How Gendarmes are framing up, extorting money from civilians in Bamenda

The Anglophone has kept on claiming victims upon victims. And as the crisis prolongs, the poor keep on paying the supreme price. Despite the global outcry from the suffering population and the international community for a long lasting dialogue to be initiated so as to bring about an end to the crisis in the war-torn Anglophone regions, it has however been proven by the stakeholders that complete show of bad faith will be exerted so long as the crisis will keep enriching their greedy pockets.

The Cameroon security forces are a major part in the Anglophone crisis and may well work to the actualization of peace in these regions but are clearly working on the opposite direction.

In the North West region in general and in the Below Foncha-Bamenda neighborhood in particular, there has been a general outcry by city dwellers on the various schemes that the military forces have employed as a means of extorting money from them.

Robert (not his real name) has narrated to MMI the ordeals his nephew had to go through in the hands of the Gendarmes for something he knew nothing about.

“He was returning from the shop on a bike and was stopped at Below Foncha by the Gendarmes. They asked for his phone and he gave it to them. They asked him to unlock it and he did. They then asked him to open his Facebook of which he complained he did not have any data to access the internet. So the gendarme officer shared his hotspot and accessed his Facebook. He was then asked to step away which he did, only to be called back 5 minutes later by the Gendarme officer and shown a picture of Indian hemp on his phone. My nephew denied knowing how he got the picture but he insisted he knew about the drug. He was asked to call his parents to come along with a sum of 200,000FCFA to bail him out so he called his mother. The poor woman came with a sum of 20,000 frs and pleaded for them to release her son. After the pleadings they collected the money and released him,” he narrated.

Robert revealed that the woman and her son were shaken by the incident. When they told the story to their neighbors at Below Foncha, they replied saying that had been the normal happening. They complained of a certain Gendarme officer who has been using various dubious means of detaining people and extorting money from them.

Mimi Mefo Info sought to contact these Gendarme officers for them to answer some questions as concerns their activities in the area.

All our efforts were however futile as we got no response when we tried to contact them.

Image: archive