For almost four years, the English-speaking regions of the northwest and southwest have been in conflict between independent armed groups and the Cameroonian police. Murders and abuses committed in both camps left more than 3,000 dead and 700,000 displaced. The government finally organized regional elections that would give these regions access to a special status. But for those who have lost everything and fled their homes, peace still seems far away.
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With our special correspondent in Douala,
At the end of a muddy alley in Douala is the neighborhood manager Joseph Mofors’ house; dozens of women and children are crammed there. The poor arrived, just like Claudette, almost a year ago from their village in the northwestern region with their six children: “My father, my mother and my husband are dead. One day, while I was out in the fields, the soldiers came and killed my husband. He was not a rebel fighter! Afterwards we fled out into the woods, we stayed there for a long time. We slept in holes dug in the ground, some days we ate nothing. “
We need “sincere dialogue”
She finally manages to reach Douala and hears about this boss who receives the internally displaced people in the conflict. Today, 34 of them live with him. In four years, Joseph Mofor has welcomed 370 people and more than 200 children. He sees only one way out of the crisis: “The government really can not understand that it is only a dialogue that can solve, an open dialogue. They sit down to find solutions. If it’s federalism, we’re going to federalism. ”
First peace
And these regions, which are supposed to give more autonomy to the English-speaking regions, are not meaningful in the midst of a conflict in his eyes: “We cannot hold regional meetings with murder. There must first be peace. Meanwhile, his own struggle continues: to find something to feed, dress and take care of those he takes in.
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