Pascal Zamboue, the national coordinator of the Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM) party, who has been detained for three years now, will never be able to see his wife again – even if he regains freedom.
On the night of Wednesday, September 6, unidentified assailants broke into Suzanne Zamboue’s home in Yaounde, stabbed her, and then fled.
Reports say the assailants tied her hands and stuffed her mouth with a tissue before stabbing her in the neck. Her children, who had been in their rooms unaware of what was happening to their mother, only returned to the living room minutes later to find her dead.
Suzanne Zamboue, a victim of targeted killings in Cameroon.
Suzanne Zamboue died barely two days after visiting her husband at Kondengui Maximum Security Prison in Yaounde, where he and several other CRM political prisoners have been jailed since 2020.
Her visit to Kondengui last Tuesday came two days after she returned from a trip to France.
Not in any way connected to theft
The brutal killing of Suzanne Zamboue is far from an armed robbery case. In a chat with MMI’s CEO, Mimi Mefo, a CRM militant said “nothing was missing in her house after the attackers had conducted the operation.”
From all indications, they came with the intention of killing Suzanne Zamboue. Our source added that the attackers neither stole money nor valuables from the house that night.
No one was harmed aside from Suzanne Zamboue. Her remains have been kept at the Yaounde General Hospital mortuary as gendarmes investigate her killing.
Professor Maurice Kamto’s CRM party reacts
The Cameroon Renaissance Movement (CRM), also known as MRC, condemned Suzanne Zamboue’s killing, calling it “a heinous crime.” In a release published on September 7, the party said she was murdered by unknown assailants.
The CRM linked her killing to the husband’s political activities and stated that President Paul Biya’s government “is already politically accountable” for the murder.
“As if to make him (Pascal Zamboue) pay for his political commitment, on Wednesday evening strangers broke into their home and coldly murdered his wife Suzanne, to whom he had been married for 41 years,” the CRM release said.
The brutal murder of Suzanne Zamboue is proof that relatives
Pascal Zamboue is serving a seven-year sentence in Kondengui. He was arbitrarily arrested on October 21, 2020, one month after the CRM organised a mass protest to denounce bad election laws, rigging, rising insecurity in the country, economic hardship, and lack of basic amenities.
Hundreds of CRM supporters were bundled into detention facilities across Cameroon, and Zamboue is among the dozens who are yet to be released.
The CRM blamed the killing of Suzanne Zamboue on those who arrested and detained her husband.
“Indeed, if the latter had been at his home on Wednesday evening, it is likely that the executioners of his wife would not have ascertained their act of animal cruelty,” the party wrote.
