameroon National Council, SCNC, activists clamouring for the restoration of the total independence of the former British Southern Cameroons, to go underground as they have been declared wanted by the Yaounde regime.
A list bearing the names of these alleged activists such as Dengoue Monthe Lumiere, Tabi M-Eyere Nakungu, Eyisab Enow Kenneth and Willma Lemongu Patcha are already making rounds in the hands of the military. The suspected activists have been placed under military searchlight and declared wanted. This was after they organised several protests in major towns in the North West and South West Regions, like Bamenda, Kumba, Mamfe, Buea, Limbe, Wum, Kumbo, against the worsening frustration and marginalization, coupled with the unlawful detention and maltreatment of the people of Former British Southern Cameroons.
Reports say activist, Willma Lemongu Patcha, from Buea, Fako Division of the South West Region, is amongst the many to be arrested wherever spotted within the national territory. She is on the run as she has been declared wanted by the Yaounde regime since 2023. This was after she was served a warrant to appear at the police station to answer questions about her relation with separatist fighters, also known as Amba Boys, and her SCNC membership. Family sources say since she went underground her whereabouts remains very cloudy.
Reports say like many other youths who have disappeared amidst the armed conflict, hers is more of political witch-hunting.
THE SUN gathered that Willma Lemongu Patcha, alongside other SCNC activists, is reported to have been arrested by the military and security operatives, tortured, mistreated and detained in degrading, inhumane and harsh conditions several times. This was for either siding with lawyers and teachers, during their peaceful street demonstration across Anglophone Cameroon against marginalisation and assimilation of Southern Cameroonians, or for coordinating student strike actions in the university of Buea.
Family sources hinted that security operatives arrested, tortured, molested and detained Willma Lemongu Patcha, accused her of siding with separatist fights amidst the armed conflict and coerced her to show them the hideout of separatist fighters.
As a victim of circumstances amidst that armed conflict, Patcha, according to family sources, was kidnapped by separatist fighters on grounds that during her detention at the police station, she shared information about them to the police. She, however, regained freedom with a warning from the separatist fighters to avoid any relationship with the police else she will be treated as a “blackleg”.
As we went to press, the military, allegedly with 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 to the state and related offences and her support for the restoration of the independence of the former British Southern Cameroons and for siding with separatist fighters. The military keeps making impromptu checks at Patcha’s Buea residential area, just to arrest and prosecute her. Family sources have hinted that they are constantly being harassed, molested for them to disclose her whereabouts which unfortunately, remains cloudy.
The government has not stopped arresting persons who show sympathy for the SCNC and who take part in activities it organises. Reports say some of these persons have died in detention, or simply disappeared.
Government forces have engaged in extrajudicial killings, random looting, shooting, torture, molestation using disproportionate and discriminating force, abusing and arresting protesters, burning more than 200 villages, 500 houses, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, attacking hospitals beating and raping women and girls.
The Anglophone crisis began 2016 with the teachers and lawyers strikes which later attracted the people of the two English-speaking regions of the Country, as they said their accumulated grievances emanated from marginalisation by the majority French-speaking part of Cameroon, inequality in employment, adulterations of the judicial and sub educational system.