Schools are “weapons of war” in a separatist insurgency in Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions, but the massacre of eight young children in class last week brought a new level of horror.

Since violence erupted in 2017, the kidnapping of youngsters, attacks on teachers and the destruction of schools have been frequent in the western part of the mainly French-speaking country.

Secessionist groups kill civilians, while the army is also known for brutal attacks on non-combattants in its drive to crush forces seeking a breakaway state.

On October 24, gunmen on motorbikes rode up to a bilingual school in the town of Kumba and opened fire on girls and boys aged between 12 and 14.

At least eight children perished and about a dozen more were wounded and taken to hospital, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The school is used as a weapon of war in this conflict,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, regional Central Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch (HRW), told AFP.

“The separatists don’t want the children to be in the schools, institutions which they equate with central authority,” she said.

“Most of the teachers appointed to the Anglophone regions are Francophone,” Allegrozzi added, in a country where French is used by a majority. The English-speaking regions are a post-colonial heritage.

Syllabuses for history and civic education lessons are seen as biased instruments of government policy by separatists, who have in recent years introduced a strategy of school boycotts.

In November 2019, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) reported that some 855,000 children were not attending school in the Anglophone regions.

About 90 percent of state-run primary schools, totalling more than 4,100 establishments, and 77 percent of the state-run secondary schools were not functioning or completely closed down, UNICEF found.

‘People began to believe again’

The start of the new school year on October 5, 2020, was markedly different.

“The government and Anglophone civil society put a lot of pressure on the separatist groups to let their children go back to school, and schools that had been closed for years began to reopen,” said Arrey Elvis Ntui, the senior researcher in Cameroon for the independent International Crisis Group.

“After three years of almost total school shortages, people began to believe again in the institution, the classrooms were packed,” said Jacques Ebwea, a political analyst based in Buea, the chief town of the Anglophone Southwest region.

“It was a success. Unfortunately, Saturday’s attack will dampen the enthusiasm of many people,” he added.

Blaming separatists for the killings, Communications Minister Rene Emmanuel Sadi declared that “the goal of the secessionists is to break the momentum observed in the resumption of classes for the 2020/2021 school year in the Northwest and Southwest regions, and thereby dissuade parents from sending their children to school.”

On Tuesday morning, false rumours of new attacks spread panic at schools in Limbe and Buea in the Southwest, where frightened pupils tried to flee the premises while their scared parents were rushing to fetch them.

“I don’t know if I’m going to send my child back to school,” said Desire, a resident of Kumba. “If the situation deteriorates any further, I will send him elsewhere, to Douala or Bafoussam.”

Both towns are on Francophone territory and Douala, a big city and port, is the economic capital of the country.

‘Could happen anywhere’

“There is general panic in the area,” said Semma Valentine, a teacher in Bamenda, the capital of the Northwest region. “All parties concerned in the conflict are to blame for this situation.”

“Parents must have the courage to send their children to school, but we also need the government to guarantee the safety of these establishments.”

Stephen Afuh, chairman of the Presbyterian Education Authority Teachers Trade Union (PEATTU), warned that “what happened in Kumba could happen anywhere at any time.”

He remarked on the difference between urban areas and the rural ones where many schools could not reopen.

“To ensure security in schools, the government should call a ceasefire, recognise its mistakes and open a dialogue between all parties to examine the causes of the conflict and to find solutions together,” Afuh said.

Confronted with Saturday’s attack, a “deeply outraged” government chastised the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba for reopening without authorisation, which meant that it “could not benefit from the same protective measures as other places of learning”.

In Cameroon, nevertheless, it is common practice for schools to open without the required authorisation.

“Keep the schools open, make sure they have the authorisations to function,” Secondary Education Minister Pauline Nalova Lyonga said in English during a visit to the site.

“The school that works will guarantee our joint existence.”

Source: AFP

Cameroon says it has again closed more than 60 schools on its northern border with Nigeria to protect children and teaching staff from increasing Boko Haram attacks. Many people have fled the region and are now displaced.

 The Islamist group has stepped up its use of suicide bombers, even as the country’s military has drastically reduced the jihadists’ firepower.

 The central African country has deployed its military to assure the safety of the remaining civilian population in the affected regions. 

