Hundreds of members of Cameroon’s main opposition party are being held in custody after the country’s security forces carried out mass arrests during a series of anti-government protests over the weekend.
Two people were injured and 351 arrested on Saturday in four regions of the central African country in protests against octogenarian Cameroonian President Paul Biya and his government. Several senior opposition leaders were among those arrested. Only a handful of people have been released.
The protesters’ demands included the release of their leader, Maurice Kamto, as well as hundreds of people arrested in earlier protests, and called for an end to the killings in the Anglophone regions of the country, where a bloody conflict has played out over the past two years.
Kamto was arrested in January after protests against what he and his party, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (MRC), say was a stolen election last October.
He was later charged with insurrection, rebellion and “hostility to the homeland” by a military court, charges that theoretically carry the death penalty.
Arrests have spiked this year, since Biya claimed a disputed landslide victory.
Saturday’s demonstrators also called for an investigation into what happened to the money for hosting this year’s African Cup of Nations soccer tournament — a right Cameroon was stripped of because of delays in delivering the necessary infrastructure — and a revision of the electoral code.
“We were singing and asking them to free Mr Kamto and the other people, when they just came and asked us all to enter their vehicle,” said Samuel Kuetche, who was later released. “These people are heartless. We didn’t have any guns on us. We were not fighting anybody, but they forcefully took us to the police station.”
Opposition leaders said that the right to protest is enshrined in the country’s constitution.
MRC secretary-general Christopher Ndong, one of the few leaders not behind bars, said: “It shows how dictatorial and how wicked [the government is] and how they are not willing to listen to the people. They shall continue arresting us because we shall not give up. You can’t be arresting people because you don’t want to listen to them.”
Another protest planned for next Saturday is expected to attract a higher number of people.
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