Two aid agencies on Wednesday called on Cameroon’s army and separatist fighters to halt attacks on civilians in a conflict between English-speaking separatists and government forces in a predominantly French-speaking country.

Rights groups have accused both sides of atrocities in a two-year conflict that has left more than 3,000 dead, closed schools and clinics and forced 700,000 people to flee their homes.

In a joint statement, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) called for both sides to respect international law and stop all attacks on civilians.

“The crisis destabilising the English speaking parts of Cameroon has taken a worrying turn, with an increasing number of reports of targeted attacks against civilians,” the NGOs said.

“Survivors have shared testimonies of gruesome attacks that have left children orphaned, people homeless, and limited or cut off access to public facilities such as hospitals and schools.”

Later on Wednesday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian joined calls for a proper investigation into an alleged massacre in Ntumbo village in the anglophone northwest on February 14.

“It is absolutely essential we are told who did what,” Le Drian said.

Human Rights Watch last month accused the armed forces in taking part in the killing of 21 civilians, including at least 13 children, in Ntumbo.

The army denied the claims and said the deaths were an accident after fuel supplies exploded into flames during a gun battle with separatists.

Aid agencies say they have faced threats and violence from both sides as they struggle to deliver help to those made vulnerable by the fighting.

“This crisis needs more attention,” said Paul Taylor of the IRC.

“Aid agencies need additional resources to meet the needs of those displaced by this crisis, and all parties need to ensure that aid agencies are able to access those who are in desperate need of basic services.”

English speakers account for nearly a fifth of Cameroon’s population of 24 million, who are majority French-speaking.

Most of the anglophone minority live in two western regions called the Northwest and Southwest, which were once British colonies in West Africa.

Decades of grievances at perceived discrimination brewed into a declaration of independence in October 2017, which was followed by a government crackdown and a separatist insurgency.

The declaration has not been recognised internationally and President Paul Biya, in power for 37 years, has refused demands to return to a federal system.

Source: AFP

Giving birth in the bush, being forced into prostitution, unable to go to school, struggling to take care of family – women in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are suffering as the crisis continues, unabated, as women such as Pearl, 30, scramble to protect their families and survive during difficult times.

“There was shooting from morning until night, and we don’t know who’s shooting,” says Pearl, who fled on December 10 with her husband and three children– and the rest of Ekona village. It took three hours for the village to get to safety in the bush.

She remembers the buildup of violence around the beginning of October, when she gave birth to her daughter in the local hospital.

“I was so stressed because I heard the gunshots, I couldn’t nurse the baby for three days after I gave birth,” she said. And she was one of the lucky ones.

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, women who experienced major tragedy in one blow continue to suffer.

Giving birth in the bush

At Mount St. Mary hospital in Buea, General Supervisor Isadore Ngunyam reflects on the spike in cases of sexual violence, rape, and gunshot wounds. But pregnant women delivering babies in the bush has also increased, he says, because they are unable to access medical assistance.

“Just two days ago, a lady delivered somewhere in Munya. Because they were not able to get here or somewhere else nearby, they got here two days later. As soon as they arrived, unfortunately, we lost the child,” he said. “There are so many cases like this, we can’t even count.”

Giving birth in the bush has become normalized, even for the international agencies and non-governmental organisations who are trying to help.

The UN Population Fund (UNFPA) works throughout Cameroon, where it handles social and reproductive health. Part of its work is providing kits, including rape kits, caesarian birth kits, and even bush kits for those who need them.

Each bush kit contains the essential items for women who are giving birth in the bush — a clean plastic sheet to give birth on, gloves, scissors to cut the cord, as well as diapers for the newborn. UNFPA has carried out bush kit distribution since 2018.

Cameroon, unlike a number of other countries in Central Africa, was not a war-torn state. Cameroonians lived in relative peace in the Anglophone regions until three years ago. There was no need to flee to the bush; major attacks on civilians in the Anglophone regions were not commonplace before the separatists took up arms.

“We were taught in history class, that Cameroon, our country, is the most peaceful country in Africa, and the world,” says Jacqueline, who works at the South-West/North-West Task Force, a civil society group that focuses on helping women.

“Everything is changing, and it is affecting women seriously because they have never experienced this kind of situation — every day you learn a new strategy to deal with it. Every day. Women give birth in the bushes, there’s gang rape, and women have been tortured — it’s terrible,” she says.

She speaks of a story of one woman in Bamenda, the biggest city in the Anglophone North-West region, who was raped and then shot in her vagina.

“I think every woman in Cameroon now, especially in the North-West and the South-West, feels useless. There’s no point in giving birth to a child who could be killed at any time. There’s no need to get pregnant, because you might end up in the bush,” she adds.

Vulnerable young women become prey

The desperation of some families, who find themselves barely surviving, turn to vulnerable family members, creating a cycle of abuse.

Joyce, 21, was in the lower sixth at school in Buea, the capital of the South-West region, where children can go to school, relatively out of harm from the separatists.

Her parents were living in a nearby village until gunshots and arson by the military became a regular occurrence in their hamlet, and they fled to the jungle, along with most of the community. Joyce was visiting her family on school holiday, and ended up there too, unable to go to back to school.

“I met a guy in the bush and he said he was going to help me leave there and come to town in Kumba,” says Joyce. Desperate to get back to school, she followed him. “I got pregnant. Since then I haven’t seen him,” she says.

Her nightmare continued after she moved in with her unmarried aunt, who rents a house in Kumba. Although Joyce’s aunt sells food, she says it was not enough to pay the rent. She and 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 before the crisis broke out.

“When she sells food, men and boys come and tell her they like me, so she tells them to pay her so I will go and sleep with them,” says Joyce, her voice dropping to almost a whisper. She looks older than her 21 years, wearing a large, long brown dress and a youthful neon pink head wrap, the only sign betraying her true age.

The men pay her aunt 2,000 Central African CFA Francs, the equivalent of three euros, every time she is forced to have sex with a man.

“I feel bad. It’s not good. I’m not happy doing it, but I don’t have anywhere to go, that’s why,” she says, her eyes brimming with tears.

“People laugh at me and they say I’m sleeping with men old enough to be my father. I don’t care about them because I know deep in me, it’s not what I want,” she adds.

Going back to the bush with her parents is not an option, because Joyce is still breastfeeding her 2-month old son.

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. Twenty-year-old Chloe, from Berera village, lives with her parents and two-year-old child in Mamfe. They fled to the safety of town after her brother, Caius, was shot in the head and left for dead. He was walking to Mamfe and did not see who shot him.

While Caius receives medical treatment in Douala, Chloe says her husband, Donald, fled to neighboring Nigeria after he witnessed the whole village burnt down and saw people killed. Chloe says life is expensive in Mamfe, but would she think of joining her husband in Nigeria?

“Nigeria is too stressful,” she laughs nervously. Donald calls her from a refugee camp when he can.

“He tells me they have nothing to eat, that they are suffering. We say we’re better here in Cameroon than in Nigeria.”

While Chloe speaks to her husband, Nora, 26, has no idea about the whereabouts of her partner, the father of five-month-old Hosea, asleep but breathing heavily in her arms. He has never seen Hosea. Everyone fled when the military burnt their house and killed her brother in a close-by village last May.

“We don’t know if my husband’s actually dead or if he ran to an area that has no [telephone] network,” says Nora. She leaves Hosea with a neighbor and goes back to the village during the day to pick cassava to sell in town so she can pay the rent in Mamfe.

Children desperate for education

The majority of women with children say they left the village to escape the gunfire, but they also want to give their children an education. The crisis began in part due to the influx of Francophone teachers in to Anglophone classrooms in the North-West and South-West regions. The separatists have prevented children from going to school as part of their action against the government.

Some children in the regions have not attended school for three years– the schools in the villages located on the main road from Buea towards Kumba and further on to Mamfe are empty. Many of the bungalow cinderblock-built schools have been torched; others have sprouted vegetation growing in cracks in the walls; all are abandoned.

In Buea, however, the seat of the South-West region, children are attending school in relative safety. The military remain a large, looming presence on the streets of the regional capital.

Victorine, a 16-year-old student in Form 3, is currently living in Buea with her aunt. She excels at geography and hopes to become a doctor one day.

“I love school…but my four brothers and sisters are still suffering in the bush. There’s malaria and a lot of insecurity and I worry about them,” she says. “I want them to have the opportunity to go to school and continue their study,” she adds.

Victorine attends classes with 13-year-olds, while her friends of the same age are in Form 5. She is behind because she did not attend school for three years.

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 RFI in the region. Women 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.

An organisation with a vision

The enormity of the crisis is not lost on Baudouin Akoh Ngah, the founder and head of Global Forum for the Defense of the Less Privileged (GFDLP) in Buea. Ngah’s organization provides a number of services for the neediest, from providing legal aid, to helping re-register those who have lost their identification cards and birth certificates.

But Ngah’s biggest project to date is his plan to open a crisis centre for the most vulnerable Anglophones, with a focus on young women.

“A lot of them are victims of gender-based violence… and young girls who have been displaced have health issues,” he tells RFI, while standing on one hectare of land outside of Buea where he plans to build a facility that will incorporate job training, healthcare, and a small school.

“We would like to have part of the facility where visiting doctors can see patients,” he says, pointing to an area covered in banana trees. Another section is earmarked for food processing training for young girls, which would be separate from the small school for displaced children that he envisions.

The land is property of GFDLP — now he needs partners to make his plans to come to fruition.

The possibility of a place that could help the neediest is welcome for people like former CDC worker Agatha, who are barely surviving.

“Sister, for now, I get no hopes,” she says in Pidgin English. “Because when you get money or do something, you get hopes. But I don’t do anything now, so I not got no hopes.”

*Names have been changed for the safety and security of those featured in this report

Culled from RFI

Rights groups are accusing Cameroonian security forces of waging an increasingly brutal counter-insurgency campaign against English-speaking separatists after one of the deadliest civilian massacres in recent years sparked international condemnation and fears of an expanding conflict.

The attack on 14 February in Ngarbuh village left at least 21 civilians dead, including 13 children and one pregnant woman, according to more than a dozen eyewitness survivors who spoke to The New Humanitarian on the ground shortly after the incident. Government forces and an ethnic Fulani militia were to blame, the survivors said.

Analysts told TNH that the government’s alleged use of the local Fulani militia – who are fighting for their own identity-based interests – in the Ngarbuh attack, represents a dangerous new phase of conflict that may increase tensions between the Fulani community and other ethnic groups who are perceived to support the separatists.

The massacre comes amid a recent escalation of violence triggered by nationwide parliamentary and local elections in early February. Both government forces and rival anglophone separatists have stepped up arrests, abductions, and raids, according to rights groups, driving thousands from their homes.

The government has dismissed reports of the Ngarbuh massacre as “terrorist propaganda”. In its version of events, five people died – one woman and four children – when fuel tanks exploded during a gun battle between the security forces and separatist rebels based in the village.

But the survivors TNH spoke to in a village close to Ngarbuh denied any rebels were present, and instead described an unprovoked attack, with summary executions, beatings, and the torching of homes by the security forces and Fulani militia.

Eyewitnesses and local residents – none of whom are being named out of concern for their safety – said the attack was aimed at punishing the community for allegedly supporting rebels fighting for the secession of the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions from the rest of majority francophone Cameroon.

More than 700,000 people have been displaced over the course of the three-year conflict and over 3,000 civilians have been killed, with poverty and food shortages now deepening in affected areas.

Eyewitness accounts

Survivors recounted the events of 14 February to TNH two days after the attack. Between 4am and 5am, residents of Ngarbuh 3 neighbourhood woke to gunfire and found themselves surrounded by uniformed soldiers and roughly 30 Fulani civilians, who they recognised from neighbouring villages.

Gladys Kwitchere, a woman in her 50s, was the first victim. Emerging from her doorway, she was shot dead by attackers, who entered her home and killed her daughter and five of her grandchildren, who were all under the age of 18 and one of whom was just five months old.

Kwitchere’s two other grandchildren, Jude and Mediane, fled the house into the thick brush surrounding the village where they were also shot and killed. Both their bodies, in the brush, and the house were then set alight.

Seven people in a nearby house were also killed and set on fire, witnesses said, as attackers swept through the village, shooting indiscriminately at fleeing men, women, and children. Some victims were shot dead in the street and their corpses set on fire where they fell; others were dragged back into their homes, which were then set alight.

