Caught between English fighters and the army

NGABI DORA TUE, consumed with grief, barely managed to stand alone.

The ark of her husband, Johnson, was sitting among a crowd of striking mourning in Limb in the southwestern region of Cameroon, an area that witnessed scenes like this many times before.

While on a work trip, Johnson, an English -language civil servant, and five colleagues were captured by armed separatists.

The fighters are fighting – and are still fighting for the independence of the two Cameroon Anglophone regions in what is mostly a francophone country. Conflict with almost a decade that led to thousands of deaths and a torn life in the area.

When he was abducted four years ago, Dora struggled to reach Johnson. When she eventually heard from separatist fighters, they demanded a ransom of over $ 55,000 (41,500 pounds) to be paid within 24 hours to ensure his release. Dora then received another call from one of Johnson’s relatives.

“He said … that I had to take care of the children. That my husband was no longer. I didn’t even know what to do. Tuesday he was traveling and he was abducted. He was killed on Friday,” Dora says.

The responsible separatists had not only killed, but beheaded Johnson and left his body on the road.

The roots of the separatist struggle are hidden in years of complaints that extend to complete independence in 1961, and the formation of a Cameroon state in 1972 by former British and French territories.

Since then, the English -language minority has felt suffering from the perceived erosion of the rights by the central government. Johnson was just an innocent trainee, caught in an increasingly brutal struggle for self-determination and the desperate attempts by the government to print the uprising.

The current wave of violence began almost a decade ago.

At the end of 2016, peaceful protests began against what was perceived as a creeping use of Francophone’s legal system in the courtrooms in the region. The French-English parts of Cameroon use different judicial systems.

The protests quickly spread and led to a call to close stores and institutions.

The reaction of the security forces was immediate and heavy – people were beaten, intimidated and there were mass arrests. The African Union called it “deadly and disproportionate use of violence.”

Cameroon’s Ministry of Defense did not answer requests for comment on this or other questions in this article.

Armed groups have been established. And at the end of 2017, when the tension escalated, the Anglophone separatist leaders declared independence about what they called the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

To date, five million Anglophone Cameroons have been embedded in the conflict – equivalent to one fifth of the total population. At least 6,000 people were killed and hundreds of thousands of homes.

“We woke up to the dead bodies on the streets in the morning,” says Blaze Eing, a Kumba journalist in the English -language southwestern region of Cameroon, who produced and presented a documentary on the BBC Africa Eye crisis and was forced by his hometown with his family in 2019.

“Or do you hear a house lit. Or you hear that someone has been abducted. The parts of the people’s body is cut off. How do you live in a city where you worry every morning if your relatives are safe?”

There are a number of national and international attempts to resolve the crisis, including what the government called the “basic national dialogue” in 2019.

Although the conversations found a special status for the two Anglophone regions of the country, which acknowledged their unique history, very little was resolved practical.

Felix Agbor Nkongho – a lawyer who was one of the leaders of the protests in 2016 and was later arrested – says that with both sides who now seem to act with impunity, the moral peak has disappeared.

“There was time … where most people think that if they need security, they will go to the separatists,” he told the BBC Africa Eye.

“But in the last two years I do not think that a reasonable person would have thought that the separatists would be the ones who would protect them. So everyone should die for us to have independence and I ask the question: Who will you manage?”

But not only separatists are accused of abuse.

Organizations like Human Rights Watch have recorded the brutal response to the security forces for independence movement of the Anglophone. They have documented the burning of villages and torture, illegal arrests and out -of -court killings of people in war, largely unprecedented by the outside world.

Examples of state -sponsored brutality are not difficult to find.

John (not his real name) and a close friend were removed by Cameroon’s military forces accused of buying a weapon for a separatist group.

John recalls that after being deprived of liberty, they were given a document that they were told to sign without being given a chance to read its contents. When they refused, the torture began.

“Then they separate us into different rooms,” says John. “They were torturing (my friend). You could just hear them fall apart everywhere. I felt it on my own body (also). He defeated me everywhere. They later told me that he had accepted and signed and allowed him to go.”

But that was not the truth.

A month after his arrest, another man arrived in John’s cell. He told him that his friend had actually died in the room where he was detained and tortured. Months later, John’s case was dropped and he was released without charge.

“I just live in fear because I don’t really know where to start or where it’s safe to start or how,” says John.

Part of the Strategy of Separatists to Weakening the State and its security forces is to insist on a ban on education, which they believe is an instrument of government propaganda.

In October 2020, a school in Kumba was attacked. No one has taken responsibility for cruelty, but the government blames the separatists. Men, armed with machetes and weapons, killed at least seven children.

The incident caused brief international outrage and condemnation.

“Almost half of the schools in this region are closed,” says journalist Eong.

“A whole generation of children miss their education. Imagine the impact that this will have for our communities as well as for our country.”

As if the violence between the government forces and the various separatist groups was not enough, an additional front opened in the war. A belligerent groups have emerged in the separatist regions to fight the brazons in an attempt to maintain Camero United.

The leader of one of these groups, John Evom (known as mine), regularly lead patrols in the city of Buaa in search of separatists until he is arrested in May 2024.

He is also accused of violations of human rights, for public humiliation and torture of unarmed civilians who are considered to be separatist sympathizers. He denies the allegations. “I have never laid hands on any civilian. Just the Ambazons. And I believe the gods on this earth are with me,” he told the BBC.

Meanwhile, the cycle of abduction and killings continues.

Joe (not his real name) was – like Johnson – a hostage from a separatist group wishing to maintain control through fear – and make money.

“I went into the house and found my children and my wife on the floor as the commander was sitting in my kitchen with his gun very close. My neighbor was taken all around me, my landlord was taken. So when I saw them, I realized it was my turn,” Joe says.

He was led in the forest with 15 more, where he witnessed the execution of two captives. But in the end, he was released after the military discovered the camp.

Johnson was not so lucky and about two years after his funeral took place, news arrived that neither his five colleagues were abducted with him. Their bodies were just found.

Now more families will have to try to put up with their huge loss. For Ngabi Dora Tue, sitting with her young child on her lap, the future feels almost impossible.

“I have debts that I have to settle, I don’t even know how to settle,” she says.

“I was thinking of selling my body for money. And then I gave up the shame that would come after, I just had to swallow the difficulty and then move on. I was very young to become a widow.”

The BBC requested a response from the Ambazon’s defenses (ADF), which claims to be the most separatist force.

He replied that there were numerous separatist fighters in the Anglophone region.

ADF said it operates in international law and did not attack state workers, schools, journalists or civilians.

Instead, he accuses people and fringes acting at his request who are not ADF members for these attacks.

The group also blames government infiltrators for carrying out atrocities, while claiming to be Ambazon fighters to turn the local population against the liberation struggle.