Brutality Against A People:
On Thursday April 28, 2006, Gilbert Nforlem, a Masters degree student in zoology of the University of Buea, the lone English speaking university in The Cameroons whose pictures appear below received over five bullets into his chest from a gendarme’s rifle following a peaceful demonstration. He fell and died instantly. The following week Pa Nforlem his old father travelled from their village over 300km away and came and confronted the governor of the province. The old man broke into tears in front of the governor ‘What have you done with my last hope…tell me Mr Governor, who will take care of my family now that I am on retirement? Despite the emotions of this scene, Thomas Ejake Mbonde the francophone ‘military’ governor showed man’s inhumanity against man by shamelessly telling the old man that ‘Pa, you can still have another child’.

During the same shooting spree, Aloysius Abouam of the department of education was also gruesomely murdered by another gendarme’s gunshot behind his head. The cruelty of the gendarmes went even further. Nineteen-years-old Josephine S. Tumnde a female fresh woman narrated her ordeal with the marauding gendarmes as they broke into her room while she was cooking, ‘they broke into my room and immediately asked me to lie down, and before I could, they started beating me with truncheons and sticks. They shattered my water closet and toilet bowl into pieces’ the young woman narrated in tears as she bled profusely on her right ankle and shin.

The two slained students and the hundred or more who suffered injuries and lost properties had been part of a mass demonstration by students and teachers of the university to protest against a decision by francophone politicians from the predominantly French speaking part of the country to force authorities of the school to include the names of Francophones who failed or didn’t even seat the entrance examinations into a newly created faculty of medicine of the school. Created only in 1993, this university has become a source of pride to the English speaking population because for over 30 years after a failed independence struggle since 1961, the people of the former British Southern Cameroons were forced by a well crafted policy of assimilation to study in French in the Francophone university or migrate out to other countries to acquire university education. Previous cases of targeted killings in the same university have even been more vexing. Hilary Muabe an Economics student was shot on the head, Ivo Obia an Economics student was shot in the mouth. Laura Mbianda and Terence Ndeh also fell down from the bullets of French gendarmes just because they seek to get better learning conditions.

Profiling, Targeting and Extra judicial killings for speaking English:
The minority French speaking Canadians of Quebec province usually pride themselves for being a bilingual country after having observed the sacrifices put in place by their majority English speaking counterparts to integrate them and enable them feel at home. This is not the same in The Cameroons where the only reason why the Francophone majority population think their minority Anglophones counterparts are important is only because of their natural resources particularly petroleum.

Speaking English in The Cameroons can sometimes turn into very bitter and nasty experiences. French-speaking police, gendarmes and military personnel have targeted, tortured and killed English speaking Cameroonians on bases of their language. Just last January 8, 2008, a Southern Cameroonian by name Paul Babila was targeted and summarily battered to death by Francophone speaking police officers in Victoria because he spoke English.

In Banso, over 350 km away from where the University of Buea is located, a similar pattern of targeted killing is narrated. Mrs Shinyuy a middle aged woman stood with her three children and the big half photograph of George Shinyuy, her husband who was beaten to death by the gendarmes. ‘This is his grave’ Mrs. Shinyuy narrated in tears. ‘The gendarmes came 8 of them and kidnapped him away at midnight. When we went to inquire, they started playing games, dribbling us from one place to another. ‘He is at the brigade’, and when we go to the brigade, they said ‘he is at the company’ and by the day we finally saw him, he was at the point of dieing. He was refused food and water and when we arrived the station, we heard him crying. When one of our relations protested; the gendarmes laughed and said ‘if he dies, you can deliver another one’. ‘All along’ Mrs Shinyuy continued ‘they were beating him to accept that he killed a gendarme, but he was refusing saying that he was a herbalist who helps to save lives, and he could not be the same person who would kill someone’. She told Ulrike Kobach a German journalist who has produced a 105 minute documentary on the human rights abuses on British Southern Cameroonians.

