Macau Business | Cameroon’s government on Thursday said acts of “barbarity and horror” were on the rise after two brutal Killings, relayed on social media, occurred in western regions in the grip of a revolt by anglophones.

Spokesman Rene Emmanuel Sadi, who is also communications minister, blamed “armed bands of secessionist terrorists” for the killings, which he said were “particularly shocking”.

One video showed a young woman aged 32 who was beheaded in Muyuka in the Southwest Region, which with the neighbouring Northwest Region is in the grip of a nearly three-year-old insurgency.

A local NGO and a municipal official, contacted by AFP, said she had been killed by separatists, who in the video call her a “black leg”, or traitor.

In his statement, Sadi also said a woman in the Northwest Region had been killed by a “so-called secessionist terrorist leader”.

The two regions are home to a large minority of English speakers in a country where French speakers are the overwhelming majority — a situation that is the legacy of the decolonisation of western Africa by France and Britain more than six decades ago.

Years of resentment at perceived discrimination led to the declaration on October 1, 2017, of the self-described Republic of Ambazonia in the two regions, triggering a crackdown by the authorities.

More than 3,000 people have died and more than 700,000 have fled their homes, according to the UN.

Rights monitors say atrocities and other abuses have been committed by both separatists and the security forces.

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