BY Lawrence Ndiaba Mbwa
Cameroonian US-based scholar, researcher and a trade unionist who is concerned about the Anglophone plight gave a synopsis of the crisis rocking the two English speaking Regions of Cameroon.
Louis Funue Tangie, a Cameroonian currently serving as a high school science Teacher in the United States of America on December 30, 2018, presented a paper on Cameroon’s worsening human rights situation. While on his short vacation in Cameroon in June 2018, he wrote an article blaming the Biya regime for its poor handling of the crisis which has caused the death of many civilians and enormous damage to people’s properties.
Based on his research while in Cameroon, the scholar traced the path leading to one of Africa’s bloodiest internal conflicts in recent times-the Anglophone Crisis. His article recalls the December 22, 2016 letter of the Anglophone bishops addressed to Cameroon’s President, Paul Biya in which the priests restate the grievances of the people which ranges from: the failure of successive governments of Cameroon, since 1961, to respect and implement the articles of the Constitution that uphold and safeguard what British Southern Cameroons brought along the Union in 1961: The cavalier management of the 1972 Referendum which took out the foundation element (Federalism) of the 1961 Constitution, which gave the country the original East Cameroon name (The Republic of Cameroon) and thereby erased the identity of the West Cameroonians from the original union, West Cameroon, which had entered the union as an equal partner, effectively ceased to exist; and the deliberate and systematic erosion of the West Cameroon cultural identity which the 1961 Constitution sought to preserve and protect by providing for a bi-cultural federation.
His article threw lights on the untold human rights violations ranging from arbitrary arrests, incommunicado detentions, extrajudicial killings and arson perpetrated by the Cameroon military and the indiscriminate firing of live ammunitions on civilian residences which has resulted in the killing of so many innocent people. If one were to go by the antecedents of the military and popular belief, the killings of many civilians could be their handiwork. The immediate cause of the crisis was that, the Common Law Lawyers in Cameroon went on strike in October 2016 to protest government’s attempts to annihilate the Common Law practice in a constitutionally bilingual and bi-jural Cameroon. The strike lasted for over a year. Anglophone teachers in the country joined the strike on November 21, 2016 to uphold Anglo-Saxon values under threat in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions. Same day, Mancho Bibixy staged a coffin revolution at Liberty Square in Bamenda to protest against the marginalisation and economic deprivation of Anglophones. Matters came to a head on Thursday, December 8 when the population of Bamenda took to the streets to denounce the politicisation of a strike action they consider genuine and borne of longstanding grievances. Days of ghost town have been observed throughout the South West and North West Regions of the country. On January 17, 2017, Barrister Nkongo Felix Agbor Balla and Dr. Fontem Neba, leaders of the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium (CACSC) were arrested moments after the consortium had been banned along with the SCNC.
Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, president of the self-styled state of Ambazonia was arrested in Nigeria on January 5, 2018 along with nine other members of his cabinet including Tassang Wilfred, Nfor Ngala Nfor and barrister Eyambe Ebai.
The government crackdown on Anglophone activists has since intensified with arbitrary arrests, detention, torture and extra-judicial killings becoming the new normal, human rights groups have said. The fate of many remains precarious as security forces battle separatists. President Paul Biya has since taken a tough position on the crisis in the two-English speaking regions. Guns have since taken the place of dialogue and peace.
Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, Founder of the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (CHRDA) Buea says many villages have been burnt, hundreds of persons killed, and thousands displaced internally and externally. Looking at the depth of the crisis and the ongoing state, it has come to a state where many Cameroonians may well be reserved a fate like what Patrice Nganang got when he came to Cameroon. Scholars, researchers have reserved their commends to speak the truth of the present crisis by publishing works to explain the depth of the crisis for fear that they may be arrested and tried under the 2014 law on the suppression acts of terrorism.
It should be noted that clashes between these armed groups and Cameroonian forces, as well as attacks on civilians, have forced more than half a million people into the NW and SW’s dense forests, without proper shelter and little access to food and basic services. Separatist groups have enforced school boycotts since 2017, leaving a generation of children without education for over a year. Warring parties have tortured and killed civilians and burnt down a good number of villages. Basic services have almost completely collapsed, and, coupled with insecurity, left 1.3 million people in need of humanitarian assistance in the NW and SW alone-numbers the government of Cameroon staunchly denies.
Despite the dire need, the governments of the world have been practically silent on the humanitarian situation, leading the Norwegian Refugee Council to sub the conflict in the NW and SW the world’s most neglected displacement crisis. Most efforts by interested political power and typical humanitarian donors, such as Canada, Britain and the United States, are focused on finding a political solution to the conflict. But amidst continues to deteriorate and remains largely ignored.