CI-NEWS

Masked War: Understanding what has transpired beneath the denied conflict in Cameroon.

2019-12-09

No: 460

Masked War: Understanding what has transpired beneath the denied conflict in Cameroon.

The International Crisis Group has blamd the Cameroon military and separatist fighters for the killing of over 420 civilians in the two predominantly English-speaking regions of Cameroon following the eruption of the sociopolitical crisis three years ago. Meanwhile, November 2019 UN estimates put the figures of internally displaced persons in Cameroon due to the crisis at over 437,500 with about 32,600 of them seeking refuge in neighbouring Nigeria. Yuh MANIGHA reports:

I came across this 33-year-old woman in a shop in Yaounde from Ndop, a locality in the North West Region and she told me her story. “I trekked in some areas from Bamali to Bamenda when this unusual gun-firing had become unbearable.” She added that she managed to reach Yaounde where she does not have a relative. “Some Reverend sisters gave me shelter in their convent and have paid tuition for my two children in a very expensive school here in Yaoundé.” After having stayed with the Reverend sisters for some months, she felt that she was a burden to them and packed out to a police station pretending to want be relocate soon.

“After few months when the police did not notice any sign of packing out, they drove me and I moved to Government Primary School Etoug-Ebe from where the head teacher made a public announcement about my plight.” The lady who refused not to be named, later resorted to begging just to feed her the 2-year-old baby.

She is just one of the suffering IDPs in the nation’s capital Yaoundé. Linus who is a motorbike rider complained about harassment from security forces.

“The military just surrounded so many of us in the night showing guns and ordered us to push our bikes to their trucks from where they drove us to their base and we spent the night there. They released those who spoke French the same night and started saying that we were Ambazonians. We were obliged to call our relatives who came and paid FCFA 10.000 each to secure our release,” he said.

There are also frequent police raids in neighbourhoods inhabited by Anglophones in Yaounde since the influx of IDPs in the city from early 2018.

The UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch recently said the organization needs US$184 million for its operation to tackle the problem of internally displaced persons and refugees so rendered by the long-running conflict.

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Masked War: Understanding what has transpired beneath the denied conflict in Cameroon.