Deadly unrest closing schools in Cameroon’s anglophone gion

BUEA, Cameroon: There are no students in the playground of the high school in the Bomaka district of Buea — just the odd goat grazing on overgrown grass.
Buea is the capital of Cameroon’s Southwest Region — one of two regions gripped by violence after anglophones launched a campaign to break away from the country’s French-speaking majority.
In Bomaka, almost all the schools have been closed since 2016. It has just one junior school that remains open, but whose rollcall has slumped from around 600 to just 69 today.
“The crisis has killed the schools,” said Isaac Bissong, its headmaster. “Many pupils have left this neighborhood to study elsewhere because they are afraid.”
In one classroom, only eight students were present when AFP visited. The silence in the once-bustling corridors was heavy.
Unlike other schools in the country, the green, red and yellow flag of Cameroon was nowhere to be seen — “that could get us into trouble,” said Bissong. The school is located less than three kilometers (two miles) from Muea, one of the separatists’ strongholds and the scene of many clashes.
Bissong provides whatever security he can for the school, although he is not armed. He sits on a chair at the school entrance, on the lookout for potential trouble. Anglophone separatists in the Southwest and neighboring Northwest Region regularly attack schools that they accuse of teaching in French.
Teachers and other civil servants have been killed after being accused of “collaborating” with the central government in Yaounde.
The predominantly French-speaking country is ruled with an iron fist by President Paul Biya, 88, who has been in power for 39 years.
Years-long grievances among the anglophone minority brewed for years, overflowing into a declaration of independence on October 1, 2017.
Armed separatists launched attacks on the security forces, triggering a violent crackdown. The spiral of bloodshed has claimed more than 3,500 lives and forced around 700,000 people to flee their homes, according to monitors.
NGOs say that killings of civilians and abuses have been committed by both sides. According to UNICEF, in 2019, some 850,000 children were not in school in the English-speaking regions. In October 2020, a dozen men stormed the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in Kumba, in the Southwest Region, opening fire on pupils. They killed seven children aged between nine and 12. A dozen others were shot or macheted.