The prelude to this Torch Warfare was in Kembong in the Southern Zone of British Cameroon as captured by this report below. The non-condemnation of  these acts spurred the French-Cameroun military to embrace the strategy. By the-end-of April 2019, an estimated 8000 homes have been destroyed by the marauding soldiers. The reality was captured in this report published in January 2018.

“Increasingly frustrated over its inability to preempt attacks on its soldiers by unknown people, the Cameroon military has embarked on a heinous strategy of torching entire villages in English-speaking Cameroon. On December 18, 2018, it was the village of Kembong in Manyu Division of the South West Region. Speaking to the BBC, a disillusioned Bishop Nkea of the Mamfe Diocese in English-speaking Cameroon described the plight of more than 7,000 people forced out of their villages by the Cameroon military. “I can count more than 20 houses burnt down by the military”, the prelate narrated. “They beat the residents, then threw them out of their houses and then set the houses on fire”. The frustrated man-of-God revealed.

The military’s wrath descended on the small village of Kembong Bishop Nkea, said following the killing of four security officers by unidentified people. Despite claims by the government that its troops in the villages were to protect civilians against what they call terrorists, Bishop Nkea, said the civilians were rather fleeing from the military and its brutality.

Certainly emboldened by global silence and encomiums from their superiors including the  government, a month later precisely on  January 17, 2018, the Cameroon army again unleashed a murderous rage on  Kwakwa, another small locality about two hours’ drive from Kembong. Unlike Kembong where the priest’s house was spared, and thus served as refuge for some of the displaced, especially the elderly, this time around the Cameroon army shunned any distinction. Images show a desecrated chapel and deserted community with smoldering buildings“. (Read More here with images).

You can also read the prelate’s full interview with a Catholic NEWSPAPER Here. (Read)

And what exactly is the situation on the ground in Kembong?