BY KUBU EVELYN
The North West and South West regions of Cameroon have remained restive since the outbreak of the Anglophone crisis in 2016, which has escalated into an armed conflict.
Investigative findings and reports from many human rights groups and non-governmental organisations have condemned the extrajudicial killings by mostly the military, on civilians including children and pregnant women, and the burning of houses.
According to statistics from human rights groups, about 5,000 civilian lives have been claimed by the armed conflict, hundreds kidnapped, thousands of houses razed, over 750,000 persons internally displaced, with over 45,000 living horrible lives as refuges in neighbouring Nigeria. The situation has caused many to migrate to French Cameroon, while some have fled to neighbouring countries and overseas where they are living as refugees.
Some have been left in constant fear either due to the demise of their love ones or because their houses have been razed. These attacks have been so alarming that human rights groups across the board have concluded that Cameroon is no longer safe.
Since then killings, kidnappings have resumed and the lists of victims of this crisis continues to grow.
The Case of Jones Njang Tarh
Jones Njang Tarh, a nurse by profession and worker with the popular St John of God hospital in Nguti, Kupe Muanenguba Division of the South West Region of Cameroon is one of the victims of circumstances amidst the crisis rocking the North West and South West Regions. His ordeal, according to reports, started in 2021 when he and other colleagues in the hospital were manhandled by the military shortly after a confrontation between the military and separatist fighters that led to the killing of several civilians and many separatist fighters wounded.
The military men, in uniform, are reported to have stormed the hospital shortly after the confrontation with separatist fighters when they were hinted that most of the wounded separatists were receiving treatment at the hospital.
In April 2022 while on night duty on a ghost town day, Jones Njang Tarh was attending to a helpless wounded man who was rushed to the hospital, when a military patrol van raided the hospital.
THE SUN gathered that, while Njang went to open the door, the man he was attending to escaped. The soldiers are said to have informed Njang that they raided the hospital because they got reliable information that a separatist fighter, was receiving treatment at the hospital.
But when Njang dismissed the information about the hospital attending to a separatist fighter that night as negative, the soldiers molested and whisked him to their cmp where he was tortured and detained under cruel, degrading and inhumane harsh condition. It was after four days when the Director of the hospital endorsed an undertaking that Jones Njang Tarh will be made available whenever he is needed by security operatives, that he was released.
When Jones Njang Tarh was released, family sources disclosed that he immediately escaped to an unknown destination from a private clinic where he went for medical attention.
As we went to press we gathered that Jones Njang Tarh’s uncle, Mbu Roland, had been arrested by gendarmes and detained for two weeks in a bid to force him to disclose the whereabouts of Njang.
Jones Njang Tarh’s aunt and siblings, for fear of the unknown, are said to have escaped to the forest for safety.
Meanwhile, Jones Njang Tarh has been declared wanted by the military as there is said to be an arrest warrant issued against him.
Family sources say security forces keep making impromptu patrols around Jones Njang Tarh’s neighbourhood all in an effort to arrest and subsequently prosecute him.
Case of Sandrine Nangah Besong
The situation of 41-year –old Sandrine Nangah Besong amidst the armed conflict raging on in the North West and South West Regions is pathetic. According to reports, while growing as a little girl with her parents in Bamenda, in the North West Region, she always noticed a lot of Southern Cameroonians who had completed school and universities and were jobless. This is said to have cause her to make up her mind to learn a trade so that someday she will have a job and be able to employ some youths.
She finally became a seamstress and relocated to Yaounde, hoping things might get better since life was difficult in Bamenda.
Unfortunately for Nangah, she got a house help job in Yaounde.
Family sources, in tears, told THE SUN that between 2008 and 2019 she made an effort to do business in China and South Africa but the conditions in both Countries were not favourable due to racial discrimination, xenophobic attacks on foreigners and difficult taxation policies.
Sandrine Nangah Besong, we learnt, returned to Cameroon in 2019 at the heat of the crisis and opened a shop in Bamenda. But due to the numerous lockdowns and ghost towns imposed by separatist fighters, who have picked up arms against the government to fight for the restoration of the independence of former British Southern Cameroons, coupled with the rampant sporadic gun exchange between the military and the separatist fighters leaving many civilians killed by stray bullets, her business was seriously affected.
We gathered that she was among those who staged a peaceful demonstration on October 1, 2021; the day always celebrated as the Independence Day of Former British Southern Cameroons in Bamenda. The protest ended with the hoisting of the Ambazonia flag.
Family sources recounted how the military raided Nangah’s shop two days later and arrested her. She was granted bail after two days with FCFA 500,000 as cost.
For fear of the unknown following the experience she faced with the military while in detention, Nangah is said to have sold a family property and relocated to Kumba, South West Region and opened another shop dealing provisions and dressmaking.
Since majority of her customers were military men in uniform, separatist fighters sent her several warnings to stop attending to military men, a very difficult thing to respect.
This is how one morning Sandrine Nangah came to her show just to discover that it has been razed to the ground by separatist fighters. She was advised by neighbours around to escape because the separatist fighters are ready to abduct her.
Since many of those abducted and kidnapped by separatist fighters are either being killed or huge ransom paid before they can regain freedom in the hands of Separatists, Nangah decided to leave the country for a safe country where the respect of human rights is prime.
Just like many other youths in Cameroon, Nangah is caught in the web of both the military and the separatists and if she returned to the country, her live will definitely be in danger.
The country is now considered unsafe by many Anglophones in the diaspora who fear arrest or death if they return to the country. While the Anglophone crisis continues to escalate, international organisations and other western powers have called on the government to address the root cause of the crisis through dialogue. Also, prominent Anglophone lawyer and human rights activist, Barrister Nkongho Felix Agbor Balla, has called on the government to dialogue, and to release all Anglophones detained or imprisoned within the context of the Anglophone crisis.