The NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) denounced a new “repression” by the Cameroonian government against the opposition in the run-up to the 2025 elections, after the government of Paul Biya declared the grouping of its main parties “illegal”. in two platforms.
Since his re-election in 2018 for a seventh term, contested by the opposition and international NGOs, President Biya, 91, who has ruled this vast Central African country for more than forty-one years, has severely repressed any opposition, regularly denounces HRW.
In a statement released on March 12, his government declared “illegal” and “clandestine” two platforms bringing together the main opposition parties and civil society organizations ahead of the 2025 presidential and legislative elections, the Alliance Politics for Change (APC) and the Alliance for a Political Transition in Cameroon (ATP).
“Cameroonians have seen Paul Biya weaken any meaningful political opposition over the past four decades, and this ban is yet another example,” “in line with recent government repression of the opposition and the dissent,” HRW wrote in a statement dated Thursday, March 21.
Arbitrary arrests
The announcement declaring political “coalitions” “illegal” “shows how the Cameroonian authorities are acting to close the space to opposition and public debate in the run-up to the 2025 presidential elections,” according to the NGO, which mentions a further “violation of the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly and participation in political life.”
The APC, created in December 2023, supports a future presidential candidacy by Maurice Kamto, who came second in the 2018 election, the results of which he contested, which he considers “fraudulent”. In 2019, he was imprisoned for nine months without trial, before being released under pressure from the international community and NGOs.
In 2019 and 2020, nearly seven hundred executives and activists of his party, the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon (MRC), were arrested during and after “unquestionably peaceful marches” but “subjects to violent repression”, had accused experts mandated by the UN in November 2022. Today, forty-one of them are still imprisoned, sentenced to seven years in prison, notably for “insurrection”.
In June 2023, Amnesty International also accused the government of “violating human rights” for having “arbitrarily” imprisoned opponents, civilians, journalists, civil society leaders, and having them tried by military courts in invoking acts of terrorism.
