In a press document from the Cameroon Renaissance Movement Party, opposition leader Maurice Kamto has demanded the immediate release of all those arrested during the September 22 Protests in major cities of Cameroon.
The demand is made in an official statement released early Friday on the party’s social media platforms.
It also demanded that the government puts an end to the sequestration by military forces, at the homes of political representatives.
“The Cameroon Renaissance Movement hereby informs the national and international opinion of the following particularly serious facts:
1- The marches of 22 September 2020 were marked by a completely peaceful and exemplary behaviour of the marchers who, by their civility and their sense of responsibility, defeated the thesis of the insurgency that the Cameroonian government was agitating to ban these marches.
The government, which had hoped for acts of violence from the marchers to justify the killings and ban the CRM, is therefore caught off guard and continues to use the term “insurrection” only out of shame to back down.
2 – The savage and barbaric repression displayed by the government in the framework of these peaceful marches has now turned into political cleansing, characterised by the illegal kidnapping of many officials of the CRM and of allied political parties and organisations. Some militants and sympathisers are targeted or denounced by elites and / or traditional authorities. Several hundred people were arrested before, during and after the marches, or abducted from their homes. Among these people are Prof Alain Fogue, CRM National Treasurer, Mr Olivier Bibou Nissack, Advisor and spokesperson for the CRM National President, militants of the PAP, MODECNA, CPP parties, members of the AGIR/ACT Movement, and certainly others.
3- The CRM National President, Professor Maurice Kamto, has been sequestered at his residence with his entire household from the night of Sunday 19 to Monday 20 September until the moment when this press release is made public, by many elements of the mixed forces (heavily armed police and gendarmerie, supported by the deployment of a large arsenal of war. All the entrances to his home are blocked by military vehicles which take turns under the supervision of senior officers and police commissioners. This sequestration, which is part of the regime’s repressive harassment against the CRM leader, is totally arbitrary and without any legal basis.
This situation extends to the PAP President, Mr Njang Denis Tabe and other CRM senior officials, including Mrs Tiriane Noah, 2nd Vice-President, and Mr Albert Dzongang, Special Advisor to the National President. Others still are hunted down by the repressive forces of the dictatorial regime in Yaoundé, like Barrister Ndong Christopher and Mr Thierry Okala, respectively Secretary General, and Deputy National Treasurer of the CRM.
4- This manhunt does not even spare Lawyers in the exercise of their profession. Thus, Barrister Jean-Jacques Kengne, Lawyer in Bafoussam and member of the “Bar. Sylvain Souop Lawyers’ Collective” was arrested by the Head of the Criminal Investigations Office of the Bafoussam Gendarmerie Unit that declares to have done so in execution of verbal orders of their hierarchy.
5- Faced with this situation of extreme seriousness and unprecedented in Cameroonian political history of the last quarter of a century, the CRM demands:
– The immediate and unconditional release of all those arrested before, during and after the peaceful marches of 22 September 2020.
– The lifting of the sequestration at their homes, by the repressive forces, of the National President of the CRM and other officials of this party, as well as the leaders of the other political parties mentioned above.
– The cessation of political cleansing by immediately stopping the hunt for militants and sympathisers of coalition parties several days after the peaceful marches, and often on the basis of denunciation.
Done in Yaoundé, this 24 September 2020″
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