Cameroon Declared War on Separatists After 2017 Protests
cameroon’s government declared war on separatists in December 2017 after Anglophone protests that began in October 2016 escalated into armed conflict. Yinyu Divine Mburi, a Cameroon citizen and lawyer, said he took part in the first day of protests and watched the crisis widen across towns, homes and schools.
The conflict has stretched for 10 years, and Mburi said millions of Cameroonians have been internally and externally displaced since it began. His account places a face on those numbers: he and his family were forced to leave their home, move to another town and struggle to pay rent and find food.
Mburi’s account from Cameroon
Mburi said Anglophone students, teachers and lawyers began protesting in October 2016 against the Francophone government because they believed Anglophone citizens were being marginalized. He said the state pushed French into schools and civil law into Anglophone courts, while he and others were made to take university subjects in full French even though they had been brought up speaking English.
He said public offices turned him away with the line, "go and speak your dialect in your place or village." Mburi said, "The regime had almost abandoned Anglophones to themselves."
Troops, arrests and blackouts
In response to the protests, the government sent troops and soldiers into towns. Mburi said he saw wanton killings, burning of villages and looting during the crackdowns. The government mass-arrested protesters, classified them as terrorist groups and shut off the internet to stop the spread of information.
A blackout in an Anglophone region in 2017 lasted for months. Separatist groups such as the Ambazonia Defense Forces formed out of the Ambazonia Governing Council, and Anglophone protesters asserted their desire for independence as the Federal Republic of Ambazonia, which was self-declared in 2017.
December 2017 war declaration
The government’s declaration of war in December 2017 marked the point at which protest, repression and separatist organizing became an open armed conflict. Mburi said his family also struggled with switching school lessons from English to French after they were displaced, showing how the crisis reached into daily life as well as the battlefield.
The next confirmed development in the record is the crisis’s continuing toll: displacement, rising costs and a conflict that has drawn little international media attention, even as Mburi’s account shows how language policy, public services and schooling became part of the fight.
