RE-VISITING THE NGARBUH MASSACRE

• Archives & Analysis
• February 24, 2023

 LRC Colonial military slaughtered 21 innocent civilians including pregnant women and children in cold blood Survivors recounted the sad events of 14 February 2020 after the attack that took place between 4am and 5am, when residents of Ngarbuh 3 neighbourhood woke to gunfire and found themselves surrounded by uniformed colonial LRC invader soldiers and roughly 30 Fulani civilians, who they recognised from neighbouring villages. Rights groups accused LRC colonial security forces of waging an increasingly brutal counter-insurgency campaign against Ambazonia freedom fighters after one of the deadliest civilian massacres in recent years sparked international condemnation and fears of an expanding conflict.

The Ngarbuh killings were one of the LRC security forces’ worst atrocities since the conflict in the Southern Cameroons aka Ambazonia began in late 2016.

The government initially denied that its security forces were responsible. But following international pressure, the octogenarian dictator and tyrant Paul Biya established a commission of inquiry on March 1, 2020.

The colonial Yaounde government then admitted that its security forces bear responsibility and announced the arrest of two soldiers and a gendarme in June 2020 who were presented before the colonial military tribunal in Yaounde charged with murder, arson, destruction, violence against a pregnant woman, and disobeying orders. The court is about 450 kilometres from Ngarbuh, making it difficult for family members of victims to attend According to Human Rights Watch, “When the trial started, it was welcomed as a step toward justice and tackling impunity for military abuses in Southern Cameroons, But three years after the massacre, victims and their families are still awaiting justice, while security forces have continued to commit serious human rights violations. Human Rights Watch research concluded that government forces and armed ethnic Fulani killed 21 civilians in Ngarbuh, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, burned five homes, looted scores of other properties, and beat residents in a reprisal operation against the community suspected of harbouring freedom fighters.

 

Ethnic Fulani living in and around Ngarbuh are also known as “Mbororo” and are mainly pastoralists whom the colonial government in Yaounde uses to fuel the crisis.
 

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The African Commission on human and peoples’ rights has said that “all investigations must be prompt, impartial, thorough and transparent” and that failure “transparently to take all necessary measures to investigate suspicious deaths and all killings by [s]tate agents and to identify and hold accountable individuals or groups responsible for violations of the right to life constitutes in itself a violation by the [s]tate of that right.”

Under international standards, including the United Nations Minnesota Protocol on the Investigation of Potentially Unlawful Death and jurisprudence from human rights bodies such as the European Court of Human rights, for an effective investigation to be transparent, victims and their families need to have reasonable access.
 

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Lawyers for the victims and their families told Human Rights Watch that sections 177 and 189 of Cameroun’ criminal procedure code provide the possibility that a magistrate could go to Ngarbuh and collect testimony from witnesses. But instead, lawyers said, courts have used section 336 of the Criminal Procedure Code to allow criminal proceedings to be heard and determined without witnesses present.

International standards also require an effective investigation to identify and collect evidence from probative witnesses, to take all feasible steps to identify and locate those allegedly involved in the crime, and to hold to account all those responsible, such as those with command responsibility.
 

ONYEE OKPALA;

Instead, family members’ lawyers said that the prosecution has presented testimony from people who did not witness the killings and whose testimony is at odds with witness accounts provided during the preliminary investigation, as well as reports on the massacre by the United Nations and local and international human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch

“Testimonies of administrative and military authorities, who serve as prosecution witnesses in this case, try to show that those killed in Ngarbuh were Ambazonian liberation fighters and not civilians,” said Barrister Menkem Sother, one of the family members’ lawyers. “It looks like the goal of the investigation will be to show that the Cameroon security forces only killed separatist fighters in Ngarbuh, and that the killing of any civilians was the work of vigilantes.”
 

 

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The judicial authorities also appear to have made no effort to locate the accused vigilantes. According to family members’ lawyers, investigators had the telephone number and location of at least one vigilante, but apparently made no attempt to trace and apprehend him or to explain why they didn’t.

In the Southern Cameroons, vigilantes work in tangent with local authorities and security forces and receive material support from the colonial government in the form of motorcycles, first aid kits, flashlights, and metal detectors. As a result, the colonial LRC sub-divisional officers, including the one in Ndu LGA, which includes Ngarbuh, should normally have a list of the vigilantes working in their areas. The use of ethnic militia by the colonial LRC government adds a dangerous new dimension to the conflict.

