Blanche Bailly Saga: Speaking french doesn’t save us. Not in Cameroon

By Minang K. Oscar

It’s been a few hours already since the video footage of acclaimed Cameroonian musician Blanche Bailly being dragged out of her Buea house, made the rounds on social media on Tuesday night October 4, 2022.

Bailly whose birth name is Bailly Larinette Tatah can be heard in a shaky video telling the police:
“I am waiting for my father,He’s on his way. When my father arrives, we’ll move…”.
One of the police officers speaks to her and later answers a call (apparently from his superior) and then grows more aggressive and drags Bailly by the arm as her son can be heard crying as the phone jerks about before the recording ends.
It is unclear what the reason for her arrest is, but it is probable that it has something to do with the current crisis, with Bailly herself being Anglophone.

The only advantage she seems to have had was the fact that she is a nationally-recognized singer.
Given how police interactions of this nature usually end (which is not very good by the way), one can safely assume that had Bailly been an ordinary Cameroonian without fame and status, she would have been treated even worse.
Bailly who is perfectly bilingual was not spared by the French-speaking policemen either. She addressed them politely in French but they nevertheless were brutal in how they treated her.

Therefore the assumption that if Anglophones just learn French and get on with the system, they would be treated better is a lie as this case has proven.

Cameroon’s Anglophone crisis is still very much tense and unresolved and having policemen arresting people without warrants, should never be condoned.

We are not sure if Bailly is guilty or innocent. That is the job of the courts to decide. She had no such option to have a lawyer present during her arrest. She wasn’t even told why she was being arrested and obviously was scared to be leaving with policemen who would not identify themselves or tell her what her offense was.
It should therefore be said here – and loudly so: Cameroon’s problems need more than just people speaking French and English. We must accept that two cultures came together from two different histories and trying to use force to paint this illusion of a utopic ‘one and indivisible’ nation is outright stupidity.

We must all condemn the arrest of Blanche Bailly and demand for transparency in how she is being treated wherever she has been taken to.
We are all too familiar with the killing last year of a little girl by a policeman who shot the girl and split her little head open with a bullet and many other instances of police brutality. We hope that Blanche remains safe – until proven guilty – if she is.