BY ALICE NJI
Security authorities say they have stepped up operations targeting members of the Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, amid a deepening Anglophone crisis in the North West and South West Regions.
Government officials have in recent statements described SCNC activities as illegal and say security forces are conducting a “fresh manhunt” to arrest activists accused of promoting secession and disrupting public order.
This move comes as the Anglophone crisis, which began in 2016 over grievances related to language, education and law, continues to affect the two English –speaking regions. The crisis has led to displacement, school disruptions and periodic security operations.
The Southern Cameroons National Council, SCNC, is an outlawed political movement that advocates self-determination for the former British Southern Cameroons. The government classifies SCNC activities as illegal under Cameroon law.
It is against this backdrop that the authorities have already tagged SCNC members as the brains behind the unrest rocking the North West and South West Regions of Cameroon. After releasing a list of Anglophone activists in the diaspora, who were targeted for arrest years back, sources say a fresh list of SCNC activists both home and abroad; clamouring for the restoration of the total independence of the former British Southern Cameroons, has been re-established for arrests.
More than a hundred names have reportedly been given to intelligence services. The list that includes the likes of Florence Sassa Diange, Odilia Anih Bechu, Ntuba Ejengue Emmanuel Arthur and Noel Fonge Esondege is already making rounds in the hands of the security officials as they have been placed under security searchlight. They have been declared wanted for organising several protests in major towns in the North West and South West Regions like, Bamenda, Kumba, Mamfe, Buea, Limbe, Wum, and Mbengwi against the worsening frustration, marginalization, unlawful detention and maltreatment of the people of Former British Southern Cameroons. Most of these SCNC activists and members have underground as they have been declared wanted by the Yaoundé regime.
Reports from Buea say Noel Fonge Esondege, an SCNC activist, is currently under security searchlight. His whereabouts was cloudy at press time, according to family sources.
Fonge, reports say, is reported to have miraculously escaped from the hospital in 2023 to an unknown destination after he went unconscious at the Buea Police Station due to severe torture and assault from the police and was rushed to the hospital for medical attention.
THE SUN gathered that, Noel Fonge was arrested on February 7, 2023 alongside others by the police on the sideline of an SCNC meeting in their residence to plan for a rally duped “independence rally”. Family sources say following that arrest, Noel Fonge was taken to the Mutengene Police Station and later transferred to Buea Police Station after discovering his previous records in connection with SCNC activism.
It should be recalled that Fonge, the son of the SCNC chairman in a local branch in Buea, joined the movement in 2021 as chief whip of his local branch. THE SUN gathered that as courageous as he was, he attended about seven meetings and participated in two demonstrations that landed him in trouble with security operatives, just like any other SCNC activists in Cameroon.
THE SUN learnt that Fonge, like any other SCNC activists, has been arrested by Cameroon’s security operatives, tortured and detained under inhumane, degrading and deplorable conditions.
As we went to press, the military, with firm instruction from government, had launched fresh pursuit of Fonge for his arrest alongside many others for them to be prosecuted at the Yaounde Military Tribunal on charges on secession, hostility and related offences and his support for the restoration of the independence of the former British Southern Cameroons.
The military keeps making impromptu checks at his residential area, just to arrest and prosecute him. Family sources hinted that they are constantly being harassed and molested for them to disclose his whereabouts, which remains unclear.
