A seminarian is shot dead in Cameroon

Africa Service – Vatican news

“This is the cream of the country you are wiping out like that. It is not some foreign country you are fighting or some foreign enemy. These are children of the house. Instead of taking guns and wiping them out, look for a way to dialogue because only dialogue will lead us onto the way of peace,” says Cameroon’s Bishop of Mamfe Diocese, Andrew Nkea. The Bishop of Mamfe spoke earlier to Vatican News on the crisis in Cameroon's Anglophone regions. Bishop Nkea is attending the Synod of Bishops on Young People currently happening in the Vatican.

Bishop also urges young people to embrace dialogue

The Bishop has also urged young people in the Anglophone regions to embrace dialogue. “My message to the young people who are in the bush fighting and attacking soldiers is that they should also look for a means to dialogue,” he said.

This week, Agenzia Fides reporting from Yaoundé, carried the story of a seminarian killed in one of the two English-speaking regions of Cameroon. According to a statement signed by Archbishop Cornelius Fontem Esua of the Archdiocese of Bamenda, the young seminarian called Gérard Anjiangwe, 19 years old, was killed by a group of soldiers on 4 October in front of the parish Church of Saint Theresa of Bamessing, a village near Ndop in Ngo-Ketunjia.

Eye witnesses said soldiers arrived at the parish and started shooting and in the process sent parishioners scampering into the Sacristy where they barricaded themselves. Gérard remained praying the rosary outside as soldiers approached him. He was then shot three times in the neck.

The United Nations says the situation is worsening

Last month, September, the new United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed worry over the worsening security situation in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions.

According to the UN, there is now a pressing humanitarian situation in the regions.