Cross-Border Repression in the Cameroon Anglophone Transnational Movement

Starting in 2017, the Cameroonian government, an authoritarian regime in power since 1982, aggressively extended its reach beyond national borders. The government enacted three strategies to intimidate and deter members of the Anglophone transnational movement mobilizing for democracy in Cameroon. This included repression-by-proxy, whereby authorities target family members, friends, and domestic networks of diasporic activists; direct attacks on activists; and movement-directed repression to discourage mobilization abroad. While diasporic activists confronted these forms of repression, they were also under scrutiny from some host country governments collaborating with the regime to extradite activists—subjecting them to potentially unfair trials in Cameroon in violation of UN conventions on fair trials.  “If you are in the diaspora, and your family is on the ground, and they know that you are very active in the movement, they pick up your parents” a key activist recounted.

The severity and intensity of attacks on diasporic activists and transnational movements constitutes a major threat to democratic mobilization globally. According to a 2025 Freedom House report, between 2014 to 2023, there were over 854 documented cases of transnational repression perpetrated by 38 states in 91 host countries, with millions of activists still at risk. These practices are carried out by authoritarian regimes across the globe, such as China, Turkey, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Egypt, and Tajikistan, to repress the activists’ voices after exit and movements for criticizing their governments or for exposing their human rights violations. These governments target activists living abroad through physical threats, online harassments, surveillance and mobility control, such as revoking passports as well as ordering their abduction, unlawful deportation, and extradition to face trials. Some also sponsor killings and unexplained disappearance abroad. When direct repression of activists becomes risky due to, one, the inability of repressive governments to manipulate or co-opt host country governments to collaborate or, two, a higher likelihood of the government facing diplomatic backlash for infringing on the sovereignty of powerful host states, authoritarian regimes rely on repression-by-proxy. In cases of massive diasporic mobilization, the regimes mobilize loyal supporters in the diaspora to monitor and report movement activities, create countermovements, and spread counternarratives to undermine collective action. Despite the prevalence of this problem, scholarship on transnational repression by African governments mostly focuses on Rwanda and Eritrea, overlooking other major cross-border repressors such as Cameroon.

The Context of Cameroon

Cameroon’s transnational repression became overly aggressive in 2017, after unprecedented, large scale, and sustained Anglophone diasporic mobilization drew international attention and diplomatically embarrassed the government. Anglophone Cameroonians in the diaspora had risen in protests against the government for brutally repressing a peaceful opposition movement in English-speaking Cameroon. The state’s domestic repression of this movement had resulted in mass arbitrary arrests, torture, unlawful imprisonment under anti-terrorism laws, and the killing of many peaceful demonstrators. The scorched-earth tactics deployed by state security forces even razed hundreds of communities and villages across Anglophone Cameroon. This left the diaspora with no choice but to mobilize to amplify the visibility of the local movement and to pressure the international community to hold the government accountable and push for democratic reforms in Cameroon. This prompted the government to embark on a transnational repression campaign, targeting both activists and the movement to destabilize collective action.

Repression by Proxy

As part of its broader strategy to suppress the movement, the authoritarian regime first started by systematically targeting family members, friends, and other people within the networks of diasporic activists based in Cameroon. Family members of diasporic activists were assaulted, arrested, and detained in maximum security prisons and torture centers. One activist detailed how their 80-year-old mother and younger sister were detained by the government in retaliation.

The government equally hunted down, arrested, and imprisoned individuals for allegedly collaborating with diasporic activists to facilitate mobilization between the movement in Cameroon and the diaspora. Activists detailed that personal devices were routinely searched at the airport for any information related to the movement, and people were harassed and punished for keeping certain data, including merely having the phone number of some key activists.

Direct Attack on Activists

As Anglophone diasporic mobilization intensified, the government escalated its repression by seeking international collaboration to track, arrest, and extradite activists. On January 5, 2018, the government worked with Nigerian authorities to arrest and extradite Sisiku Ayuk Tabe, leader of the diasporic movement, and nine others. They were convicted to life imprisonment in Cameroon, but their extradition from Nigeria was condemned multiple times by the UN Human Rights Council Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and was later deemed illegal by a court in Nigeria. Their trial and detention have been contentious, and they are currently awaiting a Supreme Court verdict on their appeal. Other Anglophone refugees have been arrested and jailed or deported, through similar collaborations. Further, diasporic activists have claimed the government also sent letters to immigration authorities in some host countries accusing activists of war crimes and recommending their deportation for prosecution. Where direct attacks proved impossible, the state blacklisted activists for future targeting. This tactic aimed at discouraging diasporic mobilization through denying activists consular services and travel to Cameroon. Due to family and friend ties, many activists left the movement from this strategy.

Movement-Directed Repression

Beyond repression by proxy and direct attacks, the government adopted movement-directed repression to weaken the mobilizations. Government agents were dispatched to countries with significant Anglophone mobilization such as South Africa, Europe, and North America to co-opt groups of activists. They approach groups with bribes and other incentives to persuade them to stop activism or propagate counternarratives that would destabilize collective action. One activist recounted, “The Cameroon government even reached out to us. But as crooked as it is, they came to bribe. They came and offered us positions and said, ‘you should do this and we have this for you.’”  activistAP07 recounted.

When groups proved resistant, the government focused on divide-and-conquer tactics, classifying activists  as “good” or “bad” members. By co-opting the “good guys” against their “bad comrades,” the regime sowed distrust and destroyed solidarity in the movement. The “good guys” spied on the movement and spread narratives that weakened mobilization. They “get our secrets and sell them to La République [Cameroon Francophone-dominated government]. Their role was actually to continue to disintegrate and bring confusion. So we never operate as a united front,” an activist stressed. Still, some “activists” were recruited to create countermovements, presenting themselves as legitimate members of the movement during foreign mediation initiatives abroad in favor of the government’s position, despite others never having heard of them before.

Finally, the government sought to manipulate and prevent foreign media coverage of the movement and its root causes, with coverage often being ignored, prevented, or removed.

The Cameroonian government’s deployment of a range of transnational repression tactics (repression by proxy, direct attack on activists, and movement-directed repression) against Anglophone diasporic activists and the movement constitutes an example illustrating the determination with which authoritarian regimes go after cross-border dissent. On the other hand, it emphasizes the critical role host country governments must play to protect diasporic activists and movements from the reach of their repressors. Governments can contribute to constraining the ability of authoritarian regimes to repress diasporic mobilization through measures such as robust asylum and refugee programs for activists fleeing persecution; rigorous scrutiny of extradition and deportation requests; refusal to cooperate with transnational repression initiatives; and hold complicit governments accountable. These measures are vital not only for defending activists, but also for safeguarding rights to freedom of assembly, association, and expression, which constitute the foundations of democracy and social change in societies.

Eliana Fonsah is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UC Merced and a 2025–2026 IGCC Dissertation Fellow. Her research focuses on African diasporic and transnational mobilizations for democracy and social change in Africa.

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