A humanitarian worker with Reach Out has described as ‘really appalling’ the kidnapping of 30 women by pro-independence rebels in western Cameroon.

Development Diaries reports that the women were released on Wednesday, having been captured days earlier in the country’s restive Anglophone region.

The authorities in Cameroon said the women were abducted by ‘heavily armed terrorists’ in the village of Kedjom Keku, in the North-West region, then ‘severely tortured’.

‘It’s really appalling to learn that women – mothers – are abducted by the very people they consider their own children who are in armed groups. It’s a shame’, RFI quoted Esther Oman from Reach Out as saying.

‘Whatever their actions, these women do not deserve such treatment’.

It is understood that the women had been protesting against violence and illegal taxes levied by separatists.

The authorities in Cameroon always use the word ‘terrorists’ to refer to armed rebels demanding independence for the northwest and southwest regions.

The regions have been rocked by violence after separatists declared the independence of ‘Ambazonia’.

The fighting between government security forces and armed groups, which has lingered since 2016, started when lawyers and teachers took to the streets of Buea and Bamenda to protest the domination of French in Anglophone courts and schools.

The violence has caused about 6,000 deaths and a major humanitarian crisis, with over 600,000 people internally displaced within the Anglophone and neighbouring regions, and over 77,000 forced to become refugees in Nigeria.

Freedom House ranked Cameroon as ‘not free’ in its 2023 Freedom in the World study of political rights and civil liberties, with the Central African country earning 15 points out of a possible 100.

Development Diaries believes that there is an urgent need to protect communities at risk and to hold those responsible for abuses to account.

Photo source: UNHCR