By DOH JAMES SONKEY
The first Vice President of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement, CRM, Mamadou Mota who has been acting President since the arrest of CRM President, Prof Maurice Kamto, the South Regional Head of the party, Dr Appolinaire Oko’o are among some 80 militants arrested in the nation capital and taken to the Secretariat of State at the Ministry of Defence in charge of the National Gendarmerie, before being transferred to the Central Police Station No1 in Yaounde.
These militants and officials were arrested on June 1, 2019 in the streets of the political capital of Cameroon, for defying authority’s ban on their peaceful march.
In the early morning of Saturday, protesters, despite tight security disposition in major roundabouts marched from the Central Market towards Post Central, thereby braving the administrative ban before being stopped at the Cathedral by mobilized Forces of Law and Order.
But they kept shouting to the top of their voices “No to secession and partitioning of Cameroon, No to war in Anglophone regions, No to the exclusion of certain opposition parties in the political life of the country, No to state tribalism and all forms of tribalism, Yes to a large and inclusive dialogue, Yes to reforms on the electoral code, Yes to peaceful manifestation rights in Cameroon” etc, while demanding for Prof Maurice Kamto and others detained in connection with the Anglophone crisis or CRM marches to be freed, and that all those who managed funds for the 2019 AFCON in Cameroon be audited.
According to CRM officials, a total of 354 militants were arrested in Yaounde, Douala, Bafoussam, Bangante and Nkongsamba on June 1, 2019. In Yaounde, the officials complained that lawyers of the newly arrested are being denied access to their clients.
Majority of protesters who survived the arrest of June 1, 2019 in the nation capital promised to return to the streets for another peaceful march planned for June 8, 2019.