YAOUNDE, Cameroon — Armed separatists abducted dozens of students from a Christian secondary school in western Cameroon on Monday and demanded that the school shut down, part of an apparent broader effort to create havoc in the region.
Cameroon, a former French colony in West Africa, has been troubled by unrest since its two main English-speaking areas, the Northwest and Southwest regions, announced in 2016 that they wished to secede and form a new country called Ambazonia.
English-speakers have long complained of being treated like second-class citizens and getting less government funding.
Against that backdrop, the English-speaking separatists kidnapped the 79 students, along with the Presbyterian school’s principal, driver and another staff member, the governor of the North-West Region said.
The abductions seem to be part of a plan by secessionists to shut down all schools in the disputed regions, in a move to make the area ungovernable.
The students, between 11 and 17 years old, were kidnapped in the town of Bamenda on Sunday night, the Rev. Samuel Fonki Forba, the head of the country’s Presbyterian Church, told dpa on Monday.
The kidnappers did not ask for a ransom payment, but instead demanded that the school be closed down, said Forba.
“The (kidnappers) have asked us to shut down the school before they can release the students and school principal,” Forba said. “We have no choice. We will close the school.”
The Ambazonia Defense Forces — the army of the self-declared independent Anglophone region — called the kidnapping “an unacceptable act of terror,” demanding the immediate and unconditional release of the children.
Members of the security force were combing areas where they suspected the children to be held hostage, ADF spokesman Tapang Ivo Tanku said in a statement.
Tanku said he believed that supporters of President Paul Biya were responsible for the kidnapping, saying the abductors had reportedly spoken in French.
This year, deadly violence marked by indiscriminate killings and mass displacement has been escalating in the Anglophone regions, according to human rights group Amnesty International.
During the past months, armed separatists have stabbed to death and shot military personnel, burned down schools and attacked teachers.
At the same time, security forces tortured people, fired on crowds, made arbitrary arrests and destroyed villages in the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions, the international human rights organization said.
