The president of the Alliance of Progressive Forces (AFP), Cyrille Sam Mbaka, describes as unjustified, the condemnation of senior officials of the CRM by the military court of Yaoundé. And calls on the Yaoundé regime to take into account various opinions.
Below, the message from the AFP National President
Cameroon has been going through difficult times for a long time, with the Anglophone crisis that continues to get bogged down, the breakthroughs of Boko Haram that are mourning families in the north, the ethnic conflicts that have marked the scene in several regions of the country and caused loss of life and serious cracks in our social fabric, road accidents, which again this year have caused many deaths and kept our country at the top of the deadliest countries in the franc zone.
It is in this context that AFP (Alliance of Progressive Forces) has learned of the sentencing to heavy prison sentences, of several cadres and activists of the Movement for the Renaissance of Cameroon. These judicial decisions seem to us unjustified and can only contribute to dehumanizing our administration and our young people, those for whom we have fought for so many years, those to whom we still hope to bequeath the torch of the reconstruction of our Nation.
Democracy is a debate of ideas. These young people arrested and detained for some in less than human circumstances, have expressed opinions that emerge from their freedom of expression, as it remains clear that their fundamental idea is so far noble: a frank and inclusive dialogue to get out of the Anglophone crisis, a consensual electoral code and a better distribution of the country’s wealth.
Such intentions cannot, in a self-respecting country, be subject to such incomprehensible custodial sentences.
AFP calls on the Yaoundé regime to ease social tensions and take better account of divergent opinions. No nation in the world develops in the muzzle of its opposition. To the opposition, AFP recalls that a better synergy of forces will make it possible to better coordinate actions with a view to an effective consideration of our voices by the governing regime.
The fight for change should not be the prerogative of a few actors against others, but of an even more diverse front. If we are truly united, repression, which is a colonial legacy, should give way to a country more rooted in democratic and ancestral values: cohesion, consultation, understanding, dialogue, forgiveness, living together, etc.
AFP reiterates that the Cameroon of tomorrow will be built by all of us.
It is a Cameroon that needs the enlightenment of our researchers, whether they are historians, literary, philosophers, doctors, pharmacists, sociologists, ethnologists, anthropologists, psychologists, educators… Cameroon is today a country that must regain its republican identity, give back to its people its authentic sovereignty.
It is together that we will build it, together that we will develop it. The release of all political prisoners, including those from the Anglophone crisis, will therefore be the real beginning of the work of national reconciliation and the erection of the new Cameroon that we wish with all our wishes.
Done at Douala, 28 December 2021
Cyrille Sam Mbaka
