Maurice Kamto is once again free to move around. On Wednesday, December 9, the police officers who had surrounded the home of the main opponent of Cameroonian President Paul Biya for two and a half months, de facto under house arrest, lifted their device. The news announced by his lawyer and his party comes after the holding of regional elections on Sunday contested by the opponent for several months.
The Democratic Rally of the Cameroonian People (RDPC), party in power, unsurprisingly won them largely, according to official results published Tuesday and Wednesday in the ten regions of the country. In the English-speaking regions of the North West and South West, in the grip of a bloody conflict between the army and separatist groups for nearly four years, the party of President Paul Biya, 87, was the only party in the running. These results were beyond doubt since the municipal councilors who elected the greatest number of representatives in these new regional assemblies were overwhelmingly from the party in power. A sign that nothing has been settled, the opponent was very suspicious in his first words granted to Canal 2 International: “Lifting the devices doesn’t change my life, it doesn’t bring anything. They can still install their police and their gendarmes. ”
Maximum pressure on the first opponent
Unhappy rival of Paul Biya, head of state in power for 38 years and reelected in 2018 in a ballot contested by the opposition, Maurice Kamto had been imprisoned without trial for nine months in 2019 before being released thanks to intense international pressure. He had been stranded at his home in Yaoundé since the eve of “peaceful marches” that he and his party had organized on September 22, notably to demand the departure of President Biya.
He considered himself “sequestered” at home and had never received any notification of his status either by the courts or by the police. “The security device was completely lifted this afternoon,” said Tuesday to Agence France-Presse Emmanuel Simh, third vice-president of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC), the party of Maurice Kamto.
Me Hippolyte Meli, one of the lawyers of the most virulent opponent to President Biya, who heads Cameroon at 87, confirmed the information to AFP after visiting the neighborhood of his client’s residence . “I believe that Mr. Kamto is now free to move around, he had not been notified of the ban on going out, he will not wait for a notification to move,” assured Mr. Simh.
Cameroon keeps up the pressure
“The situation of the leader of the MRC (…) will continue to be the subject of careful examination” by the courts, the government had announced a few hours earlier in a press release, without further details on the fate of the opponent.
On September 22, the police violently repressed from the start any rally called for by the MRC and other opposition parties for “peaceful marches”. Many militants and MRC executives had been arrested and then imprisoned. Some have since been released, others are still detained.
The government accuses the MRC and Maurice Kamto of trying to organize an “insurrectionary movement”. “Legal proceedings against the leaders and organizers of this movement will continue,” read the government statement on Tuesday.
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