Cameroon: Government Parades Corpse of Separatist Leader to Scare Potential Rebels

Cameroon’s military recently killed and paraded the corpse of a Cameroonian separatist leader accused of perpetrating beheadings and other terror activities, Voice of America (VOA) reported on Monday, noting that the display of the terrorist’s lifeless body across villages bordering Nigeria served to deter potential recruits from joining separatist organizations.

Cameroon’s military located and neutralized separatist leader Lekeaka Oliver last week. Authorities sought Oliver prior to his capture for allegedly coordinating with terror groups in neighboring Nigeria to “kill civilians, commit beheadings, and burn hundreds of public buildings,” VOA reported on July 18.

The Cameroon Armed Forces said on Monday that “hundreds of people have watched the past few days” as they exhibited Oliver’s corpse throughout villages and towns near his unofficial headquarters in the Kumba region of Cameroon. The procession reached communities along Cameroon’s western border with Nigeria, where Oliver allegedly carried out some terrorist acts, including “beheading at least 10 people, including three traditional rulers, and attacking scores of schools since 2017,” according to VOA.

Chamberlin Ntouou Ndong — who serves as the highest-ranking government official in Meme, an administrative unit in Kumba — said on July 17 that Cameroon’s government directly requested the regional parade of Oliver’s corpse. Ndong told VOA that Cameroon intended the spectacle to serve as a “gruesome warning to Anglophone separatists fighting to carve out an independent state from Cameroon and its French-speaking majority.”

“It is a testimony that all those who are not willing to surrender are going to face our forces of law and order. The head of state gave a word out to all who remain in the bushes to lay down their arms and join the remaining population in the development of this country,” he said.

Cameroon’s militant separatists work directly with Boko Haram, a jihadist terror group based in neighboring Nigeria, to attack schools in both countries. Boko Haram specifically targets western education-based schools as part of its objective to eradicate western culture in the Lake Chad Basin, which is a region linking Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon. Boko Haram — whose name loosely translates to “Western education is forbidden” — was founded in 2009 with the ultimate goal of establishing an Islamic caliphate in the Lake Chad region.

“[Cameroonian] Separatists, who have violently enforced a boycott on education since 2017, continued to attack students and education professionals,” Human Rights Watch wrote in a 2022 profile of events in Cameroon throughout 2021.

“The Islamist armed group Boko Haram increased its attacks in the Far North region [of Cameroon] from January to April, killing at least 80 civilians, with over 340,000 internally displaced as of August 2021,” according to the organization.

“A conflict in Cameroon’s Northwest Region and Southwest Region has raged for nearly five years, pitching government forces against anglophones campaigning to secede from the majority French-speaking state,” Agence France Presse (AFP) recalled in late June while reporting on an “uptick of violence” by Cameroon’s Anglophone separatists at the time.

“Armed separatist groups are kidnapping, terrorizing, and killing civilians across the English-speaking regions with no apparent fear of being held to account by either their own leaders or Cameroonian law enforcement,” Ilaria Allegrozzi, HRW’s senior central Africa researcher, wrote in a report published on June 27.

HRW’s account offers a possible reason for the Cameroon military’s decision in recent days to use Oliver’s death as an opportunity to deter potential new recruits of Anglophone separatists.

AFP noted in June that Cameroon’s Anglophone separatist movement is rooted in a deep resentment toward the nation’s Francophone ruler, Paul Biya.

The news agency detailed:

In 2017, mounting anglophone resentment at perceived discrimination snowballed into the declaration of an independent state — the “Federal Republic of Ambazonia,” an entity that is not recognised internationally.

The country’s veteran president Paul Biya, 89, who has ruled with an iron fist for nearly 40 years, responded with a crackdown.

The violence has claimed more than 6,000 lives and displaced around a million people, according to the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

HRW documented atrocities committed by Cameroon’s Anglophones and Francophones in July 2018, writing, “[B]oth government forces and armed separatists have abused civilians in the western part of the country, displacing over 180,000 people since December 2017.”

“Anglophone separatists have extorted, kidnapped and killed civilians, and prevented children from going to school,” according to the organization. “In response to protests and violence by armed separatists, government forces have killed civilians, used excessive force against demonstrators, tortured and mistreated suspected separatists and detainees, and burned hundreds of homes in several villages.”