Bamenda:
Youths raze down police checkpoint in protest against brutality

A police checkpoint in Bamenda, capital city of Cameroon’s North West region has been burnt to ashes.

The makeshift checkpoint was brought down yesterday evening by irate youths after one of them was shot dead by soldiers.

Djibrill, a native of Nso was shot on Sunday by the soldiers at their checkpoint in the Below Foncha neighborhood, leading to a massive protest.

The youths insisted Djibrill did not provoke anyone, and gave the soldiers no cause to aim their rifle at him. His death, they added, was one of many other abuses orchestrated by soldiers on the innocent population.

“It is too much! They go around beating children and fathers in the quarter for no reason … It has become unbearable,” screamed one of the protesters as they paraded the streets with the corpse of the deceased.

After several minutes of parading the town with the corpse and being watched from a distance by security operatives, the protest took a different turn as the angry population visited the checkpoint where the incident happened.

They would later tear the makeshift structure down and set it ablaze.

No administrative official has made any statement or reaction to the incident yet.

Bamenda, like several parts of the country’s Anglophone regions, has been the center of continuous violence and rights violations by both soldiers and separatist fighters for the past four years today. Government and civilians continue to trade blames, as civilians die in their thousands.

Mimi Mefo Info

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