Ngarbuh massacre findings: MRC accuses Biya regime of serving the world with half-truth

Opposition political party, the Cameroon Renaissance movement, MRC has accused the government of Cameroon of providing half-truth of the Ngarbuh massacre investigation.

In an outing Thursday, the MRC questioned”How many people in total were massacred on February 14, 2020? How many houses were burned? Who finances and maintains the militiamen and auxiliaries recruited by the Ngarbuh Commando? Who are those in the army, the institutions of the State, the administration, within civil society, who over the years ordered, supervised, covered and attempted to manipulate national and international opinion?”.

Like many other Cameroonians, the party feels there is more to the incident that the government makes appear.

To the MRC, only an international investigation can produce the truth.

Revisiting the absence of President Biya, Prof Maurice Kamto says the statesman’s return to the public stage was supposed to be effected after the audience he granted the French ambassador to Cameroon.

The President, he says however left the Secretary-General at the Presidency to declare sanctions for perpetrators of the Ngarbuh massacre. “Mr Paul BIYA preferred, from the height of his sufficiency and his usual contempt for Cameroonians and their suffering to task his Secretary-General to indulge in the pitiful admission of the responsibility of the regime in these massacres,” says Kamto.

The results revealing the act were done by soldiers he adds are not new as “all sources of good faith had already established this responsibility.”

Another reason the politician and his party want an international body to carry out an investigation, is to determine the whereabouts of persons “detained arbitrarily and tortured by security services on the pretext that they collaborated with human rights organisations which unveiled the crimes and the involvement of the army? (For example, the person who had been arrested, tortured and accused of sending images of the massacres to the organisation Human Rights Watch)?”

“What is being put in place for the reconciliation of the Fulani and the other communities concerned?” He questions further, citing the rise in religious and tribal tensions in the area that has left most local communities divided and has even resulted in skirmishes between communities.

“With all these persistent unanswered questions over the Ngarbuh massacres and given the regime’s many efforts to conceal the truth, including the use of intimidation and terror, it is evident that the conclusions that enabled the drafting of the April 21, 2020 press release are truncated” a statement from the party declares.

To ensure justice is fully served, Kamto believes several other instances of extrajudicial killings in the North West and South West regions should also be investigated in like manner. This, he says, should even extend to the Far North where the army like those of other Lake Chad basin countries is fighting the Boko Haram terrorist sect.

“The regime, no doubt ill-advised, chose to serve the world a half-truth in the hope of relieving the pressure and continuing its dirty war,” he says.

Prof Maurice Kamto and his CRM party are not the only ones who feel more action needs to be taken. Several others have also taken turns to cite weaknesses in the decision made by the Cameroon government with many falling for the dismissal of top government officials especially those that took turns to discredit reports of human rights groups on the massacre, accusing them of working with separatist fighters.

The UN human rights commission yesterday lauded the move by the Cameroon government but cited the need for better cooperation to protect citizens better. The commission also asked that those accused be given a free and fair trial.

Mimi Mefo Info