Cameroon crackdown fueling Anglophone independence push
“We need our own country
DAKAR: A once-fringe separatist movement in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions is gaining ground after a year of state repression that has undermined moderate voices and raised concerns the majority French-speaking nation may face a prolonged period of violence. Soldiers shot dead at least eight people and wounded others in the two English-speaking regions on Sunday, the anniversary of Anglophone Cameroon’s independence from Britain.
Amnesty International said on Monday at least 17 people had died in the clashes. The growing influence of the separatists, who include armed radical elements, is one of the most serious threats to stability in the central African oil producer since President Paul Biya took power 35 years ago. “Last year, separatists couldn’t rally people on the streets. But people have seen family members arrested and killed, and they have switched over,” said Tapang Ivo Tanku, an Anglophone activist based in the United States.
Like many moderates who say they are marginalized by Biya’s Francophone-dominated government, Tanku has campaigned for a peaceful solution: a twostate federation - one French speaking, the other Anglophone - under one president. “I am in the minority now,” he told Reuters from New York.
The strife began in November, when Englishspeaking teachers and lawyers in the Northwest and Southwest regions, frustrated with having to work in French, took to the streets calling for reforms and greater autonomy. Six people were killed in those protests, and in the months that followed, the government deployed thousands of police and elite soldiers, implemented a blanket internet blackout and arrested dozens of activists, dubbing them “terrorists”.
The thousands who protested on Sunday around the country were no longer calling for reform, but for a separate state for Cameroon’s nearly five million English speakers. “We told them our problems. They responded with force, killing us,” said a young student in Bamenda, one of the largest Anglophone cities. “We need our own country.” The true size and influence of the movement remains hard to gauge. Many leaders are in jail or exile, and it’s unclear how strong alliances are between a multitude of factions with competing visions of how to achieve their goals. Few analysts believe a split is imminent.
There is no doubt the separatists’ popularity and ability to stir turmoil has grown, however. Separatists told Reuters that they were responsible for an improvised bomb that last month wounded three policemen in Bamenda. “Nothing great can be achieved by using verbal excesses, street violence and defying authority. Lasting solutions to problems can be found only through peaceful dialogue,” Biya said in a statement on Twitter following Sunday’s violence. An uprising by Biafran separatists in neighboring Nigeria in the 1960s sparked a civil war that killed around 1 million. — Reuters