At least 79 students and three others, including the director, were kidnapped Monday in a boarding school in Bamenda, the capital of the region Northwest of Cameroon, a government official told the BBC.
Cameroon Southwest and Northwest regions have been affected by a secessionist rebellion in recent years.
The regional Governor, Adolphe Lele l’Afrique, blamed separatist militias for the kidnapping.
“A national disaster”: the doubts surrounding the kidnapping of more than 100 children at a school in Nigeria that accuse the Group extremist Boko Haram the militias, who have been demanding the independence of the two regions of English-speaking, had announced a boycott to the school.
But no group has admitted kidnapping in the Presbyterian school of Bamenda, which has pupils between 10 and 14 years of age.
However, there is a video of some of the children, who are believed was shot by one of the hijackers, that is being shared on social networks.
Copyright of the imagenFACEBOOKImage captionEn the video in which appear the children, the man who holds the camera turn itself in the end. The students, all men and crammed into a small room, they are nervous when the person who holds the camera commands them to tell their names and where they are.
A divided country Cameroon was colonized by Germany in 1884.
British and French troops force Germans to leave in 1916.
Cameroon is divided three years later: 80% is allocated to the French and 20% to the British.
French Cameroon became independent in 1960.
Following a referendum, the Cameroonians in the South (British) joined Cameroon, while North joined the English-speaking Nigeria.
Also repeat the phrase: “both boys took me out of school last night, I don’t know where I am”.
“Both” is the abbreviation of Ambazonia, the name of the new country that separatists want to create.
A student, who avoided being captured by hiding under a bed, told the BBC that events unfolded rapidly when the kidnappers entered the school.
The abduction of Mohammed Dewji, the youngest billionaire in Africa “one of my friends was beaten mercilessly. The only thing I could think was in staying quiet. They threatened to shoot some… all the older boys who caught and children left behind”.
A school teacher described what he saw when entered in the principal’s office after students had been taken from different bedrooms.
“The military came and went to the home of the Director, where we realized that his door was hit. Entering, his glasses were still on the ground”, he told the BBC.
‘Praying for the hostages’ the representative of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon, the Reverend Samuel Forba Fonki, told the BBC that he had spoken with the kidnappers.
“They don’t want any rescue. The only thing they want is that shut down schools. We have promised to close schools”, he told the BBC.
“We hope and pray to release children and teachers,” he added.
The aristocrat child who was kidnapped and sold as a slave to deprive him of his inheritance is not the first time that students are kidnapped in the area, known as a bastion of separatist fighters, according to the journalist of the BBC Ngala Killian Chimtom.
On 19 October, five students of the bilingual Atiela secondary school were kidnapped by unidentified armed men. His whereabouts remain unknown.
The separatists say that the school system of Cameroon suppresses the system of English-speaking regions of the Northwest and Southwest inherited from the British.
Copyright of the imagenGETTY IMAGESImage captionAlgunos pro Ambazonia protesters have come even to protest in the streets of London, Inglaterra.rebelion separatist militias seeking the creation of Ambazonia began to emerge in 2017 after that the security forces to suppress massive protests led by lawyers and teachers, for the alleged failure of the Government to give sufficient recognition to the English educational and legal systems in the Northwest and Southwest.
Copyright of the imagenGETTY IMAGESImage captionOtto von Bismarck cited the colonial powers of the time to the Berlin Conference in 1884, to discuss the distribution of the African continent. The Government was accused of largely trusting people trained in the legal tradition and educational French working in key positions and, in general, to marginalize the minority of English-speaking Cameroon, representing approximately 20% of the population.
The secret diaries of young women abducted for three years by Boko Haram President Paul Biya, who has been in power since 1982, it was recently re-elected to a seventh term with more than 70% of the votes.
Opposition parties allege that the elections were manipulated, but failed attempts to legal by override them.
