Humanity comes under threat when children are attacked

Humanity comes under threat when children are attacked

Their brains are on the floor, no longer in their heads. They are lying under the benches, no longer sitting on them. Their books and bags are soaked with their blood no longer with ink. They were told education is the key to success and a development multiplier. They were also told that they are the continental dividends and need to be highly knowledgeable for their protection, sustainability and resilience. They believed in us and obeyed us because we are their parents. They even started identifying models in their different fields of interest.  Their dreams of becoming their models in the future are shattered and they are now only good for the grave.

What a waste!!!

Their parents are inconsolable. They feel guilty. They are the ones who encouraged their children to go to school and enrich their brains. They told them that to occupy spaces that are rightfully theirs, they need to be well educated. One woman had her lone child after ten years of marriage without and issue, the gruesome act claimed that child. Many of the children who survived are seriously wounded and may end up with disabilities. The survivors are generally traumatized, and the need for psychosocial healing mentioned in my last post resurfaces.

Eye witnesses report that six unidentified gun men on motor bikes entered the school on Saturday October 24, 2020 while the children were in class and started shooting randomly. It has been men for the past four years and targeting defenseless women and children. The children were in school on Saturday to make up for Monday which is Southern Cameroons separatists fighters (Ambazonian) public holiday since the outbreak of the Anglophone crisis in Cameroon in 2016. Monday is a ghost town day in most major parts of the unruly North West and South West regions of Cameroon, imposed by the Ambazonians and respected by all including the Cameroon administration in these regions. Nobody goes out on these days. Even administrators who work in these regions escorted in armored cars observe Monday ghost towns. Both government Defense and security forces (DSF) and Ambazonian boys rape and molest women for violating ghost town days.

six of the children’s brains were shattered with heavy arms, 13 jumped from the first floor of the story building where their classrooms where situated and sustained serious injuries. One later died in the hospital making 7 casualties for now. We continue to pray that none dies again. The images of the classroom where the carnage took place are utterly horrendous. The room is littered with brains and inundated with blood. The children’s books and school bags meant to be soaked with ink in the course of acquiring education are soaked with their own very blood. We Cameroonian parents became the worst monsters under the sun and slaughtered our own children last Saturday October 24, 2020 like some wild beasts.

It was a black Saturday in Cameroon, history books will record and tell future generations. Their combined sins and offences were learning to survive the challenges of life. They were juveniles between 10 and 12 years. As women and mothers we are still hallucinating. How did we get there? Why target women and children? How and where did women and children bargain for this war? How do we tell the remaining children to go back to those same classrooms and benches were their friends and mates where slaughtered for a reason we cannot explain to them? why innocent children? What do they know about war?

It should be remembered that most of these children have been deprived of their fundamental human right to education for the past four years following the closure of and attacks on schools by the separatists fighter as a tactic to force government to comply with their demands. This year, they came back to their senses and consented to school resumption. Who then killed our children?

The political economy of the crisis has been a source of juicy fringe benefits for many on both side of the coin. Is someone trying to keep the war on for these diabolic benefits? Who can this someone be? The military or the separatists? It is too early for any sweeping conclusions which can be misleading. Let’s wait and see, hoping that an independent investigation will be commissioned on these heartless killings.  

 “Humanity comes under threat when children are attacked”