Nestor Ngong Dzenchuo
(Independent Scholar)
Abstract:
War has never appealed to the human conscience – not in any form. This is because in war humanity descends into brutes, even feral and soulless.
The world has never been gripped with bated breath like when a new war breaks out, no matter the reason in the world’s polycrisis. This is because the first real victims are the women and children as has been noted and still in the ongoing war in the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon based on Linguistic Lines, otherwise known as Ambassonian War of Independence. This war pits the military and Southern Cameroon Revolutionary Guards, the separatist fighters.
The torture and execution of captured opponents without respect of international convention on war by both sides lend credence to the cruelty and barbarity of war. The mistreatment, rape and sometimes execution of local girls by the military because they are ‘Ambassonian women’ by the soldiers with callous disregard by the authorities is heart-rending, thoughts that make culpable international communities such as the African Union and the United nations as silent accomplices to war’s cruelty and barbarism today.
The war began when both disgruntled Common Law lawyers had come out on the street bearing peace plants, demanded a translation of the OHADA (Business Law) texts from French into English of Cameroon’s bijural system. The legal minds were severely manhandled by security elements. On the heels of that the Cameroon Anglophone Teachers Trade Union (CATTU) to came out to protest, demanding salary increment and improve working condition like their French counterparts. They too were severely beaten with police batons. This war has seen pregnant women caught and put behind bars for being spouses of separatist fighters. Or, the bodies of slain separatist fighters decapitated and burnt to ashes by the military and vice versa. The cruelty perpetuated by the belligerents, Ambassinian fighters and the army, makes war an unpleasant thing to wish for.
