BY LUCY LIMA
The Anglophone crisis in the North West and South West Regions, which has metamorphosed into in armed conflict is still raging on with extrajudicial killings of Anglophones, burning down of houses, villages, by the military and sporadic exchange of gunfire between the military and separatist fighters, living the population under crossfire with many fleeing for safe havens.
This is causing untold suffering and pains on the population.
The military has of recent launched fresh manhunt for suspected Anglophones activists on grounds that they are not only organising peace protest demonstration to destabilise the, but are siding with separatists.
Most of those arrested in connection with such allegations have been killed, jailed, others’ whereabouts unknown and feared death, while others, according to sources, have escaped out of the country to where the respect of human rights is prime as they have been declared wanted by the regime. The military and other security operatives have reportedly established both search and arrest warrants for the apprehension of many alleged Anglophone activists all over the national territory. The population has equally been urged to be vigilant and report to the closest gendarmerie or police stations.
Reports from Kumba, Meme Division, of South West Region, as we went to press, indicated the case of Branson Bellabema is likened to witch-hunting. Family sources disclosed that Branson escaped from a health facility sometimes in August 2023 and went into hiding after he fell sick following the torture, molestation, cruel and inhumane treatment, while in detention for several months.
According to sources, Branson Bellabema, a commercial motorbike rider was arrested in their Kumba neigbourhood following gunfire exchange between unidentified men suspected to be armed separatist fighters and the military. THE SUN gathered that he was arrested on grounds that he was siding with separatists since his first motorbike he hired for commercial purpose just to make ends meet was burnt by the military and was found in the hands of separatists who had earlier, on gun point, taken the motorbike away from him.
This was not the first time Branson suffered in the hands of security operatives. It should be recalled that Branson, while a student in a renowned Kumba-based Technical College, alongside his school mates, were arrested sometimes in October 2018 for organising and participating in a peaceful protest against their French Instructors who took it as a right to lecture them only in the French language against their English language background. During the peaceful protest, they were chanting songs, calling on the College Principal to sack all the French teachers who could not teach in language they understood.
The peaceful protest met with heavy security reprisals, leaving many students injured and two dead.
Branson was arrested and detained under cruel, inhumane and degrading detention conditions for about two weeks and was finally dismissed from school.
By press time family sources said the military had kept making impromptu checks at their residential area in Kumba just to arrest and prosecute him. Family sources have hinted that they are constantly being harassed and molested for them to disclose Branson Bellabema’s whereabouts which, unfortunately, remains cloudy.
According to the Penal Code, if arrested he will face charge of acts of terrorism, insurrection, hostilities against the state, and failure to report.
The Ambazonian crisis began 2016 with the teachers’ and lawyers’ strikes, which later attracted the people of the two English-speaking regions of the country, as they expressed accumulated grievances emanating from marginalisation by the majority French-speaking part of Cameroon, inequality in employment, adulterations of the judicial and education sub system.