The attackers next moved to neighbouring Ngarbuh 2, where they rounded up and beat dozens of men, stole cell phones, looted homes, and warned residents that they would return in three days and kill anyone who remained in the village. Any retaliation against Fulani in the area would also be met with death, the attackers told residents.

By midday, 21 civilians had been killed.

The following day, survivors told TNH they buried their dead in four mass graves, while two injured civilians, including one pregnant woman who lost her baby due to her wounds, remained at a local hospital receiving treatment.

The violence displaced around 700 people, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, which travelled to the area to conduct a needs assessment.

In the week following the Ngarbuh attack, Fulani militia carried out subsequent attacks in the nearby villages of Fundong and Mmen, displacing almost 2,000 more civilians, local aid organisations and UN officials said.

Government denial

Anglophone separatists – who feel economically, politically, and socially marginalised in the majority French-speaking country – first took up arms in late 2016.

Civilian killings and the destruction and looting of properties have been common elements of the conflict, but violence involving government security forces and separatists, who called for a boycott of the long-delayed elections, has reached new highs in recent months, according to Human Rights Watch.

Another concerning pattern in the conflict, especially in attacks perpetrated by government security forces, is the high ratio of reported deaths to injuries, aid and human rights groups said. In the Ngarbuh massacre, for instance, 21 civilians were killed and only two injured.

“It is highly suspicious that in almost all incidents, the vast majority [of cases] are deaths rather than injuries, leading one to assume [it’s] more of an execution-style being perpetrated,” said Andrew Pendleton, OCHA’s representative in the Northwest.

The violence in Ngarbuh moved UN Secretary-General António Guterres to call for an independent investigation, while both France and the United States condemned the killings.

Cameroon’s President Paul Biya has agreed to an inquiry, though the military continues to reject the testimony of eyewitnesses who spoke with TNH and other human rights investigators.

“The military were there for security operations, and they had information about the headquarters of terrorist secessionists [being in the village],” an army spokesperson, Commander Cyrille Atonfack, told TNH.

The Ambazonia Restoration Forces – one of the secessionist rebel groups fighting the government – denied its fighters were in Ngarbuh and that clashes with the security forces led to the civilian deaths.

“There were no restoration forces involved and not a single one of them died. None of them were there in that village,” Chris Anu, the communication secretary for the secessionist movement, told TNH.

Proxy forces

The presence of local Fulani civilians alongside government security forces in Ngarbuh is particularly worrying, analysts said.

The mainly pastoralist Fulani community – known locally as Mbororos – began arriving from neighbouring Nigeria at least a century ago.

The traditionally nomadic community started settling in the highlands of Cameroon’s Northwest and Southwest regions and has since suffered marginalisation and oppression, struggling to obtain citizenship and land ownership rights.

For decades, cattle-grazing Mbororos have clashed with local communities, who are primarily engaged in sedentary agriculture, but tensions have worsened with conflict and reports of rebels seizing Mbororo cattle, demanding political allegiance, and forcing some pastoralists to flee.

The government, which views the farming communities in the region as pro-separarist, has exploited this local conflict, promising the Mbororo land in return for their support, one local opposition politician told TNH, asking for anonymity to speak freely.

“The separatists intimidate whosoever you may be; they can seize from anyone,” said Arrey Elvis Ntui, the International Crisis Group’s senior analyst for Cameroon. “It’s not fair to say it was the separatists versus the Mbororo. But the Mbororo have a reputation for violent retaliation and community defence.”

Expanding conflict

The strategy of creating pro-government militia, which extends beyond the Mbororo to include other communities – as well as ex-insurgents that have switched sides – reduces the military’s losses in its costly campaign to stamp out the rebels.

The separatists – known locally as the Amba Boys – are estimated to control some 80 percent of the heavily forested Northwest region. Increasingly better equipped and organised, they have recently been carrying out more sophisticated guerrilla-style ambushes and attacks.

“[The government] has grown quite tired of it,” said OCHA’s Pendleton. “Some of its gendarmes have been killed; some of its military sniped off.”

But Richard Moncrieff, Central Africa director for the International Crisis Group, told TNH he was concerned that the government’s recruitment of local militia as proxy forces would “drive a wedge between local communities”.

He said the strategy, which began last year, risked widening the violence in Cameroon, and was “empowering groups to commit abuses”.

Since December 2019, there has been an uptick in attacks on civilians by Mbororo and other vigilantes, both alongside and independent of government security forces.

In the past three months, local aid and human rights groups have documented 17 attacks and raids on villages across the Northwest region, including in Menchum, Boyo, and Donga-Mantung, with people displaced and killed and their homes burned and livestock looted.

“Even with a peace accord [between the separatists and government], this is still going to be going on with or without the military,” warned one aid worker who requested anonymity in order to speak freely. “They [the government] have started something here.”

Source: The Humanitarian.org

Cameroon’s government said 10 “Ambazonia Restoration Forces” were killed by the army in Southern Cameroons, denying online reports of civilian deaths in the weekend military operation.

Southern Cameroons Self Defense groups have been fighting for independence for two anglophone provinces in the majority French-speaking country since 2017.

The Francophone Communication Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi said on Monday in a press release that a separatist commander known as “General Fire Man” was among those killed on Saturday in fighting between the Restoration Forces and French Cameroun government army soldiers.

“Ten separatist terrorists were neutralised, including three women” in Small Babanki in the Northwest Region, he said.

The Southern Cameroons Interim Government announced that  10 civilians, including women and children, were killed by troops loyal to the regime in Yaounde.

These were dismissed by the Francophone government as “false propaganda” and “totally unfounded allegations, contrary to reality”.

Fighting between the two sides — and reprisal attacks on civilians — have left more than 3,000 dead in the two western regions during the three-year conflict.

Human Rights Watch has also accused Cameroon’s armed forces of taking part in the killing of at least 21 civilians on February 14 in a remote part of Northwest Region. The army has denied the accusations.

By Camcordnews with files from AFP

The day the military came to Bella’s village in Talingai, in the South-West Anglophone region of Cameroon, the villagers, terrified, escaped into the bush behind the village, where they set up a camp. Speaking to RFI in Mamfe, smartly dressed in a bright blue dress, it is only when she begins her story that her whole body heaves, her shoulders hunch up. She distinctly remembers what happened this time last year, that changed her life forever.

Bella was nursing her second child and sneaked back during the day to pick up some supplies from the house. She spent the night at home after it got too dark to leave. When she returned to the bush, her pregnant sister-in-law and four young children were nowhere to be found. She searched for them for four days.

According to Anglophones RFI spoke to for this article, people are scared, threatened and some have been tortured by the Cameroonian military and rebels, their homes burnt down by men in uniform or had friends and family killed in the fighting between security forces and Anglophone separatists.

The UN sounded the alarm in February, when they confirmed through sources on the ground that armed men carried out the extra judicial killings of at least 21 people in Ngarbuh, the North-West region of Cameroon, including a pregnant woman and seven children, in addition to other reports of military action against civilians in that area.

French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged the “deteriorating situation” in the Anglophone regions days after the attack, and came through on his promise on Sunday to call his Cameroonian counterpart Paul Biya to apply “maximum pressure”, calling the violence “intolerable.”

Both Macron and Biya “agreed an impartial probe was needed in reaction to the violence committed against civilians in the village of Ngarbuh in the North-West province,” according to the statement released by the French presidency.

Human Rights Watch has since accused the Cameroonian military of carrying out the killings in Ngarbuh, with the help of Fulani fighters.

Cameroon’s Defence Ministry initially said on 17 February the government would open an investigation into the killings. It published a second statement later the same day that fighting against “armed terrorists” who attacked government and security forces led to the explosion of fuel containers, resulting in the deaths and burnt homes. Communication Minister René Emmanuel Sadi reiterated that statement the next day.

An assessment carried out by the UN in September 2019 shows more than 700,000 people have been forced to flee their homes in the two Anglophone regions of Cameroon, a number considered to be a significant underestimate as access to the area has been difficult.

Violence began in 2017 in both the North-West and South-West regions in the aftermath of peaceful protests by Anglophone teachers and lawyers who took to the streets to demonstrate against alleged discrimination and unfair working practices enforced by the Francophone central government.

The ensuing government crackdown since then provoked the creation of an armed separatist movement and self-declaration of independence for so-called Ambazonia. The separatists are fighting for Anglophone secession.

The crisis in the Anglophone regions has swelled into an all-out civil war fought by the Ambazonians, colloquially called Amba Boys or Ambas, made up of a number of different armed groups. The Anglophone rebels are fighting 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.

Changing strategy and intimidation

The Cameroonian military’s tactics of targeting the Ambas have evolved during the crisis and recently soldiers have attempted to change their approach with the local population, according to Anthony, a resident of Sand Pit, a neighborhood in Buea.

He recounted how two weeks ago, the military travelled in a yellow taxi into Sand Pit in full uniform with weapons. He guessed that they were trying to trick the population. They caught five people and started beating them with cutlasses, he says. Those people now have wounds on their backs.

“Then they put the Pa on the ground,” he says, using a respectful term for an older male member of the community, “and they put the gun next to the ear of the Pa, and they shoot the gun right next to him,” he says.

The older man has been plagued with hearing problems ever since, says Anthony, who was displaced by the fighting three months ago. He shakes his head as he speaks of how the military intimidated the Pa and others in the community.

The story Gabriella, 32, tells is an example of how the killings in her family cross both sides of the conflict. Speaking in Mamfe town, she had not told her story to anyone outside her family before, in part, she says, because everyone else around her is suffering, but also because she trusts no one.

The military came to Mbeme village two years ago, hunting Amba Boy separatists who operate in the area. Spraying bullets among the dried mud houses in the village, one stray bullet killed Gabriella’s husband. Two weeks later, her 15-year-old son, the eldest of seven, was gunned down in the barber shop in the village, a victim of being young, Anglophone, and male.

Her father, a village elder, had questioned why the Amba Boys were shutting down public schools, and pushed for the children of the village to go back to school.

The separatists have blocked the opening of some 4,500 schools across the region for more than three years to protest what they call educational discrimination against Anglophones. To date, this boycott enforced by the gun has affected 600,000 schoolchildren.

A week after his grandson died, the Amba Boys came knocking on his door at night.

“They shot him. It was a premeditated act,” said Gabriella, the tone of her voice rising as she confirmed she had lost three male members of her family in the span of a month. She has been bottling up this story and only now feels ready to share the description of the atrocities committed in her village by both soldiers and separatists.

Both sides committing violence against civilians

Human rights abuses are being perpetrated by both sides, confirms Ilaria Allegrozzi, senior researcher on Central Africa for Human Rights Watch. She has documented abuses, deaths, and violent acts since the crisis began in late 2016.

“It’s important to acknowledge that human rights violations have been committed by the security forces but at the same time, the separatists are not angels and have also targeted civilians,” she says.

“The gravity, the scale of the abuses that we have documented coming from the security forces are more significant than the abuse that is perpetrated by the armed separatists,” the HRW researcher adds. The abuses are frequently just the start of the nightmare for Anglophones living through the conflict, where their only option is to escape the patrols of soldiers and separatists through their village.

Gabriella says she, her six children and the whole village fled into the bush. Her two cousins died in the jungle, where malaria, lack of shelter, no sanitation, and the absence of running water makes survival difficult.

She brought her remaining family to Mamfe town because she said she could not subject them to the harsh reality in the jungle. In town, she is alone with her children, and she has no relatives to help. She volunteers her cleaning services in the hope that she can beg for some rice for her children.

“I’m finished, I have no talk,” she says in Pidgin English. “Since the crisis, look at me,” motioning at her bedraggled dress. “I’m tired. I don’t have anything to feed the children.” Neither she nor her children have eaten for several days.

RFI spoke to more than 30 internally displaced Anglophones in and around Buea, Kumba, and Mamfe in the South-West Anglophone region of Cameroon.

People spoke primarily of military harassment, from looting and burning homes to shooting civilians, either targeting people or shooting in the air, which has killed a number via stray bullets. They spoke of security forces targeting villages where many lived as subsistence farmers or worked on plantations for the Cameroon Development Corporation (CDC), a parastatal company that was the country’s second-largest employer.

