Following the killing of eight schoolchildren in the town of Kumba in the Anglophone region of Cameroon, Tity Agbahey, Amnesty International’s Central Africa Campaigner, said:

“The killing of eight schoolchildren inside their classroom is an atrocity that underscores the urgency of protecting ordinary people from the ongoing violence in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions. This horrific attack shows how badly the situation is deteriorating and we call on Cameroon’s authorities to immediately take all possible measures to protect the population.

“At least 12 other schoolchildren were injured in the attack. Over the past year there has been a surge in attacks in the Anglophone region, with many people killed, abducted or injured.

“The Cameroonian authorities must send out a strong and clear signal that such appalling crimes will not be tolerated, by immediately investigating these killings. The perpetrators must be identified, arrested, prosecuted and tried in a fair trial.

“We also call on authorities to guarantee at all times and in all places the free exercise of the right to education, which is under threat.”

 President Paul Biya has condemned the killing of seven children in a mass shooting at a private school in the Anglophone region.

The president termed Saturday’s shooting as a “barbaric and cowardly crime against innocent children”.

He said he had instructed security agencies to “ensure that the perpetrators of these despicable acts are apprehended by our defence and security forces and brought to justice”.

The president tweeted his condolences to the bereaved families:

The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, urged the authorities to investigate the attack and ensure those responsible are held accountable.

“He calls on all armed actors to refrain from attacks against civilians and to respect international humanitarian and international human rights law,” read a statement from his office.

Source: BBC

“Daddy, I am going to school.”

Those were the last words Victory said to his father, Tamangoua Boniface, as he grabbed his school bag and walked to his school on October 24.

And that was also the last time Boniface, the pastor of World Restoration Ministry in Kumba, a town in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, would see his 11-year-old son.

Victory was one of the seven children who were killed when unknown attackers armed with guns and machetes stormed Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy.

The brazen attack, which also left a dozen students wounded, shocked Cameroon. It also drew widespread condemnation from within and outside the country, including from United Nations agencies, international rights groups and local civil society organisations.

On Monday, President Paul Biya also denounced the “horrific murder” of schoolchildren and said “appropriate measures” would be taken to ensure the people responsible are arrested and prosecuted.

There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack, which took place in a part of Cameroon where separatist armed groups have been fighting government forces for almost four years.

In 2016, lawyers, teachers and others in Cameroon’s largely Anglophone Northwest and Southwest regions took to the streets to protest against the dominance of French in the education and legal systems, echoing long-running grievances among the country’s English-speaking minority over their region’s perceived marginalisation by the Francophone-dominated central government in the capital, Yaounde. The government’s heavy-handed response to the protests was followed by the emergence of several separatist armed groups seeking to form a breakaway state.

Human rights groups have accused both sides of committing atrocities in a conflict that has killed at least 3,000 people. Amid a wave of arbitrary arrests and kidnappings, as well as extrajudicial killings and wanton destruction of homes and public facilities, the crisis has forced more than 700,000 Cameroonians to flee their homes in search of safety, with almost 60,000 crossing the border to Nigeria.

‘Lifeless on the floor’

The night before the school attack, Victory had stayed up until midnight studying and transferring notes to an exercise book, according to his father. After the family’s morning prayers, Victory cleaned the house and prepared for school. His mother, who was convalescing from a surgery, promised to make lunch before he returned home by 2pm.

But not too long after he left, a child came running towards the family’s home, his cries loud and unrelenting.

“When the child who was wailing got to our home, he fell to the ground and shouted ‘Pastor! Pastor! They have killed Victory; Victory is dead,’” said Boniface, 48.

“The child said some armed men came to school on motorbikes, went into classrooms and killed some children.”

Speaking on the phone, he paused for a very long time.

“When I got there [the school], I saw my son lying lifeless on the floor alongside two other kids,” the pastor said. “The deep wound on the left side around the ribs showed that he had been stabbed.”

He took a deep breath and paused again.

“Victory,” his father continued, “was among the first three victims who died.”

Anger over the attack has boiled over into expressions of public solidarity and street marches in some towns, including in Yaounde,

The hashtag #EndAnglophoneCrisis has also been widely used in recent days to reignite calls for an end to the conflict that has devastated villages, towns and livelihoods.

Some newspapers also mourned the dead by running a black cover page.

“Honestly, we did not find any words to express how we felt after the Kumba killings,” said Tarhyang Tabe, publisher of The Advocate Newspaper, a local weekly.

“As a newspaper which advocates for peace, we used our Monday publication to advocate for peace.”

But for parents who lost their children in the attack, the journey to recovery is arduous and thorny.

Njulefac Kingsley, who lost his 11-year-old daughter, Jennifer Anangim, sounded inconsolable.

A father of four (Jennifer was his second child), the 45-year-old architect said he went to his farm after his daughter had left for school, only to receive a phone call later from a friend informing him of the attack.

“I rushed to Jennifer’s school and found my daughter lying lifeless in the pool of her own blood with her head blown off,” Kingsley said, taking a breather.

A short period of silence followed. When he began to speak on the phone again, he said he became unconscious for nearly four hours after the incident.

“I had to go and try to gather pieces of my daughter’s head,” Kingsley said. “It is very difficult for me and my wife and Jennifer’s sisters and brother.”

Analysts say the shooting shows that there is a need to seek urgent solutions to the conflict and the endless cycle of violence that it has caused so far.

The Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, an NGO in Cameroon, said the attack violated children’s rights to education and life, and called for a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

Meanwhile, residents in Kumba continue to berate the attackers.

“There is no condemnation strong enough to articulate our full sorrow at the brutal attack and killing of innocent children struggling to pursue education which is their right,” said Shengang Richard, president of the Association of Family Welfare and Development, an NGO in Kumba.

Richard, whose organisation started a centre to teach children displaced by the crisis, is worried that the attack might derail efforts to get boys and girls back to school.

Separatist fighters often enforce a lockdown on Mondays in the Anglophone regions, keeping schools closed for nearly four years.

Teachers and students continue to face threats while the violence shows no signs of slowing.

“I am afraid that this school attack will undo our efforts to enable children to go to school,” Richard said. “When schools are attacked and children killed, it will scare kids from schools and undo the efforts of humanitarian workers who are working hard to help children have an education.”

For Boniface and his wife, the grief lingers on.

Victory was in the first year of junior secondary school. He loved gospel music and was an active member of the church choir, his father said. He played drums in church and loved playing football.

But, above all, he loved school, Boniface remarked. “He dreamed of becoming an engineer,” he added, saying his son’s death is “very difficult to process.”

“My wife has been collapsing since Saturday,” he said.

Victory’s family is overwhelmed with hundreds of residents who have been visiting his home to sympathise with his parents.

“It is unbelievable the crowds that are trooping to our home to condole with us,” Boniface said.

But that is also because of the circumstances surrounding his birth.

Victory was conceived nearly nine years after his parents’ marriage. Couples without children are often stigmatised in some African societies, and married women without children are often described as “barren”.

“Victory was my first and only child,” Boniface said.

“My wife and I had him after eight years [and] six months in marriage with no child. When he was born it was a big testimony for us, that’s why we named him Victory.”

SOURCE : AL JAZEERA

A Cameroon national was gunned down by a still unidentified assailant while walking along streets of Barangay 13, Zone 4 in Pasay City on late Monday night, police said Tuesday.

In a report, Pasay City police identified the victim as Divine Njua Komfun, 47, living in Barangay Santo Niño in Parañaque City.

Initial probe showed that the victim was walking along Arnaiz Street corner Roxas Boulevard Service Road when a suspect, wearing jacket, pants, and facemask, suddenly appeared and fired his handgun at the victim’s neck at close range at about 11:30 p.m.

Komfun died on the spot while the suspect went to F.B. Harrison to escape the crime scene. Police responded to the scene after they received the call regarding the shooting incident.

The Scene of the Crime Operatives team under Police Lieutenant Judilyn Kodiamat recovered an empty shell of a cal. 45 firearm in the crime scene.

The motive behind the killing is still being determined during the probe, police said.

Police Major General Debold Sinas, chief of National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO), said police investigators are “in the process of interviewing the friends of the victim.”

Based on closed circuit television footage, Sinas said Komfun was about to meet a certain individual in the area before being killed.

Source: News Info.Inquirer

Cameroon’s government on Sunday blamed separatist fighters for the massacre of children in their classrooms in the English-speaking southwest of the country.

It said there were six victims of the attack, aged between nine and 12, while the United Nations had reported a death toll of eight.

The government said 13 children had also been wounded during the raid on the bilingual school in the town of Kumba — seven of them seriously.

Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi described the attack as “a terrorist act of unbearable cruelty and barbarity”.

It was carried out by “groups of armed secessionist terrorists”, he added. Around 10 people on three motorbikes burst into the compound of the private Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy, he said.

They “coldly opened fire on the pupils who were in the classrooms”, he added.  A statement Saturday from the local UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the assailants had also used machetes.

African Union Commission chief Moussa Faki Mahamat condemned the “brutal attack” in a statement on Twitter.

Sadi said the aim of the attackers had been to stop the return to schools that had been taking place in the Northwest and Southwest provinces, where English-speaking separatists are fighting for independence.

The two English-speaking regions in this mainly francophone country have become the centre of the conflict, with separatists targeting the army and demanding local government offices and schools close.

Rights groups have accused both the separatists and government troops of having killed civilians during the conflict since 2017.

The fighting has claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people and forced over 700,000 people to flee their homes.

Last year, two students were killed by separatists in Buea, the capital of Southwest region in what an official described as “reprisal” for opposing the forced school closures.

In 2018, insurgents killed a principal, mutilated a teacher and attacked several high schools.

Separatists have also increasingly resorted to kidnappings and extortion, along with attacks on troops and police, and arson assaults on public buildings and schools.

The government has responded with a crackdown, deploying thousands of soldiers.

Source: AFP

On 24 October, a group of armed men attacked Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba, in Cameroon’s restive South-West region. According to local reports, the victims were aged between 12 and 14.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on Cameroonian authorities to conduct a thorough investigation to ensure that those responsible are held accountable, his spokesperson said in a statement.

“The attack is another disturbing reminder of the exacting heavy toll on civilians, including children, many of whom have been deprived of their right to education,” said the statement.

“Attacks on education facilities are a grave violation of children’s rights,” it added.

Mr. Guterres also called on all armed actors to refrain from attacks against civilians and to respect international humanitarian and international human rights law.

He also urged the parties to answer his call for a global ceasefire, reiterating the availability of the United Nations to support an inclusive dialogue process leading to a resolution of the crisis in the North-West and South-West regions of Cameroon

‘Schools must be places of safety, not death traps’

In a separate statement, Henrietta Fore, Executive Director of the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) also condemned the attack “in the strongest possible terms.”

“This has been a deadly weekend for schoolchildren in Afghanistan and Cameroon,” she said, also referring to the attack on an education centre in Kabul.

“I am shocked and outraged at these abominable attacks and condemn them in the strongest possible terms. Attacks on education are a grave violation of children’s rights,” Ms. Fore added, reiterating that schools must be places of safety and learning, “not death traps.”

‘Worst atrocity’ since schools resumed

According to the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Cameroon, Matthias Z. Naab, the attack is the worst atrocity since the resumption of the school year on 5 October, in which more students enrolled in the North-West and South-West regions than in recent years. Unrest in parts of Cameroon had affected school enrolment and access to education.

“Children have a right to education. Violence against schools and innocent school children is not acceptable under any circumstances and can constitute a crime against humanity if proven in a court of law,” said Mr. Naab.

The UN World Health Organization (WHO) has provided medical supplies to the local hospital and the NGO, Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) is assisting with medical supplies and personnel. 

The UN will continue to support Government and NGO efforts to provide necessary medical assistance to the wounded, added Mr. Naab.

Source: UN News

Hundreds of Southern Cameroonians held a peaceful procession through the streets of Kumba town and ended at the site of a school attacked on Saturday that the Ambazonia Interim Government has blamed on Cameroon government forces.

The Southern Cameroonians in the Meme County carried placards denouncing the attack, while calling for an end to war declared by French Cameroun President Paul Biya against the people of British Southern Cameroons in 2017.

The French Cameroun civil administrator of the Meme constituency told news reporters that “Instead of 6 we have now seven corpses in the mortuary,” Mr  Ntou’ou Ndong Chamberlin, the Senior Divisional Officer has been responsible for all Cameroon government military operations in Meme and he is currently benefitting from the proceeds of war.

“We have to make it stop, they [children] are our future, we need our education, they are our future leaders, violence must stop,” said a man at the procession.

The UN headed by the corrupt Antonio Gutteres called the shooting ‘the worst atrocity’ since schools reopened in Cameroon two weeks ago.

Fighting between Cameroonian troops and Ambazonia Restoration Forces in Southern Cameroons-Ambazonia has killed thousands. Human Rights Watch recently accused both sides of committing atrocities.

No Southern Cameroons Restoration group has claimed responsibility for the attack but French Cameroun authorities have put the blame on separatist militia fighters.

By Fon Lawrence and Kingsley Betek

The world is once more playing spectator to the gruesome acts committed by some unidentified armed men in Cameroon.

Yesterday, armed men stormed the premises of a prestigious bilingual school in Kumba, the southwest region’s biggest city, and left a trail of death and destruction.

Some five students were killed in cold blood, some of whom were simply beheaded. The world is still very shocked, especially as all the factions in the Southern Cameroons crisis had agreed that students should be allowed to go back to school after close to four years.

Schools in the country’s English-speaking regions had been shut down due to a protest by the country’s English-speaking minority following strikes by teachers, lawyers and students against the government’s systemic and institutionalized marginalization against the minority anglophone population.

As the government sought to roll back any opposition to its policies, it resorted to force, with the military being granted the carte blanche to kill those it suspected of being involved in an insurgency that has lasted over three years.

As a result, some 5,000 civilians have been mowed down by the military, sometimes in broad day light. All young men in the country’s two English-speaking regions are considered as fair targets even when they are not armed or when they are just going about their business.

The military’s brutality had to push the population to seek ways of defending itself and given the urgency, many young men and girls had to make the most of their parent’s hunting rifles and machetes, and with such rudimentary weapons, they sent more than 2,000 army soldiers to an early grave.

This has infuriated the corrupt and incompetent regime in Yaoundé that has failed to pay heed to calls by the international community for a peaceful resolution of a conflict that has put the country in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons.

In the government’s view, unleashing a reign of terror on the local population would force the innocent population to turn against the Southern Cameroonian fighters who, for most part, were simply trying to defend a population that was being unfairly targeted by a brutal and an unprofessional army.

The government had not properly analyzed the situation before jumping into such a misguided decision.

The young men and women who were wielding the hunting rifles were simply the faces of the anger that has been simmering in the two English-speaking regions of the country for decades.

Though their rifles were not a match to the sophisticated weapons sent by the French to its puppet regime in Yaoundé, the government was oblivious of many things.

The hunting rifle-tooting Southern Cameroonians had lots of wind at their backs. Their lack of sophisticated weaponry was made up with courage and determination.

But the greatest asset they had was the unwavering support from the global Southern Cameroonian Diaspora which was hellbent on demonstrating to the dictatorial regime in Yaounde that its old tactics that had given it a quick victory over the Bassa-Bamileke insurgency in the 1960s would not work.

And truly, those tactics have failed the country’s crime syndicate that passes off as a government. The Diaspora has invested a lot in this government demystification program that has left Yaounde with a bloodshot eye.

The Southern Cameroonian Diaspora has the wherewithal and determination. It has proven this over the last four years. It has successfully retired the hunting rifles that once made the Southern Cameroonian insurgency look like a running joke.

Today, the “boys” as the fighters are fondly referred to  by the population, are in possession of very sophisticated weapons and their assault rifles are a long nightmare to many government soldiers who have had the luck of facing those boys.

The government has employed all the tricks in its book, but none seems to be the silver bullet it has been hoping for.

