Cameroon:Maurice Kamto Condemns “Illegal Siege” on Jean Michel Nintcheu’s Residence

By Boris Esono Nwenfor

BUEA, Cameroon—The leader of the Opposition Cameroon Renaissance Movement, CRM, known in its French acronym as the MRC Party, Maurice Kamto, has condemned the "illegal siege" on the home of Honourable Jean Michel Nintcheu, a former SDF MP, the current president of the Front for Change in Cameroon, FCC, and the interim National Coordinator of the Political Alliance for Change, PAC.

Anti-terror police units are reported to have surrounded Nintcheu’s residence in Douala on Saturday, where he had scheduled to hold a meeting with Front for Change in Cameroon executive members. Kamto, whose PAC is supporting the upcoming presidential election, described this action as a politically motivated assault that reflects a systematic pattern of intimidation and civil rights abuse against opposition figures in the country.

“This is unacceptable. This state of affairs is reminiscent of all the acts of aggression, torture and various and repeated violations of civil and political rights to which the CRM and its militants have been subjected, particularly since the electoral Hold perpetrated by ELECAM and the Constitutional Council in favour of the CPDM candidate during the presidential election of 07 October 2018,” MRC Leader Maurice Kamto wrote on his official X account.

“The siege of his home and the administrative and police feverishness can only be explained by his political, republican and courageous choices. This behaviour by the administrative authorities and the security forces gives a clear indication of what the regime's hawks are planning to do to ensure, they hope, the survival of this worn-out and exhausted regime, which is clinging on in a fit of desperation, but which has (no longer) anything to offer Cameroonians and Cameroon.”

Maurice Kamto added, "The people of Change, Democrats of all stripes, must unreservedly condemn this latest state barbarity. The CPDM's usual complicit silence, the main beneficiary of all violations of civil and political rights in our country, carries with it a historic responsibility.”

He further warned that the security forces' action reveals a deeper plan by the ruling regime to suppress the rising public demand for change. Kamto said: “Cameroonians are on their feet. And nothing can stop them from liberating themselves by the republican path they have chosen, namely the path of electoral democracy: not poverty, not the poor quality of life, not the high cost of living, not the advanced dilapidation of the country's infrastructure, which is a sign of the great corruption and embezzlement of public funds, not administrative and police provocations, not the manoeuvres and other shenanigans of the black cabinets of the regime's hawks, who are preparing for chaos.”

“The attack on the private home of a Member of the National Assembly, the national leader of a political party represented in the National Assembly and the municipalities, is a red rag that the authorities would do well to stop waving, in the collective interest of the country. I, therefore, call on the Government to order the immediate lifting of the siege on the home of the Honourable Jean Michel Nintcheu and to allow his party, the FCC, to carry out its political activities peacefully, by the law.”