Residents in the South-West region say the Cameroonian security forces will torch a home if they see a young man fleeing in the vicinity. Young men are targeted typically because the separatists recruit young Anglophone men to fight against the military.

After constant harassment and killings by soldiers, Pierre, a 38-year-old from Ekona village, had enough. He says he has been targeted by the military because he is a man, and an Anglophone.

“They killed my elder brother first. Then my second brother. Then they killed my uncle,” he says from Buea, the regional capital of South-West Cameroon.

“I can’t stay there after they killed them — I’ll be next,” he says, nervously wringing his hands. Pierre found it difficult to recall the killing of his family members.

Grace, 38, paid the price after one of her male neighbours ran off into the bush where she lived. She was by herself in her home in Maumu village in September 2018 when the military came knocking, demanding to know where her neighbor had gone.

“The military man went and stood at my door. He called me, and then he shot me in both legs,” she says, describing how one of the soldiers escalated the situation without warning.

After neighbours came out of the bush to smuggle her to the hospital, the military searched the local health facilities, looking for her. Hospital staff hid her in a closet.

Grace, crying, says she is afraid they will find her again. She spoke to RFI on the condition that her real name and location would not be revealed. She owes hospital bills of nearly 1,400 euros (900,000 Central African CFA Francs), and is unable to walk. Her left leg is bandaged because she has an open wound from the gunshot that has still not healed, a year and a half after the shooting.

“Civilians have been caught in the middle, and have paid the highest price in this crisis,” says HRW’s Allegrozzi. “People have been displaced, have lost their families, are living in the bush and are in need of humanitarian assistance. And this crisis has yet to be addressed.”

A population terrified

Anglophones feel that the military is given free rein to do whatever they want.

Meanwhile, those villagers whose houses are still standing maintain they are too scared to sleep in their own homes and prefer to sleep in the bush. They return home occasionally to harvest their crops so they can eat. Those who have migrated to towns also venture back to their homes, but only during the daytime, in order to gather more food to eat and sell.

Bella, the young mother who could not find her five relatives, says she was determined to find out where they were. She puts her hands in her lap, her chewed nails betraying her anguish as she tells her story with little emotion.

“I went to town to report them missing, and to see if they were arrested,” says Bella. The military maintained they had not detained her family members, and she would find them in the bush. They even asked her to call them with an update.

While Bella mustered up the courage to speak to the military, most Anglophones RFI met are afraid — afraid of being shot, or disappeared, or afraid that the military will burn their house down, as they did to their neighbours.

Three years into the horror of losing family members, losing jobs, and losing sleep, many Anglophones, who perhaps were initially on the side of their separatist brethren, now distance themselves from the Ambas, both physically and philosophically. Leigh, 66, said she is afraid of both sides.

“Both are dangerous. Yes, I mean the Amba Boys. If you don’t give them money, you will be beaten. They can kill you,” she says.

Before her community relocated to the bush, she said that the Ambas would sometimes warn them with a whistle when the military were coming so that they could run.

“Now they don’t give any sound. Now they are against us, the military are against us, we are the ones suffering. When the army starts shooting they don’t ask who is who, they just shoot,” she says with a sigh, after rapidly recounting her story.

Fear among civil society groups, too

Local non-governmental and international organisations are trying to provide aid to the most vulnerable members of the Anglophone population, however the level of fear is reflected amongst the humanitarian workers too. A number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were afraid to go on the record regarding the difficulties they have in maneuvering through the terrain, and in dealing with the government.

Local aid group Authentique Memorial Educational Foundation (AMEF) was at the forefront when the fighting broke out between the military and the Amba Boys in Kumba town, where they operate. The difficulty lies in both the separatists and the government believing that aid organizations are helping the other side.

“There is that fear you’re being branded a spy,” says Atim Taniform, AMEF humanitarian affairs and operations manager in Kumba, saying that NGOs are working in a fog of uncertainty.

“We are afraid that the [government] administration thinks that we are bringing assistance to non-state actors [separatists] instead of the community. At the same time, the non-state actors feel we are taking assistance from the administration and bringing it to ‘their’ community,” she says, referring to how the Ambas refer to Anglophones. Taniform chooses her words carefully when referring to the parties of the conflict.

Both sides do not understand humanitarian principles and how they are applied in real terms, according to Christian Tanyi, head of the Martin Luther King Jr. Foundation (LUKMEF), a human rights organization that operates out of Buea.

“When you look at humanitarian principles, the principle of neutrality doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk to people. We talk to all parties in the conflict, trying to explain exactly who we are, what we do and how we do it,” says Tanyi, who says he has tried to explain the rules of engagement to both sides.

“The humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate mainly due to multiple displacements as a result of attacks against civilians,” says James Nunan, UN Office of Humanitarian Affairs regional head in Buea, South-West region, Cameroon.

The bottom line, says Tanyi, is the military and the separatists are not respecting international humanitarian law, as humanitarians and vehicles with humanitarian aid have been attacked by both the military and the separatists.

“All these attacks signify that there is still a very long way to go,” he adds.

As of press time, the Cameroonian military had not responded to a request for comment.

‘We are suffering and we just want it to end’

The majority of Anglophones still believe the government could stop this with one phone call from President Paul Biya, as well as pulling the military out of the region, including the 1300 troops and police brought in for February’s elections.

On February 11, Cameroon’s Youth Day, Biya spoke in French dubbed into English, calling for young Anglophones to come out of the bush, a move opposition Senator George Kinyang said was inadequate.

“Who’s going to employ them, willing them to come out of the bush when their houses are being burnt down in the northern South-West region,” said Kinyang from his home in Douala. He says he cannot return to his constituency because of the fighting.

“How do you call people to come out when they’re not sure of their security, when they are not sure of their livelihood, when they have no assurance that their human rights will be respected,” he adds, saying that the only way to end the conflict is a ceasefire, a move that would be welcomed by those who have already suffered enough.

A worried Bella, still looking for her missing family, left the military headquarters in her area and rushed back to the bush camp, where she found a shallow grave. Other members of the community helped her dig it up, where she discovered the bodies of her four young nephews and pregnant sister-in-law.

She called the military, telling them she found the lifeless bodies of her family.

“The military told me they were there to shoot Amba Boys,” she says, recalling the conversation, her voice cracking. “And when they saw they killed civilians, they tried to bury them.”

She said the soldiers apologized to her.

“They gave me 2,000CFA (3 euros) phone credit” to compensate for her losses, she says, laughing bitterly, before her laughs turn to sobs. Her reaction borders on hysteria – such a meagre compensation in phone credit for the killing of her family is unfathomable.

“People have lost their lives and [others] are dying,” says Bella, through a veil of tears. “I want everything to be over.”

*Names have been changed for the safety and security of those featured in this report

Culled from Radio France International

Sangmélima is one of the four constituencies of the South region from which the Cameroonian dictator hails.

The installation of Faustin Bekono, newly elected mayor of the commune of Sangmélima, initially scheduled for February 28, will finally take place on March 3, Cameroon Concord News has gathered from CPDM sources in French Cameroun.

The newly elected mayor will replace André Noel Essiane, a long time acolyte of President Biya who has been under Beti Ewondo media scrutiny of late.   

The inhabitants of Sangmelima were informed of the delay in the handing over ceremony via a message from the governor of the South region, Felix Nguelé Nguelé in which he instructed the senior divisional officer for Dja et Lobo to postpone the administrative ritual “until further notice.”

A lot of tongues have been waging on the matter due to the fact that the decision to postpone the installation ceremony was not sanctioned by the Southern Cameroons Minister of Territorial Administration, Paul Atanga Nji but by the Director of the Civil Cabinet at the Presidency of the Republic.

Our Yaoundé city reporter revealed that it was the Director of the Civil Cabinet at the Presidency, Samuel Mvondo Ayolo who pressurized the governor and the Senior Divisional Officer for Dja-et-Lobo, Koulbout Aman David to suspend the process.

A recent government communiqué made public late last week and signed by the prefect of Dja et Lobo stated that, on “instructions from the very high hierarchy“, the elected mayor will be installed on March 3.  The “very high hierarchy” in French Cameroun political discourse refers to the head of state.

According to local media reports, the crisis in Sangmelima is one of the many political wars that the Biya regime’s dignitaries are waging against each other.

By Rita Akana in Yaounde