• Anglophone regions hit by arson attacks on schools, market
• ‘You don’t negotiate with such people’: government
spokesman says
People walk at the food market in Bamenda |
Unrest in Cameroon’s English-speaking regions intensified
with arson attacks on schools and a city market as the government vowed to
quash a secessionist movement whose leaders are in detention in Nigeria, saying
it won’t negotiate with terrorists.
At
least three schools were torched this week in the Northwest region, one of two
Anglophone areas in the majority French-speaking Central African nation, after
a market in the city of Bamenda was set ablaze in an attack the government
blames on the separatists. Gunmen killed one soldier and seriously injured
another on Thursday as they were on patrol in a town west of Bamenda, a
commander of the paramilitary police, Ewane, said by phone.
“The
government cannot and will not engage any form of dialogue with terrorists bent
on amputating part of the national territory in the name of secession,’’
Communication Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary said in a phone interview late
Wednesday. “You don’t negotiate anything with such people.”
Security
forces have stepped up patrols in the areas, searching houses and arresting
those who can’t produce identity papers as part of “a routine operation,’’
Simon Emile Mooh, prefect for the Bui Division in the Northwest region, said by
phone. “The forces of law and order are merely making sure that no weapons have
been sneaked in,” he said.
Thousands of Refugees
Thousands
of people have crossed the border into Nigeria and more refugees are expected
to arrive in the coming weeks as the Cameroonian government intensifies its
operations against the pro-independence movement, the United Nations Refugee
Agency said in a Jan. 16 statement.
The
Anglophone regions are Cameroon’s biggest cocoa-growing areas, and some
producers are abandoning their farms or struggling to find laborers, Charles
Monono, the region’s head of agriculture, said last week.
Ten
leaders of the separatist movement, which calls the two Anglophone regions the
Republic of Ambazonia, have been held in neighboring Nigeria since Jan. 6 at an
undisclosed location, according to their Nigerian lawyer, Femi Falana. The
crisis began more than a year ago with peaceful protests against the French
language’s dominance in courtrooms and schools.
One of
the movement’s interim leaders, Bobga Harmony, announced on Facebook “the
multiplication of self-defense operations” because the government rejects
talks. “We shall continue targeting anti-secessionists as well as burn down
schools,” he said.
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