The government has tried to split Southern Cameroonians by choosing some hungry and desperate Southern Cameroonians to speak for the 8-million strong minority, but this strategy has fallen flat on its face.

Even the chaotic capturing of Southern Cameroonian leaders in Nigeria and their illegal extradition to Yaounde has not done anything to douse the fire and anger in many Southern Cameroonian minds.

The country’s territorial administration minister, Paul Atanga Nji, a notorious ex-convict, seems to be running the same playbook. He has been sending out death squads to murder civilians just to give the insurgency a very bad name and the Kumba incident clearly bears his hallmarks.

Similarly, he has also been creating armed militia and dressing them up as Southern Cameroonian fighters, but his demonic plans have not panned out. The people are a lot wiser and they will not fall for such shoddy schemes which have outlived their usefulness.

Despite assistance from the country’s intelligence community, Atanga Nji has not made any significant progress except when he orders that all able-bodied adults in a particular village or town be brought down with bullets obtained with the taxpayer’s money just like they did in Ngarbuh, Kwakwa, Muyenge, Ikata, Muyuka, Mamfe and even in the far north where a woman and her child were killed by bloodthirsty Yaounde soldiers.

The Southern Cameroons crisis will not be going away anytime soon. The people are still angry and for as long as the government is pack full of bitter old men and women who cannot stand any dissent, the country will continue to tither on the brink of an implosion.

While the killings in Kumba have triggered international outrage just as Ngarbuh did, the world must understand that outrage alone will not address the root cause of the conflict in Cameroon that has ruined the country’s economy.

The Yaounde government is shame-proof and it will in the days ahead order another investigation that will not address any real issue.

Many people have already begun accusing the separatists for the heinous crime, but common sense should dictate that it is too early to lay blame to non-state agents, except the world is suffering from collective amnesia.

Ngarbuh is still there for us to remind ourselves that the government we have is more of a criminal enterprise than a group of determined people who really want to bring peace and prosperity to their people.

The Yaounde government is desperate to prove a point. It wants to give the insurgency a very bad name and it will stop at nothing to prove its point.

This is a government comprising the most vindictive people God has put on the face of the earth. Their notion of government and governance is clearly at variance with what prevails in other parts of the world.

If the truth about what has happened in Kumba will be known, then an international team of investigators must be brought in.

The shell casings that have been found at the crime scene make it easy to slam the government with a guilty verdict, but since some of the fighters also bear sophisticated weapons, it will be unfair to consider the usual suspect – the government- as the guilty party.

But if one has to cast his mind to the past or look into the mirror of history, it will be very easy to figure out that Atanga Nji and his boys are simply rehashing some of their previous plans or they are simply restaging one of their old movies that did get good reviews and did not have a huge audience.

It will be preposterous or immature to exclude the government. Sources in Kumba have reliably informed the Cameroon Concord News Group that the usual suspect is once more up to its old antics.

A source in Kumba close to the military has told the Cameroon Concord News Group that the gruesome movie was staged in his neighborhood, adding that he was a witness to this unpalatable scheme designed to spread fear within the civilian population.

The source, who elected anonymity, intimated that a Toyota Carina E which is usually used by the military when it is operating under cover drove into his neighborhood and stopped somewhere, where it let off four armed military men.

The four military officers who were dressed in mufti came out and walked to the school. Shortly after their arrival at the school, their well rehearsed plan was executed with mathematical precision and with the speed of lightning.

He added that the said Toyota Carina E is not painted in military camouflage, adding that when he saw them, he took cover, suspecting that they were out for some dangerous mission.

He regretted that he was not in possession of a good phone which would have enabled him to capture the incident on video.

He stressed that almost everybody in that neighborhood was aware that the military had a hand in the  Kumba massacre  which has clearly underscored that the Southern Cameroons crisis is not yet over and that if the government thought the lull was the solution, then it was mistaken.

The Southern Cameroons crisis will continue to conduct itself as Mount Etna. It will sometimes give the inhabitants some respite but it will also, from time to time, throw up some unpleasant surprises if the government does not sign in for a long term solution that will require the mediation of international bodies and conflict resolution experts.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai in Germany and Irene Nanyango in Canada