English-speaking separatists in Cameroon have admitted deadly fighting between split rebel factions for the first time.
In a video shared on social media on Saturday, Cameron’s English-speaking fighters claim to have released a number of rebel-kidnapped civilians. A competing English-speaking separatist group known as the Marines had taken their guns, and the fighters presented two individuals who claimed to be separatist commanders in the film.
The Buffaloes, a separatist group, released another film that they claimed was shot in Bali, an English-speaking region in the northwest, and in which they claimed to have fought another rebel organisation led by Big Number, a self-declared rebel commander. They said that Big Number warriors kidnapped a man and demanded a ransom.
The abductions, deaths, maimings, rapes, and torture of citizens, according to the Buffaloes who provided the film, have risen. In the video, they claim that Big Number sent fighters to harass civilians. The Buffaloes argued that if rebel soldiers are flagrantly violating human rights, they cannot claim to be defending civilians from the savagery of Cameroon’s government forces.
The films are those of competing separatist organisations in Cameroon’s English-speaking western areas, according to both the Cameroonian government and separatist leaders.
The immediate return of all abductees, including the five Catholic priests, a nun, and two worshippers who were taken this month from a church near the Nigerian border, is also demanded by certain separatist groups on social media. According to the Catholic Church in Cameroon, the assailants demanded a $100,000 ransom.
Separatists claimed that Yaounde‘s central government in Cameroon was using education as a tool of manipulation and assimilation of English speakers by the French-speaking majority when the separatist conflict first erupted in 2016.
The lockdowns enforced by separatists on Monday, according to splinter organisations, are evidence that fighters not the central authority in Yaounde control the English-speaking regions and harm English-speaking residents. The splinter organisations claim they are no longer in favor of the separatists’ forced closing of schools.