Today marks four years since American Baptist missionary Charles Wesco was killed in Bamenda
By Hans Ngala
October 30, 2022, is exactly four years since American Baptist missionary Charles Wesco was killed in Cameroon.
The American had been in Cameroon less than two weeks when on Monday October 30th, 2018, he was caught in crossfire between soldiers and armed separatists at Bambui just outside Bamenda in the North West Region. He was pronounced dead by a doctor at the Regional Hospital in Buea.
Wesco’s death was the first and only high-profile expatriate death so far and brought more visibility to the Anglophone conflict as foreign press reported on his death. Media outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Fox News, BBC and CNN all reported on the missionary’s death in Cameroon.
The United States embassy also issued a statement and while there were hopes that America would now play a more active role in helping resolve the conflict, that never became the case.
Timothy Wesco, the brother to Charles Wesco who is a Republican senator in the US state of Indiana stated that he believed his brother had been killed “quite probable because he was a white, English-speaking American.”
Wesco’s family said that they were grieving but believed that this was a tragic but divine plan.
The US State Department stated at the time that they didn’t believe Wesco was targeted although in May of the same year, the then US ambassador to Cameroon, Peter Barlerin told reporters that President Biya should learn from the examples of George Washington and Nelson Mandela and should be thinking about his legacy. Comments that didn’t sit well with pro-regime supporters.