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The prosecution strategy also omits accountability for the authorities who had direct supervision over the suspects and the units and personnel who conducted the military operation in Ngarbuh.

 

This includes the colonial LRC commander of the 52nd BIM, who acknowledged that he authorized a reconnaissance operation to Ngarbuh, and the colonial Ndu sub-divisional officer.

 

The 17 vigilantes would have been operating under his supervision. According to family members’ lawyers, the suspects all stated that the operation in Ngarbuh had been authorized by the colonial LRC Commander of the 52nd BIM and the colonial LRC Ndu sub-prefect.
 

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Lawyers for the victims also said that the judge in charge of the case also sits on the court of appeals, to which complaints about the trial and requests for review will be referred. “If the parties are not satisfied with the judgment and the case is referred to the appeals court, the review will be carried out by the same judge,” said Barrister Richard Tamfu, one of the family members’ lawyers.

 

This is a blatant violation of the right to appeal to an impartial tribunal. As set out in the principles and guidelines on the right to fair trial and legal assistance in Africa; judicial impartiality is compromised if “a judicial official sits as member of an appeal tribunal in a case which he or she decided or participated in a lower judicial body.”
 

 

ONYEE OKPALA;

As the trial goes on, LRC colonial security forces continue to commit serious crimes in the Southern Cameroons - Ambazonia, underscoring a climate of impunity that has fueled the conflict in Ambaland for seven years.

Human Rights Watch observed that: “The lack of justice for the killings of civilians in Ngarbuh and the recurring military abuses are avoidable consequences of the failure to ensure effective investigations and prosecutions,” Cameroonian authorities should rein in their security forces, ensure an end to abuses, and guarantee that those most responsible for the Ngarbuh killings, as well as other serious abuses, are held to account in fair and effective trials.”

 

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Eyewitness accounts

Gladys Kwitchere, a woman in her 50s, was the first victim. Emerging from her doorway, she was shot dead by attackers, who entered her home and killed her daughter and five of her grandchildren, who were all under the age of 18 and one of whom was just five months old.

Kwitchere’s two other grandchildren, Jude and Mediane, fled the house into the thick brush surrounding the village where they were also shot and killed. Both their bodies, in the brush, and the house were then set ablaze.

 

ONYEE OKPALA;

Seven people in a nearby house were also killed and set on fire, witnesses said, as attackers swept through the village, shooting indiscriminately at fleeing men, women, and children. Some victims were shot dead in the street and their corpses set on fire where they fell; others were dragged back into their homes, which were then set ablaze.

The attackers next moved to neighbouring Ngarbuh 2, where they rounded up and beat dozens of men, stole cell phones, looted homes, and warned residents that they would return in three days and kill anyone who remained in the village. Any retaliation against Fulani in the area would also be met with death, the attackers told residents.

By midday, 21 civilians had been killed.

 

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The following day, survivors buried their dead in four mass graves, while two injured civilians, including one pregnant woman who lost her baby due to her wounds, remained at a local hospital receiving treatment.

The violence displaced around 700 people, according to the UN’s emergency aid coordination body, OCHA, which travelled to the area to conduct a needs assessment.

 

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In the week following the Ngarbuh attack, Fulani militia hired by the colonial lrc barbaric government carried out subsequent attacks in the nearby villages of Fundong and Mmen,in Boyo County displacing almost 2,000 more civilians, local aid organisations and UN officials said.

The Ambazonia liberation fighters – known locally as “the Amba Boys” – are estimated to control some 80 percent of the heavily forested Northern zone of the southern Cameroons. They Amba Boys are increasingly better equipped and organised; they have recently been carrying out more sophisticated guerrilla-style ambushes and attacks.

 

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Besides the holocaust in Ngarbuh, peace loving Ambazonians have suffered similar fates from brutal LRC military: killings, burning, looting, maiming, raping, in several other localities like Mautau, Kwakwa, Muyuka, Muea, Buea, Ekona, Mamfe, Ndop, Kumbo, Batibo, Ngie, Pinyin, Santa, Bali, only for standing up for their fundamental rights and over 40.000 have been killed, over 500 homes and villages razed, hundreds of thousands have fled their homes and living under deplorable conditions in the bushes or in neighbouring towns and villages, many are on the run as refugees, many in the jails...