Cameroonian authorities have displayed the corpse of a separatist leader in towns and villages to deter the rebels and warn youth against joining their cause.
Recall that Lekeaka Oliver, a known separatist commander, was killed by the military last week. Oliver was wanted for collaborating with rebel organisations in the neighboring Nigerian nation to slaughter civilians, carry out beheadings, and set fire to hundreds of public buildings.
The military of Cameroon claims that hundreds of people had observed them display Lekeaka Oliver’s body over the past four days.
Oliver, the leader of the Red Dragon rebel group and a self-declared field marshal, and his bodyguard were allegedly killed by military personnel last week in Menji, a hamlet close to the Nigerian border.
It claimed Oliver had attacked numerous schools since 2017 and beheaded at least 10 individuals, including three traditional leaders.
The highest-ranking government official in Meme, an administrative division of Kumba, a border town, gave a speech to a throng on Sunday. Chamberlin Ntouou Ndong.
Ndong claimed that the government of Cameroon ordered the military to display the body as a grisly warning to Anglophone rebels battling to split Cameroon and its French-speaking majority into an independent state.
“It is a testimony that all those who are not willing to surrender are going to face our forces of law and order. The head of state gave a word out to all who remain in the bushes to lay down their arms and join the remaining population in the development of this country,” he said.
The exhibit, according to Ndong, aims to discourage young people from Cameroon from joining rebel groups.
The Red Dragons’ allies in conflict, the Ambazonia Defence Forces, are led by Capo Daniel.
Daniel claims that the rebels’ display of the body of their leader won’t deter them from fighting.
“Field marshal has been replaced by a younger and more vibrant leader,” he said. “Our armed resistance against Cameroon rule will only intensify. Our forces have received instructions to carry out reprisal actions in response to the killing of [the] field marshal. Such display of dead body by the Cameroon government only adds to its list of terror tactics being used to subjugate our people. Our fight of self-determination will only intensify.”
Ephraim Foreke is a teacher at a government school in Fontem in the Lebialem administrative unit where many of Oliver’s rebel camps were located.
Foreke claims that Oliver’s passing is a relief for the populace who had been terrified of the Red Dragons.
Foreke added that residents have been cleaning schools in the hopes that students and instructors who fled the attacks will return when he spoke to newsmen on Monday.
“We are in front of the administrative block. There are some people below who are clearing down to the Francophone section. All the doors were destroyed. Chairs that were there were all eaten by rats. Every place is like a graveyard. They ransacked the whole place,” he said.