 Ousmanou Garga, Cameroon’s basic education official on the northern border with Nigeria, says recent Boko Haram attacks have made many schools unsafe.

 Garga says several dozen schools in Cameroon’s Mayo Sava, Mayo Tsanaga and Logone and Chari administrative units that border Nigeria’s Borno state, the epicenter of Boko Haram’s activities, no longer function.

 “Sixty-two schools have been closed. The children have to be either scholarized (educated) in other schools very far from their own villages or to abandon schools. Thirty-four-thousand-and-fifty-four students have been registered as IDPs. We have the students of the host communities; we have even refugee students,” he said.

 Garga said teachers in all the affected schools fled with the children they teach.

 Cameroon’s military has been reporting at least three Boko Haram attacks every week since January. The military says most of the attackers are suicide bombers, mainly women and children. The military says the terrorist group has torched 13 schools within the past two months, held at least 200 people for ransom and abducted an unknown number of civilians.

 Colonel Ndikum Azeh, commander of Cameroonian troops fighting Boko Haram in the Mayo Sava, Mayo Tsanaga and Logone and Chari administrative units, says the military has been deployed to protect civilians in the area. Azeh says some troops have also been deployed to teach displaced students in safer areas less susceptible to Boko Haram attacks.

 “Ashigashia (a border town) has for long been a target for Boko Haram assault as early as 2014. The hierarchy (military) thinks that to sustain a good security situation, it is through the youths and the best process is through their education,” Azeh said.

 Nongovernmental organizations, rights and humanitarian groups have been calling on Boko Haram to respect the intergovernmental Safe School Declaration. Desire Fouda of the NGO School First says the declaration should be observed to protect students and ensure they are able to receive an education.

 “We sensitize different actors in education to respect those guidelines on safe schools declaration so that all the different actors should contribute to help those children to have access to education,” Fouda said.

 Boko Haram terrorists have been fighting for 11 years to create an Islamic caliphate in northeast Nigeria. The fighting has spread to Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Benin, with regular killings, abductions and burnings of mosques, churches, markets and schools.  

Source: VOA

Universities and other higher education institutions in Cameroon started to welcome returning students on Thursday after a suspension of nearly seven months due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The universities have adopted strict social distancing and all-round disinfections while receiving the returning students, officials said.

All students and teachers must wear face masks and check their temperature regularly, said Minister of Higher Education Jacques Fame Ndongo.

Some returning students told Xinhua that their emotional connection to their universities has become even deeper despite a long separation. “I feel like crying. Setting foot on campus after such a long time gives me deep satisfaction.

It was like I was in prison and now free. I’m so happy to start school again,” Gerard Batir, a sophomore of the University of Douala, told Xinhua.

Cameroon has so far recorded more than 20,000 coronavirus cases. COVID-19 prevalence in the country is generally decreasing with a recovery rate of 95 percent, according to the Ministry of Public Health.

Source: Xinhuanet

10 teachers were abducted in the Northern zone of Ambazonia on the same day that classes reportedly resumed in both French and Southern Cameroons.

A report released by the teachers association said Seydou Mbangyah, headmaster of Baba1 Bilingual High School in Ngoketunjia,  Chayi Sungha of GBHS Baba1, Ntam Yuh,a teacher at the Bambui high school in the Mezam were among the ten forcefully removed from the respective schools and taken to an unknown destination.

The French Cameroun civil administrators in the area have maintained a kind of deliberate silence on the subject as Ambazonia Restoration Forces continue to impose a boycott of schools in Southern Cameroons.

For their part, Cameroon government army soldiers have burned down school buildings, assaulted and rape students and teachers.

The attacks on schools, students and teachers have had a devastating impact on education. According to figures from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), up to the last school year, 4,400 schools were closed in Southern Cameroons and more than 600,000 children are being deprived of education because of the security climate.

By Fon Lawrence in Bamenda

At least 3,000 Cameroon teachers have refused  offers by the central African state’s military to transport teaching staff to schools in the conflict-prone English-speaking regions.

The teachers, who fled separatists’ attacks, looting, burning and occupation of their schools in the English-speaking regions, say they are not sure of their safety as some separatist fighters are again threatening to kill teachers and students who go to school. The renewed separatist threats are casting doubts over all schools reopening after four years of closure due to separatist crisis.

Primary school teacher Fru Issac, 47, says he has refused an offer by the Cameroon military to take him to his school in the restive English-speaking region. However, Fru said Friday, six of his peers accepted the offer to be transported by the military from the town of Bamenda to Ndop in the English-speaking Northwest Region.  

“The authorities are now taking the teachers who cannot access their stations in armored cars. But the question is, when you successfully take them there, how would the teachers cope in the absence of these armored cars,” he said. 

Fru said he remained convinced that fighters were still hiding in the bush ready to commit atrocities on teachers and students when the military transports leave.  

However, Handerson Quetong, the highest government official in the English-speaking northwestern Ngoketungia Division, where Ndop is located, says teachers who fail to return to school will be punished. Quetong says the military will also find and punish people he describes as agents sent by separatists to threaten parents if they send their children to school.  

“Anybody, especially teachers who will continue to insist on boycott, should know that [we consider that] they have another agenda which is hidden, and woe betide anybody who will still continue to carry out campaign and sensitization for this doctrine of boycott,” he said.  

Cameroon’s military said it has been on standby since October 5, when the country’s 2020-2021 school year began, to transport teachers, students and administrative staff to schools in English-speaking towns and villages.   

The military said they acted to ensure that schools closed for the past four years as a result of the separatist crisis can reopen their doors so thousands of children can have access to education.   

However, Cameroon’s ministries in charge of elementary and secondary education said more than 3,000 teachers did not show up last week.

Cameroon reported that 140 of close to 500 schools closed by fighters within the past four years had reopened, with about 30,000 anxious children in attendance.  

Some Anglophone activists have asked for schools to be reopened, saying it was a human rights abuse to continue to deprive children of education.  

The Teachers Association of Cameroon said at least 300 teachers responded to the calls and returned to schools in the English-speaking regions. The association said many of the teachers preferred to return on their own for fear of being identified with the military by fighters.  

However, a group calling itself the Interim Governing Council of Ambazonia, the nation they are fighting to create, said it had banned all schools controlled by Cameroon central government in Yaoundé from operating in the English-speaking regions.  

It said it had ordered its fighters to abduct teachers and students who dare go to school.  

Colonel Leoue Fesso, in charge of road safety at Cameroon’s Defense Ministry says special troops have been deployed to assure the safety of the teachers and students in all English schools.  

“Our forces made it possible to restore serenity in these areas affected by the crisis. We can therefore reassure the entire education community in these areas about the protective measures being taken by the defense and security forces for a smooth and successful 2020-2021 academic year,” he said. 

Cameroon’s government is also encouraging the creation of militias around schools to inform the military of any strange movements and visitors.   

The separatist conflict in Cameroon has left over 3,000 people dead and half a million displaced according to the United Nations.  The crisis started in 2016, when teachers and lawyers took to the streets to complain about the overbearing influence of the French language in the bilingual country.   

The military responded with a crackdown and separatists took up weapons, claiming that they were defending civilians. They asked for a school shutdown and vowed to make the English-speaking regions ungovernable. 

Source: VOA

School attendance is improving in Cameroon’s two English-speaking regions that have been ravaged by separatist violence since 2016, local officials said on Wednesday,

Schools, particularly in rural areas that shut down because of violence, are gradually reopening, according to Adolph Lele Lafrique, governor of the Northwest, one of the troubled regions, without giving further details.

“We are seeing students coming back to school in their numbers, schools are also gradually reopening. The situation is generally improving,” Lafrique told reporters after visiting some schools in the region.

“We want to believe that this year will be a normal year for schools. Security of the children is guaranteed. We are pleased with the number of children coming to school,” said Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of Southwest region.

Separatists enforced a school boycott in the troubled regions since 2016 to protest against what they described as educational injustices against English-speakers.

The four-year school boycott has left more than 800,000 children out of school, according to the UNICEF, also known as the UN Children’s Fund.

Last week, two key separatist leaders, for the first time in four years, called for school reopening in the regions, stressing that school boycott “is no longer a weapon” for the struggle for independence.

In 2017, separatist fighters began clashing with government forces in a bid to establish an independent nation they call “Ambazonia” in the two Anglophone regions of largely French-speaking Cameroon.

The new school year in Cameroon started on Monday.

Source: Xinhaunet