Deadly Violence in Cameroon’s Anglophone Regions
-- Escalation of violence marked by indiscriminate
killings and mass displacement
-- Security forces destroy villages, torture at least 23
persons including minors to extract “confessions”-
-- Armed separatists attack 42 schools, kill 44 security
forces Members
Armed separatists in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have
stabbed to death and shot military personnel, burned down schools and attacked
teachers, while security forces have tortured people, fired on crowds and
destroyed villages, in a spiral of violence that keeps getting more deadly,
Amnesty International said today.
In a new report on Cameroon’s Anglophone
crisis, ‘A turn for the worse: Violence and human rights violations in
Anglophone Cameroon’, which is based on in-depth interviews with over 150
victims and eye-witnesses, and material evidence including satellite images,
the organization documents how general population is paying the highest price
as violence escalates in the North West and South West regions of Cameroon.
“People
in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions are in the grip of a deadly cycle of violence.
Security forces have indiscriminately killed, arrested and tortured people
during military operations which have also displaced thousands of civilians.
Their heavy-handed response will do nothing to calm the violence - in fact it
is likely to further alienate Anglophone communities and fuel further unrest,” said
Samira Daoud, Amnesty International Deputy Director for West and Central
Africa.
“For
their part, armed separatists have killed dozens of members of the security
forces. They also carried out attacks designed to strike fear amongst the
population, going as far as burning down schools and targeting teachers who did
not enforce the boycott.”
The
Anglophone regions of the Cameroon – the South-West and North-West - make up
approximately 20% of the country’s population. Many of their grievances date
back to the early 1960s, when these regions were included in the newly
established, mostly French-speaking, Republic of Cameroon.
Violence
and unrest escalated in late 2016 after a series of strikes and protests
against what teachers, lawyers and students viewed as further discrimination
against Anglophones. Between 22
September and 1 October 2017, large-scale protests were organized across the
Anglophone regions to symbolically proclaim the independence of a new state of
“Ambazonia.”
Torture and killings by the military
Cameroon’s military has responded to these
protests with arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful killings and destruction of
property. In one striking incident, satellite images and other photographic
evidence obtained by Amnesty International show the complete destruction of the
village of Kwakwa, which was burned to the ground by Cameroonian security
forces following an operation conducted in December 2017 in connection with the
killing of two gendarmes by suspected armed separatists.
In some cases, following these security
operations, people were arbitrarily arrested and tortured while detained in
illegal detention facilities and in secret. For instance, at least 23 people,
including minors, were arrested by the security forces in the village of Dadi
on 13 December 2017 and spent three days in incommunicado detention. They told
Amnesty International that during this time security forces tortured them to
extract “confessions”, to force them to admit having supported the separatists.
Victims
described being blindfolded and severely beaten with various objects including
sticks, ropes, wires and guns, as well as being electrocuted and burnt with hot
water. Some were beaten until they lost consciousness, and Amnesty
International documented that at least one person has died in custody.
One man
who was arrested on 13 December 2017 in Dadi gave a harrowing account of the
torture he suffered:
