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Civilians Accuse Military of Brutality in Cameroon's Anglophone Regions

Moki Edwin Kindzeka

   YAOUNDE - Cameroon's military has detained hundreds of people in the
   country's troubled northwest as they search for separatists following
   the killing of a police officer this week. Locals accuse the military
   of carrying out revenge attacks, including looting and burning shops,
   in the English-speaking region-- a charge the military denies.
   Thirty-four-year old fish seller Ernestine Sahmo says she has decided
   to temporarily leave the English-speaking northwestern town of Bamenda
   due to what she says is military brutality.

   Sahmo says she was forced out of her shop by armed soldiers who
   detained 80 other women at a police station for three days.

   "The military entered the whole market and was removing everybody," she
   said. "They will break into your store and then start brutalizing you,
   asking you to go out. They succeeded to remove everybody from the food
   market to the mobile police station. We were being asked to sit on the
   ground. Some women were collapsing. The way they terrorized us, we
   never knew we would come back alive."

   Sahmo says store owners' goods were either looted or torched by the
   military.

   Last Monday, the government said separatist fighters in Bamenda killed
   a policeman in active service. The military was then deployed to hunt
   for the killers.

   Residents said troops started arresting people indiscriminately,
   forcing some either to undress or to sit on the floor for several
   hours.

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