Nothing has changed ever since the awful death of a third year law student in the University of Yaoundé II, Soa last year. So, the men who rape, harm and kill women are multiplying and consolidating their gains all over the national territory.

President Biya, his government, the police force, the gendarmerie and the judiciary are maintaining their observer status as seven women were recently abducted, raped, murdered and in the words of their beloved mothers, “bodies disposed of as if they were rubbish”.

In all the seven killings, Cameroon Concord News Group is aware that the suspects are all men. We of the Cameroon Concord News Group know this but not the Biya government and not the Delegate General for National Security. To be sure, the seven women will have died in terror and pain, just like the third year law student in Soa. All of them leave behind grieving families and friends for whom their loss will last a lifetime.

Cameroonian men’s violence against women is growing at catastrophic rapidity throughout the national territory and cuts across all sections of society, Francophone, Anglophone, across ages, class and ethnicity. But like with the media in Cameroon, it is almost always the young, conventionally attractive, middle-class Francophone girl killed by a stranger that makes headline news in Yaoundé. We of the Concord Group want every woman’s death to be a reason for soul-searching and a very productive national discourse.

Southern Cameroons women are disproportionately victimised, yet more likely to receive a sub-standard response from the security apparatus of the state dominated in all towns and cities in Southern Cameroons by Francophones.

Nothing indeed has changed ever since the third year law student in Soa was abducted, raped and murdered.  There is completely nothing on the government table on how to tackle violence against women in Cameroon. The women are partly to blame for Biya’s regime’s deliberate silence!!

We of the Concord Group think it is time to set an ambitious program to end men’s violence against women.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai