When on 15 March 2019, two consecutive mass shootings occured in a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch in New Zealand, which attacks were carried out by a gunman, Australian-born Brenton Harrison Tarrant, who attacked the mosques during Friday prayers; the world came to the sudden realisation that real crime can be ignited online, coordinated online, and finally executed with the minutest of detail on real time in the real world. That singular attack killed 50 muslim faithful, living some 40 seriously wounded. People who only demanded to worship their God differently.
The case of New Zealand was quite unique in that this time around, it wasn't some muslim fundamentalist trying to launch an attack against some western symbol, but interestingly, a white supremacist acting on some strange ideology that the muslim religion and culture had no place in a white-only land. Recall muslims make up 15% of New Zealand population. Harrison Tarrant was a member of the far-right xenophobic identitarian movement that is mixophobic and stands against multiculturalism or culture mixing.
After the 2019 attacks, social media platforms were condemned for not being proactive enough to keep in check extremists from freely assembling and planning terrorists attacks using their platforms. With pressure from governments and international human rights organizations, social media platforms like Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Google, Twitter and others, jointly set up a counterterrorism platform to check violent extremism and promised to be more proactive in future, given that the Christchurch attacks could have been avoided.
Last August 24, 2022, barely one week to resumption of schools for the 2022/2023 academic year across Cameroon, a repeat of the Brenton Tarrant-like audio/video made rounds on the social media space in Cameroon, calling on lockdowns and more especially on churches, particularly the Catholic, Baptist and Presbyterian churches in the hinterlands of the former British Southern Cameroons to stop operations forthwith. The voice attributed to a certain Eyong Willy (County Coordinator of yet another IG group) warned of very serious consequences to church leaders and christians who disobeyed the edits.
When on the evening of September 16, 2022, an arson attack was launched on St. Mary Catholic Church, Mamfe Diocese and five priests, a Rev. Sister and two Christians abducted, many saw a corollary between the August 24 social media audio and the arson attack on that Catholic church. Those who held this view were comforted by yet another video released September 20, 2022, by the spokesman of Ayaba Cho's Interim Government condeming the unfortunate attack and not only attributing it to Eyong Willy, but also previous attacks on schools and especially Queen of Rosary College in Manyu Division. Although at The Colbert Factor, we still think it's too early to be conclusive on the real perpetrators of the abominable act as correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation; (and that it would be a questionable-cause logical fallacy, referred to in Lation as 'cum hoc ergo propter hoc), we are not oblivious to the basic scientific principle that although matter(energy) cannot be changed nor destroyed, it obviously can change shape.
Having said that, The Colbert Factor joins others like the Buea-based Center for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa, CHRDA, to condemn the arson on the Catholic church, the abduction of the men and women of God in Nchang, as well as the burning of the bible, table cloths and church archives in Catholic Church Abuh in Boyo Division of the North West Region, days after the Nchang incident. The cowardly acts consitutes a great breach to the 1977 additional protocol to the Geneva convention which fobids any hostilities directed against clearly recognized historic monuments, works of arts or places of worship which constitutes the cultural and spiritual heritages of a people.
While in deep shock, the new Bishop of Mamfe is categorical the arson was committed by former Christians of the same community, it implies he must be aware some of them might have been ex-communicated at one point and they are probably using the amba frenzy to take revenge on the church. When he is heard declaring that the Church would not come back to Nchang he is certainly echoing a biblical prescription from Jesus Christ himself when he admonished his disciples to always 'shake the dust off their feet' and leave any community that doesn't welcome them when they come preaching the word of God, (confer Mathew 10:14, Luke 9:5, and Mark 6:11).
'And if any place would not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them'. Only that it wouldn't be proper for Catholic authorities to apply such a prescription against the people of Nchang village, given that they too are just victims of unnamed barbarism and rather need the prayers and support of all to help them reconstruct a more befitting church house, in much the same way its french counterpart, Cathedral Notre Dame in France benefitted when it was torched by fire recently.
Perhaps, the silver lining in the unfortunate incident that God might have allowed to happen for a reason, is that despite the level of destruction to the building, the host and the communion remained untorched. If there was any sign communicants of the Catholic church wanted before believing in the real presence of Christ in the holy communion, the Nchang church incident demonstrated it in truimphant detail.
In every conflict situation, the church has always been soft-target for belligerents. What is surprising in the Cameroon context is that the Church that was accused by government for fuelling the crisis and even dragged to court in Bamenda on charges of treason, is today under attack supposedly by the same side government accused it of supporting. Recall the Ecclessistical Province Bishops' letter of 4th October 2017, in which they blamed government for unleashing a genocidal war on Anglophones, while complaining bitterly how they had booked for audience to explain the situation to the Head of State and were rather ignored.
For quite sometime now, activists at home and abroad have blamed the church for no longer standing by them as they 'promised' during the opening pages of the conflict, and for drifting 'dangerously' too close to government. Some think the Church is behaving now like Jesus, who, after receiving compassionate words from the good thief nailed to the cross besides him promised he would verily be with him in Heaven by evening ; but seem to have forgotten the promise immediately he died, as he instead took the opposite direction, descending to hell, only to ascend to Heaven three days after. But as many well-meaning Cameroonians argue, the Church may not just be behaving like Yindo Tangeh in the Muteff indepence struggle, but may now be playing their role as neutral arbiters. What with the collapse of the much-talked about Swiss-led mediation. The Catholic church now remains the alternative.
And even if the attacks on the Catholic church were to push it to offer its good offices for mediation so the conflict comes to an end, they would do that not necessarily because they believe Biya to be a catholic Christian, but rather on humanitarian grounds. After all, have we not heard the President's supporters in Yaounde publicly presenting him as a humanist ? The American Humanist Association, AHA, defines humanism as 'a joyous alternative to religions that belief in a supernatural god and life in the here after'. Humanists therefore, are people who belief that this is the only life of which they have certain knowledge and that we owe it to ourselves and others to make it the best life for ourselves and others who share with us in this fragile planet.
And it would appear that unfortunately, the more we kill each other, the more Biya's staying power comes alive. Have we not read Ebale Angounou's book : 'Blood : Biya's Power Lotion' ? From inference therefore, the day killing stops, the day this regime goes home.
Just like others argue that Jesus descended into hell to break the barriers and proclaim his truimphant victory over sin, dead and the devils, the Church may be drifting toward government more to deepen government's understanding of the real situation on ground and the urging them to quickly bend-over- backwards for inclusive dialogue addressing the root causes of the problem.
As a speedy solution to the conflict delays in coming and as more and more people become nervous, it's likely more alt-right extremist groups may crop up and we get to a situation where the original prominence of amba fighters nucleus would decrease gradually and a nebula of similar extreme far-right movements would emerge across the areas in conflict.
With the arson attacks on the church today, we may be beginning to witness a post-2019 Major National Dialogue far-right movements, distinct from the 'traditional' 2016 nostalgic far-right. Such new and emerging identitarian movements would claim to be 'cleaning up' the territory of those perceived as 'non-assimilable', that is, those they refer to as enablers. Only that they forget that the concept of the xenophobic identitarian movement and 'Les Identitaires' started in Europe and particularly in France many years ago, derives from the core foundational principle of 'the right to be different', in turn derived from 'Nouvelle Droite.
And just like the contemporary world has been busy celebrating Christmas every 25 December with Christ, we are witnessing a God-ordained struggle excluding God from its functioning. Maybe, we have all become humanists...
*Colbert Gwain is digital rights advocate, author, radio host and content creator @TheColbertFactor
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