By Cynthia Bih
The long drawn crisis in the two English-speaking North West and South West regions has already caused a lot of devastation since late 2017 when political differences between the government and separatist groups fighting for independence of the former British Southern Cameroons morphed into an armed conflict.
On January 16, 2023, Human Rights Watch, which has been monitoring the conflict since its start, reported that: “In 2022, armed groups and government forces committed human rights abuses including unlawful killings across Cameroon’s English-speaking regions…”.
It further stated that: “at least 6,000 civilians have been killed by both government forces and armed separatist fighters”.
The atrocities of the armed conflict have affected people, schools, businesses and just everybody or sphere of life. But the most harrowing thing about the crisis, as it persists without any end in sight, is that business persons and their businesses are becoming the unfortunate targets.
On the one hand, government forces have been directing their attacks on business persons on the excuse that some of them are secretly using their money to finance separatist fighters against the state forces. While on the other hand, the separatist fighters have targeted and killed several business persons with their own story being that their targets, though helpless in most cases, have not been supporting their struggle for what they call the liberation of Ambazonia from foreign occupation, being the government of Cameroon.
However, the most prominent excuse by the separatist fighters or Amba boys, as they are also known, has been the fact that those targeted have not been respecting Monday days which they had imposed as a non-working or ‘ghost town’ day.
Monday, in Cameroon, is officially a working day.
Separatists’ imposition of ghost town days
But since the Anglophone crisis degenerated into an armed conflict in 2017, the Anglophone separatists took a very controversial decision by declaring that Mondays, across the two English-speaking regions, be observed unequivocally as non-working or ghost town days.
By this declaration, all businesses on this day are to remain shut, offices and schools all closed as everyone, too, is expected to stay indoors. And it’s been awfully so for the past seven years.
They argued that this was to force the government to capitulate and come for peace talks or negotiations.
But in response, the government has instead been bent on ensuring that the people don’t respect this day as imposed by the separatists. They have argued that it’s killing businesses and putting the government and the economies of these two regions into more hardship.
Thus, those caught in this dilemma are the business persons within the two regions who have either had to be killed, kidnapped or attacked by separatist fighters because they decided to open their businesses on Mondays in disrespect of the said imposed ghost town day. Or be arrested by Government forces on the one hand for respecting this day as well as many others being made to pay huge fines to the government for failing to open their businesses on Mondays. In this dire situation, many have fallen victim to the bullet either shot by the government forces or the separatists.
There is a case as reported on May 29, 2020, by Cameroon News Agency, of one trader at Mulang in Bamenda, North West Region, who happened to have been killed by separatist fighters, apparently for failing to respect ghost towns and for his alleged collaboration with the military.
“Lambert was killed a few days after another civilian popularly known as Fat Joe was murdered in the same neighbourhood…They were both accused of collaborating with security forces,” CNA reported.
The killings, kidnappings and disappearances of businessmen both by separatists and government forces is becoming a real issue in the two regions.
This reporter is privy to information on the case of one Fonjiyang Remi Mumbara, a 29-year-old university graduate, who is said to have been whisked off from his business shop at Mankon, in downtown Bamenda, sometime in November 2023.
He is said to have been picked up by the military at his shop.
He is said to have been running the small provision store for some five years with his cousin named Fonyijang Mofor Harrisson since his graduation from the University in 2017.
Fonjiyang Remi’s uncle, who is said to have been the one who gave him a loan as startup capital for his business, after he left university, spoke to us with deep sadness.
He disclosed that the military came and arrested Remi and ferried him to detention at a gendarmerie brigade, where he was tortured and detained under inhuman conditions.
With tears streaming down his cheeks, he said further that, few day later after Fonjiyang Remi was taken away from his shop, another patrol team of government soldiers came by, caught his cousin, Mofor Fonjiyang, who was now left in the shop, shot him to death, point blank and set the store ablaze.
Fonjiyang Remi’s uncle said they presume the military killed Mofor and took Remi away on the excuse that they have been colluding with the Amba boys by selling food items to the Amba boys and, therefore, energising them to fight the military.
It’s an excuse that is very unacceptable and a blatant abuse of rights because, it’s difficult for a business person to tell or determine his customers identities, when selling.
But since the Government imposed an anti-terrorism law in Cameroon in 2014, the military has been conducting the war in the North West and South West with reckless abandon. It has, backed by the above said law, been committing a lot of abuses by way of arbitrarily killings, of suspects, burnings of houses or unjustified arrests and so on.
Meantime, on the other hand, the separatist fighters haven’t been any different.
Fonjiyang Remi’s uncle further disclosed that Remi had equally complained to them about threats that he had been getting from the Amba boys. He said he had, before the military arrested him, informed them how the Amba boys had called him on a certain Friday, November 10, 2023, and threatened to come and assassinate him on the excuse that he, Fonjiyang Remi, had been disrespecting their Monday’s ghost town days.
Asked why Remi wasn’t respecting the said imposed ghost town Mondays, his uncle said, Remi, since he opened the business shop, had become the sole bread winner for the family. And given the difficult economic situation in the two English-speaking regions as a consequence of the long drawn armed conflict, most people have been depending but on small businesses for their survival.
But the growing attacks and threats on the business persons in Bamenda, especially, has made it such that these persons have become more or less endangered species.
Meanwhile, we gathered that after being detained by the military for about a week at Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaounde, Fonjiyang Remi is said to have escaped from detention under circumstances that remain unclear. Since then, his whereabouts is not known.
The military is said to have launched a manhunt for him, and constantly storms their family house looking for him.
If re-arrested, Fonjiyang Remi Mumbara will be tried in a military tribunal under the anti-terrorism law, whose maximum punishment is the death sentence. That is if he is not killed outright, like many others who have been victims of extrajudicial killings, within the context of the armed conflict in North West and South West Regions.
Many businessmen fleeing
It should be noted that the situation in the crisis-hit regions has forced many business persons, of late, to flee for their own safety; some fleeing even out of Cameroon to other safer countries around the world.
International human right groups have already reported of thousands who have already left Cameroon and are seeking protection in foreign countries owing to the crisis in the North West and South West regions. Besides, there is a general air of violence across the country as politicians are, currently, already jostling to see who will replace Cameroon’s 91-year-old head of state, Paul Biya, who has held power for over 41 years.
Thus, the months ahead could spark even a direr situation across Cameroon as opposition leaders are fighting tooth and nail to replace the 91-year-old incumbent by 2025 when elections are expected. But his supporters are battling to maintain him on seat so as to protect their interests. But many don’t just want to have another seven years under a leader who is considered already long overdue in a country where people retire at 60.
Thus, the general atmosphere in Cameroon doesn’t promise to be stable anytime soon.