A declaration by Cameroon’s territorial administration minister to make two opposition coalitions illegal is part of a government crackdown on opposition and dissent.

On March 12, 2024, the minister, Paul Atanga Nji, said in a statement that the Political Alliance for Change (Alliance politique pour le changement, APC), led by Jean-Michel Nintcheu, and the Political Alliance for Transition in Cameroon (Alliance politique pour la transition, APT), led by Olivier Bile, are “illegal,” calling them “clandestine movements.” The minister also referenced a recent meeting at a prison in Yaoundé between Nintcheu and Sisiku Julius Ayuk Tabe, a leader of the Anglophone separatist group Ambazonia Interim Government, as a factor in the decision to ban the coalition.

“The government’s move against these coalitions shows how the Cameroonian authorities are moving to close down space for the opposition and for public debate ahead of the 2025 presidential elections,” said Carine Kaneza Nantulya, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities should immediately lift the ban and allow opposition parties to continue working without harassment.”

In December 2023, a prominent opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, was reelected as the leader of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (Mouvement pour la renaissance du Cameroun, MRC), one of the most prominent opposition groups in the country. Kamto used his reelection to announce the creation of the APC.

The current president, Paul Biya, has been in power since 1982 and is serving out his seventh term. Biya, 91, was last reelected in 2018 after a contested vote-counting process. Kamto challenged the official results and declared himself winner of the election.

Biya’s 2018 election sparked a wave of political repression. After the 2018 vote, opposition-led protests occurred across the country, and the government responded with a heavy crackdown and the use of excessive force by the police, army, and gendarmes. In January 2019, Kamto and over 200 of his supporters were arrested and detained. Kamto was charged with insurrection, hostility against the homeland, criminal association, threats to public order, rebellion, and inciting insurrection, crimes that can carry the death penalty. He was freed on October 5, 2019, and the charges were dropped, though the crackdown on the opposition continued.

In early September 2020, Cameroon authorities banned demonstrations across the country after Kamto’s MRC encouraged people to take to the streets over the government’s decision to call regional elections in December 2020. Opposition parties had expressed concerns that the elections could not be conducted freely and fairly without reforming the electoral code and addressing the lack of security in the country’s minority Anglophone regions, where separatist groups and security forces have repeatedly clashed.

On September 22, 2020, Cameroonian security forces fired tear gas and water cannons and arrested over 550 people, mainly opposition party members and supporters, to disperse peaceful protests across the country. Many peaceful protesters were beaten and mistreated while being arrested and in detention.

While the majority of Kamto’s supporters who were arrested in 2019 were eventually released, 41, including Olivier Bibou Nissack and Alain Fogue Tedom, two of the group’s leaders, remain behind bars after being sentenced to seven years.

When initiating the APC in December 2023, Kamto said that the opposition should rally behind one candidate for the next presidential elections, slated for late 2025. Biya has not announced if he will run again for reelection.

Opposition groups simply coordinating activities and forming alliances cannot be considered “clandestine movements;” instead, this coordination should be considered a normal and important feature of the democratic process, Human Rights Watch said.

Activists have expressed doubts over the legality of the government’s ban. “This decision is not based on any legal texts,” Emmanuel Simh, a prominent rights activist and lawyer for the MRC, told Human Rights Watch. “No law in Cameroon prevents legally established parties getting together to establish a coalition. It’s just repression and another attempt to muzzle the opposition, to prevent it from organizing ahead of the next presidential elections.”

The government’s decision to ban the two political coalitions violates the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and the right to participate in political life . These rights are guaranteed under international human rights law including expressly in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, both of which Cameroon has ratified.

“Cameroonians have watched Biya weaken any meaningful political opposition over the course of the last four decades and this ban is yet another example of the government’s repression,” Nantulya said. “He should consider his legacy and encourage authorities to facilitate and deliver a credible election process with full respect for fundamental rights and freedoms.”

Culled from Human Rights Watch

Paul Biya, the tribal chief passing for a head of state, has faced allegations of corruption and authoritarianism during his long tenure. Critics have accused his Beti-Bulu-Ewondo government of widespread corruption, human rights abuses and political repression.  And he remains the master at curbing press freedoms.

Is Biya taking the last kicks of a dying horse? The Francophone dominated Cameroon government military is presently occupying most of Southern Cameroons. Cameroonians are being told that the dictator intends to run again in the 2025 presidential election.

Boko Haram is alive and active in the Far North region. The security situation in the East region is deteriorating. Southern Cameroons Restoration Forces have now killed more than three thousands government soldiers and police, an indication that the Ambazonia conflict is intensifying.

