BY ALICE NJI
The lives of humanitarian and health workers in the North West and South West regions are continuously in danger as armed conflict persists in the crisis-hit areas.
The humanitarian and health workers have been caught between the Ambazonia separatist fighters and government defence and security forces. While the secessionist fighters have sometimes kidnapped and also killed some humanitarian and health workers, defence and security forces have, on their part, been arresting any humanitarian and health worker accused of having links with separatists or treating wounded separatist fighters, providing healthcare and humanitarian assistance to persons internally displaced by the armed conflict.
The arrested humanitarian and health workers are being detained under horrible conditions. Some have reportedly died in detention. It is in this light that many of them have fled into hiding.
One such humanitarian worker who has borne the brunt of the armed conflict is Emerencia Ngwo Endoh, who was working with St. Jude Apostolate Cameroon League, providing support and care to underprivileged persons in her community. Saint Jude Apostolate Cameroon League is a Roman Catholic movement with key activities being prayers and helping homeless people, especially giving care and support to less privileged people who have been victims of the armed conflict in the English-speaking regions.
On October 3, 2021, while undergoing her charitable activities, visiting and supporting the less privileged and victims of the armed conflict, the military accused Ngwo of helping Ambazonia separatist fighters with supplies. She was arrested and whisked away to the military camp, where she was tortured, allegedly raped and detained under inhumane conditions.
Days later, Ngwo was discovered abandoned on the road and taken to the hospital, where she was hospitalized to be treated for the injuries she incurred and the trauma she suffered.
But her ordeal with the military was far from over. On June 4, 2022, her brother, whose name we got as Valentine Endoh, was found dead in the bush after fleeing military torture and severe beatings.
For fear of her life, Emerencia Ngwo vamoosed, and since then, her whereabouts have not been known.
However, sometime in September 2023, the military stormed their residence in search of her. Not finding her, they took her brother, George Endoh, and tortured him, and he later died because of the injuries he incurred from the torture.
Suspicious of Ngwo’s humanitarian activities, the military has launched a manhunt for her. If rearrested by the military, Emerencia Ngwo Endoh will be tried in a military tribunal under the anti-terrorism law, whose maximum punishment is the death penalty. That is, if she is not killed outright like many others who have been victims of extrajudicial killings within the context of the armed conflict in the North West and South West Regions.
Other victims galore
It should be recalled that in August 2018, Nancy Azah and her husband, Njong Paddisco, nurses who ran separate clinics in Mbengwi, Momo Division of the North West Region, were reported to have been shot by the military while on their way to attend to people wounded in the armed conflict.
The couple’s deaths provoked outrage among medical staff who said both sides of the conflict were threatening them: government security forces accuse them of treating armed fighters and hiding some in hospitals, while the armed separatists accuse medical staff of disclosing their identities to the military.
Elvis Ndansi of the Cameroon Trade Union of Nurses had said: “The military comes, chase them out of the hospital, brutalize them, beat them. As medical personnel, we all stand to condemn these acts and say they are very wrong”.
“Medical personnel are supposed to be protected in times of war. They are there to take care of all casualties, be they from the military, be they Ambazonia fighters or secessionists. Their role is to save lives,” Ndansi had added.
Meanwhile, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders had it rough with the government and separatist fighters before ending its operations in the North West and South West regions.
In the early hours of February 4, 2021, a Doctors Without Borders ambulance was fired on by armed men while responding to a call in Muyuka, Fako Division of the South West Region. The ambulance was hit, and the accompanying nurse was injured.
Doctors Without Borders was forced, in August 2021, to withdraw its teams from the North West Region after its programmes were suspended by government authorities almost eight months earlier. The suspension came after a series of allegations accusing Doctors Without Borders of supporting local armed groups, which the organization consistently denied.
In May 2022, Doctors Without Borders also suspended its activities in the South West Region.
Meanwhile, in December 2022, five of the organization’s staff, who had been detained for a year on charges of helping separatists, were released. The staff, four of them Cameroonians and one Indian, were tried in a military tribunal in Buea but acquitted.
The military arrested two of the staff in December 2021 in Nguti, Kupe-Muanenguba Division of the South West Region, while they were transporting a patient with a gunshot wound to a hospital. The military said the patient was a separatist, and the next month arrested two more Doctors Without Borders staff members, accusing them of collaboration.
Despite the dropped charges, Doctors Without Borders’ Operations Manager for Central Africa, Sylvain Groulx, said they cannot yet resume the needed aid work.