BY CYNTHIA BIH
Being a youth struggling to make ends meet, unable to go to school, struggling to take care of the family – youthful men in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are suffering as the crisis continues unabated. The whereabouts of two brothers Awantang Stephen Ngu, 38, and Awantang Suhna Pius, 28, is unknown as they ran a small business in Ekona, a conflict epicentre. They were scrambling to provide food for their family and survive during difficult times.
“There was shooting from morning until night, and we don’t know who’s shooting,” says Joseph Awantang, uncle to the duo who have since gone missing following a military operation in Ekona on 10 November 2020. Following the military operation and gun battle with armed separatists, Joseph Awantang and the rest of Ekona village fled. It took three hours for the village to get to safety in the bush.
Joseph Awantang remembers the buildup of violence around the beginning of October, when soldiers first accused his nephews, Stephen and Pius, of using their documentation centre to print and circulate separatist literature and propaganda.
“I was so stressed because I heard the gunshots of 10 November 2020 around where Stephen and Pius have their documentation centre. The soldiers had accused my nephews of publishing separatist information. I heard the military came for them again, accusing them of providing shelter and food to separatist fighters we call Amba Boys. I couldn’t go in search for them until three days after the gunshots ceased,” he said. And he was one of the lucky ones who fled into the bush unharmed.
North-West and South-West regions erupted in violence in 2017 after a Francophone central government crackdown on peaceful protests. The repression against Anglophone teachers and lawyers rallying against alleged discrimination spurred an armed separatist movement and self-declaration of independence for so-called Ambazonia.
This conflict has escalated between armed separatists, and the Cameroonian security forces in the villages and towns, as people flee both sides, not knowing if a stray bullet will kill their family members or themselves.
The various armed groups are fighting against the Cameroonian military, specifically the Rapid Intervention Battalion (BIR), the elite fighting unit accused of human rights abuses in the far north of the country.
While the Anglophone crisis has escalated over the past three years, the youth who seen as fighters or potential fighters continue to suffer.
Fractured families trying to survive
One casualty of the ongoing crisis is the family unit — those who have not had a loved one killed or maimed in the fighting have lost touch with them in the scramble for safety during attacks by soldiers or the separatists.
Joseph Awantang tells us he knows not of the whereabouts of his nephews. It is not known if they fled to the safety of town after the military raid or were arrested or even shot and left for dead.
Relative safety, but daily life difficult
Other families in town struggle to pay their rent, an expense they did not have in the village when they were living in their own home. Emily, 28, exhales loudly when asked when she left her village to come to Buea with her husband and four children.
“We came on August 16. They burned our house down, my children had not been going to school for two years, and we were living in the bush for six months before coming here,” she says, looking spent after cataloguing the events in her life over the past year.
Emily’s brother-in-law is helping pay the school fees for her children, and the whole family lives with him, which can be difficult, she says.
Jobs are scarce in the Anglophone areas, as Anglophones say government jobs frequently go to Francophones, one of the reasons for the start of protests in the first place.
Emily, like other women, sells fried doughnuts, called ‘gateaux’ or ‘puff-puff’ on the street to make money for school fees, food and rent.
Women say neither the military nor the Amba Boys separatists respect women and children, according to the numerous interviews carried out by rights groups in the region. Women, youth and children have been shot, killed, set on fire, just like the boys and men in the Anglophone regions.
Agatha barely escaped with her life the day separatists surrounded the plantation she worked on. She had worked for the Cameroonian Development Company (CDC), the country’s second-largest employer, for 28 years.
The Anglophone separatists reportedly consider those who work for CDC, a parastatal company, as traitors, and attack workers, cutting off their fingers.
As they rushed in, the workers, including Agatha, were bending back the metal fence to escape into the bush.
“The military were shooting and the Ambazonia forces were shooting all over the place,” says Agatha. Her back is scarred from the metal fence that cut her as she fled. After four days in the bush, relatives sent her mobile money and she used that for herself and fellow workers to come to Buea.
She also lives in Kumba and is struggling to feed her children. The stress of the situation has had a negative impact on her health. She collapsed one month after leaving the bush.
“They did tests and found out I have high blood pressure,” says Agatha.