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The Commander of the Limbe Gendarmerie Brigade, Bota, Metougue Messoumbe, received them. “They arrived at about 8.00 pm almost empty handed”, Metougue told The Post. As to the reason for the deportation, the Brigade Commander said they were expelled for illegal immigration.

But the deportees told The Post, just like those who were sent off in February 10 and 11 that their travelling documents were severally seized and tom and then they were held in detention for a month before being loaded in a boat and sent off.

One of the deportees, Timothee Kaisse, 41, who hails from Douala and is married to a Northwesterner said his passport was seized and tom by the Commissioner of Loubaa, a town in Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea.

He said he bas been working in Equatorial Guinea as a technician for three years.

As to how he survived the first deportation campaign, Kaisse said he hid himself in an Equato-Guinean friend’s residence. He said when the heat of the hunt and deportation of foreigners subsided, he re-emerged. But the search was still on so he again ran to a forest for shelter and later gave up to the police when he could no longer resist staying in the forest. He said he was arrested and detained.

Among Wednesday’s deportees were several of them who, despite what happened to the others in February, decided to brave the odds, and still went to Equatorial Guinea to try their luck.

Mary Tabe Manyor, 21, apetty trader from Mamfe, told The Port that she bought some food items three weeks ago, and took them on a daring mission to Equatorial Guinea for sale. Asked why she went there, knowing that Cameroonians had been deported in February she said she had all the necessary travelling documents. She said she believed that the others were deported for lack of travelling documents, so she got hers before leaving. As soon as they arrived the port of entry in Malabo, disembarked and were about to take a taxi to town, Equato-Guinean police officers stopped them. They searched them, seized their documents and all other belongings and frog-marched them to the police station where they were thrown into the cell.

For the three weeks and three days that she was in detention, she said they went through various forms of inhuman treatment. Just like the First batch of Cameroonians deported in February accounts of the February deportees, she said they were sexually abused.

She, like Kaisse, strongly denied the fact that their expulsion was based on not having valid documents. She said in the cell, there were several other foreigners: Ghanaians, Malians, Burkinabes and others, “but only Cameroonians were deported,” she said.

Kaisse said the main reason for their deportation was that Equato-Guineans no longer want Cameroonians in their country. To support his argument, he said while he worked there, each time he had to send money home that was more than FCFA 500,000, the officials there raised their eyebrows. He said the Equato Guinean authorities still hold Cameroon as an accomplice to the said mercenaries whom they say passed through Cameroon and tried to overthrow their President.

Kaisse lamented that the so-called efforts at bringing the CEMAC countries together was a shame. He said like the European Union, citizens of the CEMAC countries should be able to travel, live and work freely in any of the member countries.

But the DO of Limbe Central, Mbiwan Nchafu, shared the view of the Brigade Commander that the reason for their deportation was due to lack of travelling documents. Asked about the fact that the deportees complained their documents were destroyed, he said that could not be verified. But he said they have advised Cameroonians travelling to Equatorial Guinea to have the required travelling documents.

He said the authorities were doing everything to enable them rejoin their relations in Cameroon. He said they could not keep them for long on grounds that they did not have ample lodging facilities.

Among them were some 12 EquatoGuineans who came to do business. The Cameroonian deportees were bitter that Cameroonian security authorities in Limbe were treating the Equato-Guineans normally, whereas, back in their country, Cameroonians are being treated as sub-humans.

The Equato Guineans travelled in the same boat as the Cameroonian deportees. When they disembarked at the Bota Port, they were taken to the Special Branch Police office in Limbe, while the Cameroonians were taken to the Gendarmerie Brigade.
The Brigade commander said there was need to protect the Equato Guineans, given Cameroon’s spirit of love, hospitality and good neighbourliness.

It will be recalled that Obiang Nguema, President of Equatorial Guinea, was in Cameroon a few days after the deportation, for the inauguration of the Chad-Cameroon Pipeline.

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