Anglophone Cameroonian separatists have kidnapped at least a dozen people protesting the brutality and crime of the rebels. The separatists claim that the government of the majority French-speaking country paid the protesters to defame the separatists, which officials deny.
A video widely circulated on social media shows suspected separatists forcing one man and 11 women to confess that the government paid women in Oku, an English-speaking western city, to fight fighters. To protest on the street of alleged abuses of Men have bruises all over their face and women look tired. He was among several hundred people who protested in Oku.
Suspected separatists say that within the past two weeks, similar protests took place in the farming and ranching villages of the English-speaking north-west region of Cameroon, Njikejem, Manchok, Ngmsibba and Elak.
Cameroon’s military said the video was taken on April 6 by separatist fighters in Alaq, and that 14 women were kidnapped, not just 11. He did not give information about the missing three.
Capo Daniel, the deputy defense chief of the Ambazonia Defense Forces, one of Cameroon’s separatist groups, said the abducted people were hired by government officials and members of the local elite to defame the separatists who were fighting Cameroonian forces in Yaounde. support the central government.
“The people you see in that video are people who have been arrested [abducted] By our army in Oku,” he said. “The man you see in front is the gangster. Twelve people were arrested, four of them have been released, eight of them are being interrogated, and anyone found guilty of cooperating with a foreign and foreign government occupying our territory If he goes, he will have to face the consequences of his actions.”
Capo said some fighters found guilty of civil rights abuses were punished but gave no further details. He also said that the Cameroonian military violates the rights of citizens more than the separatists.
The army has always denied that it violates the rights of citizens.
Government officials in the North-West region deny that women were paid to protest and defame separatist fighters.
The government said a similar protest took place this week in Mabalangi, a village in the English-speaking southwest region, where the military said four women had been kidnapped, but did not say whether they had regained their freedom. Is.
Fifty-six-year-old farmer Nagle Dorothy took part in the Mabalangi protest. He told local media that there is anger among people over crimes against women, especially the widows of separatist fighters.
He said that in Mabalangi village, separatist fighters have killed hundreds of men and the fighters rape girls and widows and harass civilians who do not pay money to show support for the separatist fight. He said that the Cameroonian army should protect the Mabalangi villagers from the heinous crimes committed by the fighters.
Separatists have been fighting to create an independent English-speaking state in majority French-speaking Cameroon since 2017.
Human Rights Watch, in a report in August, accused both the military and armed separatists of violating civilian rights in the English-speaking regions of Cameroon. The organization stressed the urgent need to protect communities at risk and hold those responsible for abuses.
The United Nations says at least 3,300 people have been killed and 750,000 internally displaced during the years of separatist violence.
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