Opposition party leader Maurice Kamto has denounced what he terms a “violent hate campaign” by President Paul Biya’s regime against him and the entire Bamileke ethnic group, to which he belongs.
In a statement shared on Facebook on Friday, August 2, the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party chairman accused the regime of using “certain services” to defame him and the Bamileke people, a prominent ethnic group that holds significant economic power in Cameroon.
Kamto claims the campaign is aimed at preventing him from becoming President by getting other Cameroonians to hate the Bamilekes.
The alleged hate campaign reportedly began during the 2018 elections, where Kamto was the runner-up as long-serving President Paul Biya, 91, was declared the winner with 71 percent of the vote.
“The evidence, including video of this targeted hate operation against a community, is available. All Cameroonians and international observers have witnessed it,” Kamto stated.
“How many times have we heard representatives of the CPDM and allies declare emphatically and with impunity, particularly on television, radio, and social media: ‘KAMTO will never be President in Cameroon’; ‘A Bamileke will never be President of the Republic as long as the capital is in Yaoundé’; ‘The Bamilekes already have economic power; they must therefore give up political power’ etc,” he added.
Kamto claims the hate campaign is ongoing, with members of the regime using the media to whip up hate sentiments against him and the Bamileke people.
“A few months before the next presidential election, frightened of having done nothing of the seven-year mandate stolen with violence in 2018, this regime is relapsing and plunging back into the mire. Here it is once again invading the web with hateful, tribalistic remarks and defamation against me, all with an assumed political plan of setting Cameroonians against me and the Bamileke community on the basis of a colonial quibble and the supposed supremacist and hegemonic ambition of this community, theorized by the enlightened,” Kamto said.
The CRM, one of the major opposition parties in the country, was technically knocked out of next year’s presidential race after President Biya signed a bill postponing the 2025 parliamentary election.
A subsequent presidential decree also postponed the municipal election to 2026, effectively barring the party from contesting under the current electoral code, as it controls no municipal council or legislative seat.
Kamto, who strongly opposed the election postponement alongside other opposition politicians, believes it was a strategy by the regime to undermine his party.
Kamto claims the regime has particularly targeted the Bamileke community by cracking down on CRM militants and sympathizers through arbitrary arrest, detention, and torture.
Kamto’s remarks come amid government intolerance of free speech, with activists suffering arbitrary arrest and detention for voicing concerns about bad governance.
