Cameroon - May 2023

Three incidents in May indicated an increasing intensity in the conflict between Anglophone separatists and the central government in Cameroon that has been ongoing since 2017. On 2 May, a group of 15 separatists was reported to have attacked a military outpost in a village 40 kilometres from the city of Douala, killing five soldiers and one civilian. This attack was the closest yet to the country’s major port and economic hub. On 8 May, a journalist named Anye Nde Nsoh was murdered in Bamenda in what the separatists later claimed was a case of mistaken identity. A separatist leader subsequently threatened to arrest any journalist who protested against Nsoh’s killing. This is the third murder of a journalist in Cameroon in 2023. Two weeks later, a group of 30 women who had protested against a rebel group’s collection of taxes from the local population in the Nort-West region village of Kedjom Keku were kidnapped and mistreated. They were released after being held for one week.

Sources: Africa News, Radio France Internationale, France24, Voice of America, Anadolu Agency, Deutsche Welle