A Western Washington University Cameroon specialist stated in one report that selective harassment continued against members of the SDF and SCNC (All English speaking) and that in the last 18 months (2002) a number of cases of women affiliated with political organizations in Cameroon who said they had been raped, had been brought to his attention according to a finding by The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (MFCVT). In its June 2002 report, the Medical Foundation concluded: “In the present study of 27 Cameroonian women receiving treatment at the Medical Foundation in London, 25 have been raped by agents of the Cameroonian State and/or while in the custody of the State” (MFCVT 26 Jun 2002, 4.1). Of the 60 men and women whose treatment formed the basis for the report, 35 of the subjects (58 percent) were members or supporters of the Social Democratic Front (SDF), nine (15 percent) were affiliated with the Southern Cameroon National Council (SCNC), 13 percent were members of other parties, and only eight percent were not politically active (MFCVT 26 Jun 2002, 7.1).

Amnesty International in several reports has castigated the Cameroon government of systematic targeting of English speaking Cameroonians. Cases of (Anglophone) deaths in custody among this group of prisoners include the following:

Emmanuel Konseh, who was reported to have been severely beaten and stabbed with, a bayonet, died on 28 March 1997 while being transferred to Bamenda; Samuel Tita, aged 38, died on 1 May 1997 apparently as a result of lack of food and medical care while held at the Gendarmerie Legion in Bamenda; Pa Mathias Gwei who had become critically ill after having been tortured was reportedly denied adequate medical treatment and died on 25 May 1997, a few hours after he had finally been transferred to hospital; Daniel Tata, from Bui Division, was reported to have died in custody at the Gendarmerie Legion in June 1997; Ngwa Richard Formasoh , aged 25, reportedly died on 5 July 1997 as a result of dehydration caused by diarrhoea for which he did not receive treatment; Lawrence Fai, who had become critically ill in the Central Prison in Yaoundé, died around 5 September 1998. Four Anglophones, Abel Achah Apong, Crispus Kennebie Echikwa, John Kudi, and Jacque Njenta, have been detained in the Yaoundé Central Prison since 1995, and a fifth, Etchu Wilson Arrey, since 1997. Each was incarcerated after signing or displaying a petition for a referendum on independence for the Anglophone provinces. At year's end, none of these detainees had been brought before a judge or charged with a crime.

There were no known developments, nor are any likely to be, in the May 2000 case of Mamfe residents Joseph Enow, Joseph Tafong, Chief Assam, and Mathias Takunchung, who disappeared after security officials searched their homes. The families of the four Mamfe residents have alleged that they were executed, and that 30 other persons disappeared under similar circumstances in 2000. On October 1 in Kumbo, a gendarme shot into a crowd of approximately 400 unarmed demonstrators, killing 3 and injuring 16 persons, after a SCNC anniversary celebration became violent (see Section 2.b.). No action was taken against the responsible gendarme by year's end. Because of the presence of two Anglophone brothers, Eric Chia and Effician Chia the Douala Operational Command arrested and killed with acid nine persons who were suspected of stealing a gas canister in the Bepanda District of Douala. On May 26, 2000 at least six people were targeted and shot dead in Bamenda during the launching of the Social Democratic Front.

Another report concludes that ‘In this predominantly French-speaking country, Anglophones suffer discrimination from both State and society and disproportionate human rights abuses including arbitrary detention. During the 1990s, radio stations controlled by or supportive of the government repeatedly “incited ethnic animosity against Anglophones.” Public -sector discrimination and their under-representation in public institutions has led many English-speakers to support claims for greater self-determination for the Anglophone Northwest and Southwest provinces. These incidences might be a microcosm, but understanding the plight of the over 6.5 million people of the former UN trust territory of The British Southern Cameroons and their clamour for an independent statehood can better be explained by such gross injustices and violations of the individual civil and political rights of the people in a manner that has led thousands of people to an early grave, maimed and handicapped hundred others, and convinced virtually the entire population of the territory that independence NOW is the only way to avert another bloody conflict in the armpit of Africa that could have a bitter spill over engulfing the whole of sub Saharan Africa.

Ebenezer Derek Mbongo Akwanga, Jr., a native of Southern Cameroons was arrested in 1997 along side dozen of his fellow countrymen and women for speaking out against the unspeakable human rights abuses and targeting of English speaking Cameroonians. He was humiliated, tortured and tried in a midnight military tribunal and sentenced to 15 years. He was rescued from prison in 2003 and has recounted his ordeal in a book ‘Smiling through hardship’. His suffering and tribulations has come to represent the hope of a new dawn for the over 6.5 million people of the former UN trust territory of British Southern Cameroons.