8, December 2021
Bishops condemn attacks on Southern Cameroons schools as more details emerge on the Ekondo Titi incident 0
Cameroon’s English-speaking bishops have condemned attacks on schools in the country’s conflict-ridden North West and South West Regions.
Their latest statement comes after four students and a teacher were killed on Nov. 24 at Government Bilingual High School Ekondo-Titi in the South West region.
Schools have become a battleground as Anglophone separatists fight the majority French-speaking government in the African country. For many years, the separatists imposed a schools’ boycott, which they enforced with violence.
“Our hearts have been pierced again!” said Archbishop Andrew Nkea Fuanya of Bamemda, in a statement he signed on behalf of all the bishops of his ecclesiastical province, which overs the Anglophone regions of Cameroon.
“In recent times, we have painfully witnessed an agonizing drama involving, among other evils, the targeting and killing of pupils, students and teachers … We have hardly recovered from the cruel killing of Enondiale Tchuengia Carolaisse, killed in Molyko-Buea on Thursday, October 14, 2021, and the brutal killing of another pupil, Brandy Tataw, on Friday, November 1, 2021, in Nkwen-Bamenda, then we are confronted again with the killing of four more innocent Cameroonians within the protected area of a school,” said the archbishop.
“These innocent victims are not the cause of the socio-political crisis, and their deaths cannot be the solution. Their murder is totally senseless and unacceptable,” Nkea said.
A local government administrator confirmed the attack, telling Crux that “separatist fighters laid ambush in the school before students arrived. They were dressed like soldiers to give students the feeling that they were actual soldiers guarding the school.”
Timothee Aboloa identified the students as Emmanuel Orume 12, Joyceline Iken 16, and Kum Emmanuel, 17. The teacher, Celestine Song was 58 years old and a mother of four.
“It was quite a frightening scene,” said Henry Agbor, a local resident.
“I heard a loud explosive. I was standing around the Okada beach park ready to take a bike to the beach before the mayhem broke out. Besides the teacher and students who have died, many students are also wounded,” he told Crux.
“We never expected this,” said Father Gaetan Ndongo.
“The attacks are creating fear around the place and the education of our children has been systematically sacrificed,” he told Crux.
The recent attacks are a grim reminder of the price education has had to pay in the separatist war in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions, now in its 5th year.
The darkest date was probably Oct. 24, 2020, when six children were killed by suspected separatists at the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba.
Several other schools were attacked the following month, leading to the deaths of at least three other students.
Earlier this year, on Oct. 14, a soldier killed Enondiale Carolise, a student on her way to school in Buea. Another girl, Tataw Brandy, was killed by a soldier in Bamenda on Nov. 10.
The United Nations says more than 700,000 children have been forced out of school during the conflict, with 2 out of 3 schools being shut.
Yasmine Sherif, the director of Education Cannot Wait, said the Cameroon crisis is among “the most complex humanitarian crises in the world today.”
“Children and youth are having to flee their homes and schools, are threatened with violence and kidnapping, and being forced into early childhood marriage and recruited into armed groups,” said Sherif.
“We call for urgent support from donors to respond to this forgotten crisis. We call for the respect of human rights and adherence to the principles of international humanitarian law and the Safe Schools Declaration, and for partners to redouble efforts so all children and adolescents can get back to the safety, protection and hope that quality learning environments provide,” she said.
The bishops have condemned violence as a means of problem solving, insisting that life must be protected.
“We, the Bishops of the Ecclesiastical Province of Bamenda, condemn these barbaric acts, which violate all International Laws and Conventions safeguarding the inviolability of schools and the protection of learners (pupils and students), and teachers, offend against the fundamental right to education, and breaks the Fifth Commandment of God,” the statement reads.
“We have been persistent in our call for the respect and defence of human rights, especially the right to life, openness to dialogue, an option for the truth and recourse to peaceful means as the best way to a durable solution,” it continues.
While calling on the government to ensure the security of schools, we make a special appeal, once more, to all perpetrators of violence to allow the genuinely human feelings of love, pardon and benevolence to flow into their hearts so that the safety and security of all may be guaranteed, alongside the right of all young people to life and to an education and a future,” the statement added.
Source: Crux
13, December 2021
Deadly unrest closing schools in Southern Cameroons 0
There are no students in the playground of the high school in the Bomaka district of Buea — just the odd goat grazing on overgrown grass.
Buea is the capital of Cameroon’s Southwest Region — one of two regions gripped by violence after anglophones launched a campaign to break away from the country’s French-speaking majority.
In Bomaka, almost all the schools have been closed since 2016. It has just one junior school that remains open, but whose rollcall has slumped from around 600 to just 69 today.
“The crisis has killed the schools,” said Isaac Bissong, its headmaster. “Many pupils have left this neighbourhood to study elsewhere because they are afraid.”
In one classroom, only eight students were present when AFP visited. The silence in the once-bustling corridors was heavy.
Unlike other schools in the country, the green, red and yellow flag of Cameroon was nowhere to be seen — “that could get us into trouble,” said Bissong.
The school is located less than three kilometres (two miles) from Muea, one of the separatists’ strongholds and the scene of many clashes.
Bissong provides whatever security he can for the school, although he is not armed.
He sits on a chair at the school entrance, on the lookout for potential trouble.
– Deaths and threats –
Anglophone separatists in the Southwest and neighbouring Northwest Region regularly attack schools that they accuse of teaching in French.
Teachers and other civil servants have been killed after being accused of “collaborating” with the central government in Yaounde.
The predominantly French-speaking country is ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Biya, 88, who has been in power for 39 years.
Years-long grievances among the anglophone minority brewed for years, overflowing into a declaration of independence on October 1, 2017.
Armed separatists launched attacks on the security forces, triggering a violent crackdown.
The spiral of bloodshed has claimed more than 3,500 lives and forced around 700,000 people to flee their homes, according to monitors.
NGOs say that killings of civilians and abuses have been committed by both sides.
According to UNICEF, in 2019, some 850,000 children were not in school in the English-speaking regions.
In October 2020, a dozen men stormed the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba, in the Southwest Region, opening fire on pupils.
They killed seven children aged between nine and 12. A dozen others were shot or macheted.
On November 24 this year, four students and a teacher were killed by gunmen in the Southwest.
– ‘Children are dying’ –
“Children are dying, and teachers too, for providing an education that these armed people do not want, believing it is not good for their region,” Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP during a visit to Buea.
“There’s a generation of children who are on the verge of becoming illiterate because they have not been to school.”
In the streets of downtown Buea, armed soldiers were on patrol.
Blaise Chamango, a parent, said she was constantly worried for the children’s safety.
“Before leaving them at school in the morning, I pray”.
“When we send our children to school, we can receive threats,” said another parent, Manu Dao. “I am sad because their future is at stake.”
Many families have fled.
In the Southwest’s coastal area of Souza, one school is hosting 596 displaced English-speaking children this year, out of a total of 1,087 pupils.
The pupils are sometimes crammed 90 to a class.
“Many of them are in a state of shock,” said school official Joseph Mencheng.
“Many have seen people killed, their parents in some cases. Sometimes, in the middle of a lesson, they bring up some horror they have experienced.”
Stephanie, aged 12, is in a class with children years younger than her.
“I left my village because there was a war and I couldn’t go to school for three years,” she explained.
Nine-year-old Dipanda is talking with three classmates in another crowded classroom.
She comes from a small village in the Northwest Region. She says she is delighted to be back in school after classes were stopped “because of the war.”
Source: AFP