79 school students abducted in restive anglophone Cameroon

YAOUNDE: Gunmen kidnapped 79 school students on Monday in an English-speaking region of Cameroon where separatists are fighting an armed campaign for independence, security and government sources said.

The abductions, the worst incident so far in 13 months of unrest, came a day before longtime President Paul Biya was to be sworn in for a seventh term in office.

The students were abducted along with their principal, a teacher and a driver, the government official said.

A source close to the school confirmed the kidnapping of the pupils, saying however: “All we know is that the abducted students are mainly boys.”

The first mass abduction in Cameroon follows two major such incidents in neighbouring Nigeria, where the militant group Boko Haram snatched more than 200 schoolgirls from the Borno state town of Chibok in April 2014.

Some 107 girls have since been released or found, but the militant group abducted scores more schoolgirls from neighbouring Yobe state in February this year.

The students kidnapped on Monday were enrolled at the Presbyterian Secondary School in Bamenda, capital of Cameroon’s Northwest Region — one of two regions hit by attacks by anglophone militants that have met with a brutal crackdown by the authorities.

“The search for the hostages has been launched — every man has been called in,” the government source said, speaking after a crisis meeting.

Elsewhere in the same region, a high-ranking local official was also seized, a security official said.

The school’s website says that the student body numbers more than 700, drawn from “all the religious and linguistic origins of Cameroon.”

The kidnappings coincide with an upsurge of political tensions in the majority French-speaking country.

It comes after elections on October 7 in which 85-year-old Biya, who has ruled the country with an iron fist for 35 years, was credited with 71.3 per cent of the vote.

The polls however were marred by allegations of widespread fraud, low voter turnout and violence.

Around a fifth of Cameroon’s 22 million people are English-speaking — a minority whose presence dates back to the colonial period.

Cameroon, once a German colony, was divided between Britain and France after World War I.

The French colony gained independence in 1960, becoming Cameroon. The following year, the British-ruled Southern Cameroons was amalgamated into it, giving rise to the Northwest and Southwest regions.

But resentment at perceived discrimination at the hands of the francophone majority, especially in education and the judiciary, began to build.

In 2016, demands for greater autonomy grew but have been rebuffed by Biya. — AFP