Yesterday, barrister Mispa AWASUM, National President of the Women wing of the CRM party, was notified of a 15-days custody at the regional department of the Judicial Police (DRPJ), after a group of women from the party that she was leading had tried to visit the CRM National President, who has been under an illegal house arrest for two months, to ask for his release.
This police custody comes after barrister Me Richard TAMFU (National Secretary in charge of the reform and modernization of the State) has been remanded to the New Bell central prison in Douala, the threats of arrest of barrister Cheikh Ali ASSAD (national secretary in charge of electoral, administrative and traditional questions and of the civil society). Apart from all of them being all Lawyers, the other fact common to all these people is that they are high ranking officials of the party. It is therefore clear, as we have repeatedly said, if there still was the slightest doubt, that the dictatorial regime in place has decided to behead the CRM and stop it from carrying out its political activities therefore muting the party.
22 women among those who yesterday asked for the release of the CRM National President and their many members in detention since the peaceful marches of 22nd September were arrested and detained in certain police stations in Yaoundé.
How come that a regime which brilliantly claims to be the promoter of an “advanced democracy” in our country gets involved in the manhunt of its political opponents?
Instead of ensuring the security of the territory and its citizens, the national police and gendarmerie have become a political police force and the intelligence services devote most of their time to infiltrating the opposition and monitoring its militants.
Cameroon is more than ever a police state that recalls the dark days of the colonial period and the first two decades of independence; a police state which is really starting to remind us of the “tontons macoutes” in Haiti .But the CRM will not give in to this repression and persecution that befalls on it.
More than a political party, the CRM is a state of mind, a humanist, generous and patriotic vision of our country and its people that concerns Cameroonians in the depths of themselves. Arresting its leaders, even of all its leaders will not be enough to kill it. Others will take over.
The thirst for freedom and justice is in every normal human being, and this thirst which keep up the militants .
The CRM requires:
- The immediate release of its many members and sympathizers arbitrarily arrested and detained since the eve of 22nd September ;
- An end to the persecution, hunting, harassment and intimidation of its members.
Nothing will prevent us, on the one hand, from continuing to ask for peace in the NOSO by implementing an immediate ceasefire to create measures conducive to an inclusive, frank and sincere political dialogue, on the other hand, a consensual reform of the electoral system in order to establish a peaceful democracy in our country that will spare us repeated post-election crises.
Done in Yaoundé on the 22nd November 2020
The national president
Maurice KAMTO
