Each year on June 20, the world celebrates World Refugee Day. The Day offers a chance to raise awareness of the plight of refugees around the world and of the efforts to protect their human rights.
The United Nations Human Rights Council, UNHCR, which noted that the 2022 edition will focus on the right to seek safety, added that every person on this planet has a right to seek safety – whoever they are, wherever they come from and whenever they are forced to flee.
Hundreds of Cameroonians have been forced to flee their country, owing to the activities of separatists in the Anglophone regions of the country.
On Sunday, May 29, there were reports of the killing of about 20 members of Obonyi community in Cameroon. Some were critically wounded with machetes, others were doused in petrol and burnt alive while others ran away with the fuel still dripping from their body. Women and children were not spared by the Ambazonian militants.
The anger of the militants was that the people of Obonyi community refused to join their struggle or support their quest for independence. They also accused the young men in Obonyi border community of Cameroon of failure to display the Ambazonian emblems.
As a result of the attack, about 2,000 residents of Obonyi fled the community into the neighbouring Bashu community in Nigeria. Bashu is not far from Danare community where the Nigerian Army has a small base.
