United States-based rights group, Human Rights Watch has raised an alarm o the urgent need to protect civilians at risk in the crisis-hit North West and South West regions of Cameroon and to hold those responsible for abuses to account.
In a report published Monday August 2, the rights group documents fresh attrocities committed by both soldiers and separatist fighters against civilians, including rape, torture, unlawful killing, desecration of palaces, destruction of artefacts and kidnappings.
The report reads that Cameroonian security forces killed two civilians, raped a 53-year-old woman, destroyed and looted at least 33 homes, shops, as well as a traditional leader’s palace in the North-West region on June 8 and 9, 2021.
Meanwhile, armed separatist fighters in the South-West region killed a 12-year-old boy on June 6, a 51-year-old teacher on July 1 and in the North-West region kidnapped four humanitarian workers and held them overnight on June 25.
Human Rights Watch indicates that to get the above information, it conducted telephone interviews with 10 victims and witnesses to human rights violations by security forces, as well as with 18 relatives of victims, journalists, and civil society activists and as well interviewed a family member of the teacher killed by separatist fighters.
As for details on security forces’ abuses, the rights group says witnesses revealed to them that in the very early hours of June 9, about 150 soldiers from both the regular army and elite Rapid Intervention Battalion conducted a security operation in and around Mbuluf village in the North West region. As the forces approached the village on foot, fearful residents allegedly fled to the nearby bush.
Security forces reportedly stopped a group of six – a husband and wife, their two children, another man, and another woman – in the vicinity of the village and enquired on the whereabouts of separatists.
“We said we didn’t know,” the wife said. “They said my husband had a gun. We said we had no gun. They said they would kill us, and then one of them raped me.”
These are just few out of the many abuses Human Rights Watch says civilians are victims of in the Anglophone regions. The rights group has called on Cameroonian authorities to investigate and prosecute attackers and their commanders, and urged the UN Security Council and other regional and international partners to impose targeted sanction against those responsible for the serious human rights violations.
S.K.
