Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on authorities in Cameroon to ensure that the investigation into the killing of nine people in Missong village is impartial and independent of state influence.
The Cameroonian Ministry of Defence had confirmed that soldiers of the 53rd Motorised Infantry Battalion committed a massacre at Missong in the North-West region, killing nine civilians, including four women and a baby.
Army spokesperson, Colonel Cyrille Serge Atonfack Guemo, who formally acknowledged military responsibility for the killings in Missong, said a group of defiant villagers confronted soldiers which led to their ‘disproportionate’ and ‘hasty’ response.
However, HRW said it found no evidence of a confrontation between the soldiers and the villagers or that the villagers provoked the soldiers to resort to lethal force.
The rights organisation said it interviewed six people from Missong by telephone, including five residents who witnessed the killings, and a traditional authority known as ‘the fon’.
According to HRW, the attack in Missong is not an isolated case, but part of a pattern of systematic human rights violations by the Cameroonian security forces in the Anglophone regions since 2016.
‘The government’s decision to go public about the killings, to open an investigation and arrest four soldiers hopefully indicates an end to denying and hiding the truth around serious human rights abuses’, Senior Central Africa Researcher at HRW, Ilaria Allegrozzi, said.
‘The admission of responsibility by the army and the announcement of an investigation are crucial steps toward justice for these serious crimes.
‘The authorities now need to ensure that the investigation is thorough, impartial and independent, and capable of establishing a clear timeline of events and the identification of all those responsible, including in the chain of command, with an aim toward prosecution’.
Freedom House ranked the country as ‘not free’ in its 2022 Freedom in the World study of political rights and civil liberties, with Cameroon earning 15 points out of a possible 100.
Photo source: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters
