“Cameroon’s Silence of Fear”: As Biya Clings to Power, the World Turns Away

As President Paul Biya begins what his government calls a new mandate, Cameroonians are facing one of the darkest political chapters in the nation’s modern history. The world, a group of prominent Cameroonian intellectuals warns, is watching in silence. In a statement published in the French newspaper Libération, a collective of Cameroonian intellectuals, artists, journalists, and civil society figures condemned the country’s October 12 presidential election as fraudulent and decried what they describe as “the suffocating silence of the international community.”

According to the collective, the election — which handed 92-year-old Paul Biya a 53.66% victory and an eighth consecutive term — was “a usurpation of popular sovereignty carried out by a regime that has turned fraud into an institution.”

“Everything indicates that Paul Biya was defeated by his challenger, Issa Tchiroma Bakary,” the statement said. “But, true to a well-rehearsed script, the regime used massive fraud and its institutional machinery to overturn the will of the people and cling to power.”

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Widespread Crackdown After the Vote

Following the contested results, protests erupted across major cities, including Yaoundé, Douala, and Bafoussam. Security forces responded with lethal force, leaving at least 30 people dead, hundreds injured, and more than 2,000 arrested, according to the statement.

Among those detained are opposition figures and academics, including Anicet Ekane, Djeukam Tchameni, and Professor Jean Calvin Aba’a Oyono, who were arrested “for the sole crime of supporting the opposition and demanding the truth of the ballot box,” the statement said.

It described the crackdown as “immediate and brutal,” asserting that the government’s reaction “illustrates the moral and political exhaustion of a postcolonial regime that rules only through fear and violence.”

“A Complicit and Deafening Silence”

The collective reserved its sharpest criticism for what it called the “assourdissant et coupable silence” — a deafening and culpable silence — of the international community, particularly France, Cameroon’s former colonial power and longstanding ally.

“France, which has sponsored the Cameroonian regime for decades, contented itself with a timid communiqué,” the statement said. “This is not an oversight — it is the continuation of a postcolonial system in which African autocrats know they can rely on the indulgence of their former tutors.”

The group linked this to recent cooperation between the French and Cameroonian security forces, citing the June visit of General Hubert Bonneau, head of the French national gendarmerie, to Yaoundé.

“The French taxpayer must know that his money indirectly finances bloody repression,” the statement declared, adding that French security assistance strengthens the very forces “now turned against their own people.”

Media Indifference and the Hierarchy of Suffering

Beyond government halls and diplomatic circles, the collective accused international media of helping to enable repression through neglect.

“The Cameroonian tragedy unfolds in near-total media indifference,” the statement said. “Rare are the major outlets that show any concern for the situation. The country does not make the headlines — and what is not seen does not exist. What does not exist can be repressed with impunity.”

The authors called this silence part of a “hierarchy of human tragedies,” arguing that some nations’ suffering receives sympathy while others’ are dismissed as background noise.

“In Cameroon, this media silence amplifies the solitude of a people caught between the brutality of a decaying regime and the indifference of the world,” the collective wrote.

Echoes of the Past

The statement draws on the legacy of Mongo Beti, the late Cameroonian writer and dissident who, decades ago, denounced what he called France’s hypocrisy — praising human rights while backing African dictatorships.

“Nothing has changed,” the collective said. “At each crisis, realpolitik triumphs over principle, and the democratic aspirations of African peoples are sacrificed to the interests of their rulers and their Western patrons.”

The group argued that the situation in Cameroon today “poses a fundamental question about the credibility of the democratic discourse of the West.”

“How can one claim to defend freedom and human dignity while, through silence, security cooperation, and economic interests, sustaining a regime that fires live bullets at its population?” the statement asked.

A Call to Break the Silence

The collective urged France, the international community, and global media organisations to “break this indecent silence” and refuse to be “passive witnesses or self-interested accomplices” to what they described as “the violent repression of a people demanding, peacefully and for decades, to exercise its sovereignty.”

“History will judge harshly those who, out of indifference or calculation, chose to look away while a people struggles to reclaim its confiscated freedom,” the statement concluded.

A Nation in Crisis, a World in Denial

Biya’s continued rule — now stretching into its 44th year — makes him one of the world’s longest-serving heads of state. His government, long accused of corruption and authoritarianism, has faced numerous domestic crises, including the ongoing Anglophone conflict in the country’s west and a stagnant economy.

Analysts say the 2025 election has pushed the country to the brink. “The regime has outlived its legitimacy,” one political observer in Yaoundé told the AP on condition of anonymity. “What remains is fear — and the international community’s convenient blindness.”

The collective’s statement, signed by lawyer Alice Nkom, entrepreneur Rebecca Enonchong, journalists Eric Chinje, Mimi Mefo, Jean-Bruno Tagne, and others, represents one of the most coordinated public denunciations of Biya’s rule by Cameroonian civil society in years.

But whether their appeal will stir the world to act remains uncertain.

As the statement warned, “A people’s cry for freedom has met the silence of those who claim to defend it.”

MMI News