Meanwhile the prolonged, miserable plight of large numbers of citizens both in English and French Cameroun has grown. The on-going ill-treatment of innocent Southern Cameroons civilians in the seven year conflict is now unacceptable in the eyes of many deep within the African Union, even to Yaounde’s friends. Pretending in French speaking Cameroun that all is well, allowing crime to flourish and spread in the cities of Douala and Yaoundé, while refusing to dialogue with the jailed Southern Cameroons leaders is not the proper way to conduct politics.

Some of Cameroon’s European allies including Canada and the US, understandably, are out of patience with the government of the 91-year-old President Biya. The general consensus is that Biya should go! After 42 years in power, even prominent Francophone CPDM officials are now recalibrating their positions and saying Biya should be replaced.

We of the Cameroon Concord Group are pushing the military to begin setting out the various ways in which Cameroon as a nation could dump Mr Biya as leader. Biya is not a cure. He has never been a cure. He was never going to be a cure.

We now know that Cameroon’s presidential election is coming up next year, though no campaign has started but threats from the Minister of Territorial Administration against some progressive political parties.

The 2025 election offers the right opportunity for Cameroonians including those in the military and the National Gendarmerie to depose the Beti Monarch.

By Soter Tarh Agbaw-Ebai

Cameroon’s government has branded two political coalition groups as having an “illegal character” and warned them to suspend their activities 18 months ahead of a presidential election.

International NGOs accuse the regime of President Paul Biya, who has ruled with an iron fist for more than 41 years, of systematically suppressing opposition.

“The Political Alliance for Change (APC) and the Alliance for Political Transition in Cameroon (ATP) are not political parties under the law,” said Territorial Administration Minister Paul Atanga Nji in a statement late Tuesday.

“These clandestine movements cannot carry out any political activity.

“Despite the illegal character of these movements, their promoters hold meetings, press conferences and consultations looking to recruit new members,” he said.

The statement also expressed concern over “pseudo-associations ahead of the 2025 presidential election”.

The APC dismissed what it called “curious threats,” in a “statement which indicates panic”.

The alliance said it was “ready to face the elections victoriously” next year.

The APC, led by former deputy Jean Michel Nintcheu, was set up in December at a congress of the leading opposition Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC), which backed Maurice Kamto for president in the 2018 ballot.

Kamto came second and called Biya’s re-election a fraud. He was jailed without trial the following year, after staging peaceful protests.

The movement boycotted legislative elections in 2018 and over the next two years saw 700 of its supporters imprisoned, including Kamto.

Most were freed after eight months in detention without trial but 47 were jailed by a military tribunal in 2021 — 44 remain in prison today.

Rights group Amnesty international last year charged 91-year-old Biya’s regime with using military tribunals to arbitrarily detain the opposition, civilians, journalists and civil society figures on the pretext that they had committed terrorist acts.

Source: AFP

The opposition in Cameroon has had a worrying trajectory since it was legalised in 1990.

Things looked positive at first. Vibrant parties emerged, such as the Social Democratic Front (SDF), led by the charismatic Ni John Fru Ndi. It won more than half of the seats in the National Assembly.

While President Paul Biya secured re-election, he beat Ndi by only 4%, and everything changed. Understanding how close he was to defeat, Biya clamped down. Repression became more intense, and restrictive measures such as bans on meetings and demonstrations were introduced.

Worse, Biya’s efforts to divide and rule the opposition by sponsoring some groups and co-opting others has led to damaging fragmentation. Today there are more than 300 opposition parties; none can compete with Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement.

But Biya is not the only problem. A lack of common vision, underpinned by ethnic divisions, has prevented the emergence of a more coherent challenge to the ruling party’s hegemony. The SDF has also struggled to replace Ndi, and has suffered from the conflict in the English-speaking regions of the country, which has made it difficult to campaign in its stronghold.

Taken together, these challenges explain why the opposition holds only 28 out of 180 seats in the National Assembly and has no senators at all. Even the decision of Maurice Kamto to form the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC) in 2012 failed to deliver political change.

Despite considerable fanfare, Kamto was controversially given only 14% of the vote in the 2018 presidential election.

Even in the darkest moments, however, there is hope. Having boycotted legislative and municipal elections in 2020, the MRC will take part in the 2025 polls.

Opposition parties have also started to draw together to promote a mass voter registration drive and form a coalition around the Alliance for Change. Biya remains in control, but opposition supporters can now dream of a renaissance.

Culled from the Mail & Guardian