BY REGINA NGIE
A long and arduous search for activists backing the Anglophone crisis is underway within the ongoing unrest in the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon.
Faced with this deteriorating socio-political condition and other security concerns, the Cameroon 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 Cameroons 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 in the likes of Dengoue Monthe Lumiere, Tabi M-Eyere Nakungu, Eyisab Enow Kenneth and Titus Peter is already making rounds in the hands of the military. The alleged activists have been placed under military searchlight and declared wanted since 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, Dengoue Monthe Lumiere, from Kumba, Meme Division of the South West Region is amongst the many to be arrested wherever spotted within the national territory. He is on the run as he has been declared wanted by the Yaounde regime. He has been under security searchlight since May 2023 after he miraculously escaped from detention and family sources say since he went underground his whereabouts remains very cloudy. At press time family sources hinted that their neighbourhood in Kumba is constantly under security operative patrol and the harassment of family relatives and friends of Monthe is being exaggerated.
Reports say Monthe, just like several SCNC activists, due to his constant involvement in SCNC activism such as the holding of meetings under the theme “Peacefully sensitising our people to the last man or woman” ahead of the commemoration of the Southern Cameroon’s “Independence Day” in October 1, 2017 , the holding of peaceful protest demonstration against Anglophone marginalisation, and the holding of other SCNC secret meetings have suffered several arrests, by security operatives including the police, gendarmes and elements of the Rapid Intervention Battalion with French acronym BIR. Monthe and other activists were tortured, molested and detained under cruel, harsh, degrading and inhumane conditions with far-reaching pathetic consequences on their life and family. Monthe is reported to have lost his eight-month-old daughter while in detention and his mother died of heart attack because he was in detention and his mother thought it was the end of his life.
In one of his incarcerations, with news that him and other inmates were to be transferred to the Buea Central Prison and coupled with the fact that two inmates in their detention cell in Kumba died due to police brutality on them, Monthe miraculously escaped from detention and went underground.
Flashback of the crisis
It is also worth recalling that the Anglophone crisis, something that pundits say had been brewing for several years, boiled over recently, when Common Law Lawyers in the North West and South West regions went on strike. They were demanding for the return of the federal system of government, redeployment of Civil Law Magistrates back to Civil Law Courts in French Cameroon, among other grievances. Not long after, teachers in the North West and South West regions also went on strike, demanding for the redress of several issues concerning the English system of education.
The crisis has left thousands, both civilians and security and defence forces dead, others internally displaced with some living in bushes, while over 30,000 have fled to neighbouring Nigeria where they are living as refugees, houses as well as villages razed to the ground with extrajudicial killings being a regular occurrence.
While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other western powers have called on the government to address the root cause through genuine and inclusive dialogue.