Babanki: Outrage as Amba fighters torture over 30 women for rejecting imposed levies!.

The victims this time around are dozens of women who took to the streets Friday May 19 to denounce the atrocities of separatist fighters.  They are also said to have protested the forceful imposition of levies of 10,000 FCFA on men and 5,000 FCFA on women by separatist foot agents.

In retaliation, the gun-carrying youngsters who identified themselves as Amba fighters, swooped on the women and bundled them into the unknown.

Hours after picking the women from their homes, the separatist fighters whom Biya supporters have been describing as “terrorists,” released a video of the women.

The video, which has gone viral shows the women being subjected to unbearable torture. Accounts which The Guardian Post could not independently confirm, further hold that the Amba fighters had also shot some of the women severally on their legs.

Amba fighters demonise women

In the same video which the separatist fighters apparently filmed, they are heard inflicting trauma on their victims. They made pronouncements demonising the women for daring to rise against the siege of separatist fighters.

One of them is heard in the video saying: “These women just got up from nowhere in the early hours of May 19, 2023, and descended to the streets to protest that they do not want Amba fighters in their community. This was after a stressful night we had had, filled with continuous gunshots”.

Another even accused the women of being witches who are bent on fighting Amba fighters before stating that only God can deliver the women from their grip.

As at yesterday, reports had emerged that one of the women had been rushed to a health facility with a broken leg. Medics are said to have   programmed one of her legs for amputation! 

A bullet which the separatist fighters fired is said to have touched her bones. Several others are said to be living through unbearable pain. 

Beyond this, the separatist fighters were also overheard in the viral video cursing and accusing the women of having been working to frustrate their agenda. 

A voice was also heard in the video saying that most of the women   abducted will not leave their den alive. But narratives emerged yesterday to the effect that most of the women were being treated in a health facility in the North West Region. 

Despite seen weeping profusely and hoping even against hope for their agony to turn to peace, the Amba fighters, going by their declarations on record seemed unmoved. They were rather promising to do their worst.

What actually happened?  

According to reports, the women had descended to the streets of Babanki, decrying the suffocating effects of separatist fighters’ activities. 

They had cursed the gun-carrying youngsters for putting them through ‘hell’ since the armed conflict in the North West and South West Region went deadly.

The women, most of whom were in their late 50s and 60s, are said to have marched, brandishing sticks and calling for an end to separatist excesses. 

Some locals said the band of gunmen had been going round neighbourhoods in Babanki, collecting names of residents. It is said the names were being collected to milk money from the population through imposed levies.

Amba faction at origin of move

The idea to cage communities and extort money from locals under the guise of funding a liberation movement, was first initiated by the Ambazonia Governing Council, AGov, of Ayaba Cho Lucas.

AGov is the separatist faction that spearheaded and indoctrinated fighters across communities in the North West and South West Regions to be forcefully collecting money from locals. The approach had met with stiff resistance and criticism.  

Since news of the Babanki torture surfaced, many have been cursing the Amba hoodlums for having again, crossed the red line by putting women through physical and psychological torture. 

Some civil society organisations are already qualifying the use of live ammunition and torturing of the women to crimes against humanity. Going by them, women, like children, are vulnerable and are protected in the face of war or conflict through international conventions.

They cite Article 27, Chapter IV of the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 for the protection of Civilian Persons in time of war in article which states that: “Women shall be especially protected against any attack on their honour, in particular against rape, enforced prostitution, or any form of indecent assault”.

Amba fighters not new to putting communities under siege 

But for the fact that what happened in Babanki involved only women, separatist fighters have unending antecedents of putting locals through pain.

They have since 2017 instituted all kinds of anti-people ‘laws’ on the same population they claim to be fighting for. 

They have been accused of beheadings, slaughtering, arson and mass theft especially in the cocoa-rich South West Region.

Analysts say, the protest in Babanki, which was not the first against Amba fighters, only comes to reinforce the dislike of the population to the activities of those fronting to split Cameroon.