FEATURE: Civilians bear brunt of violence in Cameroon
All parties to the conflict have committed human rights violations and abuses, and civilians are caught in the middle, reports Amnesty International.
CAPE TOWN, July 29 (ANA) – Civilians in Cameroon bear the brunt of unlawful killings, kidnappings and widespread destruction of houses and villages as a result of ongoing violence between various armed groups and armed forces in the country’s troubled anglophone regions, according to rights group Amnesty International.
Government intervention has been limited, and there has been near-complete silence from the international community, the rights group said in a research report issued on Wednesday, revealing the devastating scale of destruction caused by the ongoing conflict.
Violence between government forces and the anglophone armed separatist groups erupted in 2017, when protests against discrimination and marginalisation were repressed by the authorities.
Based on eyewitness testimonies and analysis of satellite images, Amnesty International documented how dozens of civilians have been killed and multiple villages destroyed since 2019.
All parties to the conflict have committed human rights violations and abuses, and civilians are caught in the middle, according to Fabien Offner, Amnesty International’s Central Africa researcher.
“In one particularly appalling case, armed separatists shot dead two elderly women with barrage rifles; in another, Fulani vigilantes burned hundreds of houses and killed four people in a terrifying attack,” he said.
“It is difficult to obtain accurate information about the human rights crisis unfolding in these regions, which are hard to reach by road and have poor telecommunications networks. But this is no excuse to look away – without strong action by the authorities and the international community, civilians will continue to bear the brunt of the crisis.”
According to the United Nations, at least 22 civilians were killed in Ngarbuh on the night of 13 to 14 February 2020, including 15 children and two pregnant women, following a military operation. A government inquiry found that during the same incident, “the detachment commander decided to enlist 17 members of a local vigilante committee”.
Several sources also reported that members of that “local vigilante committee” were Fulani armed groups.
The situation has heightened tensions with armed separatists who have long accused the Fulanis of co-operating with the authorities.
Between June and July 2021, at least four policemen were killed in an ambush near the town of Bali Nyonga in the North-West region. Two gendarmes were beheaded in the town of Babadjou in the West region, bordering the North-West in an attack attributed to armed separatists by officials.
Other examples include the killing by the army in Bamenda 3 subdivision of a civilian man driving a car, and the kidnapping of six local officials in the town of Ekondo Titi in the South-West region, Amnesty International said.
Nwa subdivision, located along Cameroon’s border with Nigeria, has been particularly hard hit by the recent violence. Between February 22 and 26, at least 4,200 people were displaced from seven villages in Nwa, following attacks by Fulani vigilante groups in which at least eight people were killed. According to the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa (CHRDA), the Fulani herders “have carried out over a dozen raids against the natives in the villages of Nwa in less than a month”.
Satellite images analysed by Amnesty International show some villages that have been destroyed or burned down in Nwa in February. It is unclear whether Fulani vigilante groups attacked the villages or whether the destruction took place during clashes with armed separatist groups, but the images suggest that the destruction was fairly recent.
“Armed separatists came to attack me six times. They destroyed my compound, burned down my brother’s houses. Seven people were killed in my compound. They gathered them in a house, locked the house and burned it,” a Mbororo traditional leader in Nwa subdivision told Amnesty International.
Testimonies, documents and satellite imagery reviewed by the rights group showed that armed separatists attacked a Mbororo community in the town of Mbem on February 16, 2020.
Four members of one family, aged between 15 and 80, were killed, and three others were injured, including two elderly women who were shot in the forehead, legs and thighs with barrage rifles. The attackers also set fire to 30 homes and the mosque, and looted property, including motorcycles.
A victim and eyewitness whose identity has been verified by Amnesty International said: “We were coming out of the mosque after prayer, when armed separatists came on three motorcycles and attacked us. They burned all our houses. Two hundred people could not sleep because their homes were razed.”
– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher