Yaoundé, CAMEROON – Cameroon is experiencing a surge in frequently deadly violence against women, with eight women reported killed over a ten-day span last month and no fewer than 72 women slain in the country between January 1 and April 4 this year in the central African country of 31 million.
The outspoken Bishop John Berinyuy Tatah, auxiliary of the Bamenda archdiocese in Cameroon’s English-speaking North West region, is urging action to prevent the killing of women and girls in the country.
“An attack upon the life of any woman is an assault upon her God-given dignity,” Tatah told Crux Now.
The prelate told Crux Now he has “accompanied families through suffering and bereavement,” and knows how “such violence leaves wounds that can endure for generations.”
According to Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Prof. Marie Therese Abena Ondoua, reports include cases of intimate partner violence, serial predation, and suspicious circumstances authorities are still working to unravel.
Harrowing cases
Perhaps the most harrowing case emerged in Douala on August 22, where 34-year-old victim identified as Modestine was allegedly butchered by her husband.
Reports say the man barricaded the doors of their home from inside before attacking his wife with a butcher’s knife in front of their two young children.
Modestine’s body was found bearing multiple deep wounds, with one hand almost severed.
In the capital, Yaoundé, police have made a series of grim discoveries.
On August 26, Beguel Crescence Merline, 44, was found dead in a hotel room with stab wounds to her throat.
Investigators believe she was killed by a man she had met online.
Just days earlier, on August 21, a mother of three was killed and decapitated in the Tsinga neighborhood.
Her body was discovered hidden under a bed, while her partner had fled to Kumba in the South West Region with the couple’s children.
He has since been arrested.
In the prominent Efoulan neighborhood in Yaoundé, 19-year-old Diane Yidi Ebabi was strangled by her boyfriend following a dispute on August 8 or 9.
Authorities say the perpetrator, who was arrested nine days later and reportedly confessed to the crime, kept her body in his room for two days before burying it in a pit.
On August 11, Kenfack Fortune died on the Yaoundé–Nsimalen Highway after being ejected from a speeding vehicle.
Meanwhile, in the Mefou-et-Afamba area, a young woman was found dead on a road, with investigators suspecting the killing was staged to resemble a traffic accident.
In the East Region, a young woman was found raped and killed in Belabo; the attacker remains at large.
In the Adamaoua Region near Meiganga, Rougaïatou Saidou, a 38-year-old trader, disappeared in late July. Her body was later discovered buried near an abandoned house. A suspect, identified as her companion, has been taken into custody and has confessed.
Public outcry
The cluster of deaths has ignited a fierce public outcry over femicide in the country, which paradoxically celebrated just last month a long-sought tournament victory in the Women’s Africa Cup of Nations.
Tatah told Crux Now he has been “deeply saddened” by the murders. “Behind every number is a human face,” he said, “a daughter, mother, sister or wife, loved by God and precious to a family and community.”
Describing the crime of femicide as “a grave violation of the sanctity of human life,” Tatah said it “contradicts both the Gospel and Catholic social teaching, especially the principles of human dignity, solidarity and the protection of the vulnerable.”
“No cultural practice, domestic dispute, jealousy or alleged provocation can ever justify violence against a woman. God’s commandment remains clear: ‘You shall not kill’.”
Bamenda University professor and social activist Eileen Tabuwe Akwo told Crux Now “there can be no justification for killing women and girls for whatever reason.”
“When we look at most of the reasons that have been proffered for the acts, it all comes back to what men believe they are owed by women,” she said.
“Either they claim the woman cheated or she wanted a divorce or she exploited them financially,” she said.
“If we get to the bottom of it,” the academic and activist said, “we’ll find toxic masculinity and a society that aligns with the thinking that men are superior and should have control over women as their wives or girlfriends.”
Cameroon commits to fight the scourge
Abena Ondoa’s Ministry for the Promotion of Women and the Family has initiated a nationwide three-month campaign to combat femicide.
The initiative calls for severe legal prosecution of the perpetrators.
During the campaign’s launch in Yaoundé, Abena Ondoa said official statistics are likely to represent only a fraction of the reality, which she described as a persistent and deepening national crisis.
The new strategy focuses on early prevention, encouraging reporting, and enforcing strict legal penalties.
“Perpetrators of femicide and their accomplices are criminals who must be hunted down and punished without mercy,” Abena Ondoa said.
“The government is declaring an end to these archaic, barbaric acts,” she said.
“We want to assure every woman and girl in this country of our unwavering determination to stop this human butchery,” she said.
Intellectual condemns Church’s silence
Bishop Tatah spoke to Crux Now, but the Catholic bishops of Cameroon have not made an official statement over the recent spike in the killing of women.
The bishops’ silence has drawn a sharp rebuke from a leading Cameroonian intellectual, Prof. Vincent Sosthène Fouda.
In an open letter addressed to the President of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference and archbishop of Bamenda, Andrew Nkea, Fouda says the apparent silence of the bishops is synonymous to what he called “culpable sentimentalism.”
He urges the Archbishop to speak out against what is clearly evil.
“Your Grace, are you aware of all these femicides? These women’s lives snatched away in silence, in the very realm of love?” he asks.
“The Church, Mother and Teacher, cannot remain silent when the body of Christ is wounded in his daughters,” he states.
“Your Excellency,” Fouda says, “speak out.”
“Speak out on behalf of those who have been silenced,” Fouda writes, “on behalf of those whose blood cries out from the earth.”
“Speak out,” he writes, “so that the Cameroonian Bishops’ Conference may proclaim, in the light of the Gospel, that love does not kill.”
Tatah agrees that the Church cannot afford to stay silent in the face of such evil.
“In our pastoral ministry,” the auxiliary bishop told Crux Now, “we must listen more attentively to women, take reports of threats and abuse seriously, provide safe support for victims and form our boys and men in respect, self-control and responsible love.”
He called on families, traditional and religious leaders, civil authorities and the justice system “to work together to prevent such crimes, protect those at risk and ensure that perpetrators are held accountable.”
“Like the Good Samaritan,” he said, “we cannot see the wounded person and pass by on the other side. As a Church, we must not remain silent or wait for another woman to die before acting.”
“Defending the life and dignity of women is not merely a women’s issue,” Tatah said, “it is our shared moral duty and a test of our fidelity to Christ, who came that all might ‘have life, and have it abundantly’.”
