Thread by @bellingcat

In Cameroon’s Anglophone regions, separatist groups have been battling government forces since 2016.

Thousands have been killed & many more displaced. Among those most impacted have been schoolchildren & teachers. New from @Bellingcat and @Newsy bellingcat.com/news/africa/20…

@Newsy Cameroon’s Anglophone conflict is as complicated as it is brutal. A separatist-enforced boycott of schooling has seen classrooms shuttered. The aim, according to separatist leaders, is to force the Cameroonian government to the negotiating table.

@Newsy But as time has dragged on, enforcement of the boycott has become increasingly radical and the safety of students and teachers has deteriorated.

@Newsy Schools have been torched while teachers have been threatened. Children have been killed and kidnapped

@Newsy The government blames separatists for these incidents while separatists blame the government. Bandits, unaffiliated with either side, have also taken advantage of the chaos for their own ends.

@Newsy One of the most prominent incidents saw seven children murdered after men with machetes and firearms rampaged through a school in the town of Kumba in October 2020 hrw.org/news/2020/11/0…

@Newsy By analysing open source material from Cameroonian social media, Bellingcat has verified 11 further attacks against schools and children in the Anglophone regions starting in 2018 and continuing into the early months of this year.

@Newsy This material, collected by the Cameroon Anglophone Crisis Database of Atrocities and the Berkeley Human Rights Center, reveal the ongoing scale of Cameroon’s humanitarian crisis, of which Kumba is only the best known example.

@Newsy One video analysed by Bellingcat shows an arson attack at a facility known as the Kulu Memorial College near the town of Moliwe.

@Newsy The video shows unidentified men in civilian clothing storming the school, forcing children and teachers to strip naked and flee. Once the students and staff had vacated the building, the attackers set it alight.

@Newsy Satellite imagery helped to verify another attack in the town of Kungi in the Nkambe Subdivision, where a school was reported to have been burnt down by separatists

@Newsy The school is visible in satellite imagery from February 5 this year, but by February 10 it appears to have been destroyed

@Newsy Men in Cameroonian army uniform were also present at a fire at a school in the village of Eka, near Widikum in January 2019.

@Newsy Video posted to social media does not show who started the fire but a group of armed, uniformed men are standing nearby and do not appear to be trying to stop it.

@Newsy The camera pans back at the end of the video to show the school fully ablaze.

@Newsy A partisan website that backs the government against Ambazonian separatists later claimed that soldiers had burned the school as separatist fighters had used it as a base. However, Bellingcat was not able to ascertain whether this was accurate.

@Newsy With no end to the conflict in sight, a safe and full school resumption is proving elusive. Until that comes to pass, the social and economic outlook for the next generation of Anglophone Cameroonians remains uncertain.

@Newsy But as the warring parties play the blame game, children pay the price. As one expert Bellingcat spoke to asked: “The children are our tomorrow. What tomorrow are we building with uneducated children?”

@Newsy Read the full article along with full details of how Bellingcat and partners verified several other attacks on schools and schoolchildren bellingcat.com/news/africa/20…

@Newsy This article was produced with our partners @Newsy. watch this video they produced on the topic