Around twenty people, including women and children, were killed on Monday November 6 in a new attack on a village by English-speaking separatists in western Cameroon where these rebels and the army have been clashing for seven years, security officials and local authorities told AFP.
The tragedy took place at night in the village of Egbekaw (South-West region). “The attack left around twenty dead, men, women and children, and ten seriously injured people are in hospital,” a senior administration official assured AFP on condition of anonymity. region contacted by telephone.
Since the end of 2016, a deadly conflict has pitted armed independence groups and security forces, each accused of crimes against civilians by international NGOs and the UN, in the North-West and South-West regions, populated mainly by the English-speaking minority of this predominantly French-speaking Central African country.
Rebels “attacked the civilian populations of Egbekaw and the provisional toll is twenty-three dead and around fifteen houses burned,” an officer of the local gendarmerie also told AFP by telephone, who also requested the anonymity. A senior official from the Cameroon Human Rights Commission (CDHC) confirmed the attack and cited a provisional toll of fifteen deaths. “But this figure can change,” the member of this government body assured AFP.
A country ruled with an iron fist for 41 years
In Cameroon, information concerning attacks, or actions involving law enforcement, is always officially communicated several hours or even several days later. The country has been ruled with an iron fist for forty-one years to the day by 90-year-old President Paul Biya
The Egbekaw attack was not claimed, but midday news on state radio and television attributed it “to separatists.” “It happened at 4 a.m. Armed young people came and shot residents sleeping in their houses and set fire to an entire block of houses,” a village resident who requested anonymity told AFP by telephone mid-morning. For safety reasons.
“We have already pulled twenty-three people out of the rubble, some of whom are not even recognizable because of the fire,” he continued. “We can think that it is linked to November 6, the anniversary of President Biya’s accession to power,” believes this resident, who adds: “A meeting of the RDPC [Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People, the all-powerful party presidential] was planned in the surrounding area,” he says.
The attacks by the rebels, who call themselves the “Ambazonians” (from the name of an “Ambazonia” whose independence they unilaterally proclaimed in 2017), frequently attack civilians whom they accuse of “collaborating” with Yaounde. The security forces are also regularly accused by international NGOs and the UN of “blunders”, killings and other torture of civilians they suspect of sympathizing with the rebels.
“Extrajudicial executions”, “torture”, “rape”
On October 4, two villagers were publicly executed in the village market of Guzang, in the North-West, by a group who accused them of informing the army. The rebels also carry out kidnappings of civilians accused, or not, of “collaboration”, which are resolved in most cases by the payment of ransoms.
At the beginning of July, Amnesty International was once again alarmed by “atrocities” suffered by civilians, including “extrajudicial executions”, “homicides” of residents including women and children, “torture” and “rape”, perpetrated by armed separatists as well as by members of the security forces.
The conflict broke out at the end of 2016 after Paul Biya violently suppressed peaceful demonstrations by English-speakers in the two regions, who felt ostracized and marginalized by the central power in this former French colony. Since then, the intractable head of state has sent troops there massively. The conflict has killed more than 6,000 people and forced more than a million people to become displaced, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG).