From 9 January to 6 February, Cameroon, one of the continent’s most successful football nations, hosted the Africa Cup of Nations for the first time. Not only did I boycott the matches but I actively campaigned for other supporters to stay away. I called for empty stadiums as a protest against the flagrant violation of human rights in the country.

Cameroon was hosting this sporting jamboree at the same time as blood was being spilled in a neglected civil war that has been going on in its Anglophone regions for five years.

English-speaking Cameroonians constitute 20 per cent of the population but increasingly feel marginalised by the Francophone majority. Tensions boiled over in late 2016, when the peaceful protests of lawyers and teachers were brutally put down by Cameroonian security forces.