An African adage goes “when elephants fight its the grass that suffers” No where is this true like in Bamenda where businesses have been subjugated to extreme forms of extortion by armed belligerents in the Anglophone crisis. While the armed separatists kidnapped, impose illegal taxes on the population, some state forces have set up an elaborate scheme to intimidate and extort from the local population.
From several reported cases and investigations by City Web, some police and gendarme offices disguise and dress shabbily to mimic separatist fighters go around businesses in commercial districts of Bamenda asking business persons to show prove of payment of liberation taxes.
Once the person presents one, the security officials will leave then inform the others who descend on the business site to carry out arrests. The arrested persons are accused of sponsoring terrorists, failing to report case of known terrorists and taken into detention. Once there some are left incommunicado, some are detained in illegal detention cells. They are threaten and told they will be transferred to SED in Yaounde or should pay huge sums from hundred of thousands to million of FCFA before they are set free.
They openly tell their captors that if they don’t cooperate, they will find incriminating evidence against them. City Web also found out that many of the cases do not reach the legal department or the military tribunal, indicating is a covert operation. Cty Web is also aware that a group of gendarmarie officer involved were recently apprehended and some are in detention.
The recent group of security officials involved in the scam are from the police and are reported to be working under the instructions of very senior police officials who provide them cover. Some of their victims told City Web they were detained for several days both men and women in a small holding room under a sentinel tower without toilets or water.
One of the victim under anonymity told City Web ” I was taken to a location at Station opposite the former Governor’s office. I was kept with others, … and we were not allow to stand up or look into the street. I was asked to pay one million…”
Our investigations also found out that some of those detained were set up by others who falsely tag them as supporters of the terrorists. City Web has taken steps to inform senior military and officials of the legal department in the region of the ongoing scam perpetrated on some individuals.
Such malpractices have been blamed by some as the driving force behind the increasing violence as it makes the population mistrust security forces and the separatists as they see them as interested in punishing the masses rather than ending the current crisis. Such has dampened the fight championed by the military that are putting their lives on the frontlines by these unscrupulous individual who are left to defend the population(build trust) and the republic.
