Statement on the discovery of the Sikoum mass grave, by Edea

STATEMENT ON THE DISCOVERY OF THE SIKOUM MASS GRAVE, BY EDEA, AND ON THE TOTAL INSECURITY INTO WHICH THE RDPC REGIME HAS PLUNGED CAMEROONIANS.

According to various sources, a mass grave of eleven (11) skeletons, four (4) bodies and two (2) people still alive was discovered on February 18, 2025 in Sikoum, not far from the toll of Edéa.

This macabre discovery may lift a corner of the veil on the disappearances of many people, and in particular motorcycle taxi drivers and taxi drivers in the cities of Yaoundé and Douala and elsewhere.

On behalf of CRM militants and sympathisers, I offer my sincere condolences to the families of the missing persons and those found dead in the Sikoum mass grave. I wish a speedy recovery to the two people miraculously found alive at the scene of this tragedy.

Many cases of unsolved disappearances have ended up plunging our country into a psychosis that has been accentuated by the discovery of the Sikoum mass grave.

Two days after this macabre discovery, the President of the Republic, the Prime Minister, Head of Government, the Government Spokesperson, the Secretary of State in charge of the Gendarmerie, the General Delegate for National Security (DGSN), the Minister of Territorial Administration, the Public Prosecutor at the High Court of Sanaga Maritime remain strangely silent. Clearly, after 43 years of management by the CPDM regime, we can sadly note that nothing, not even what affects the lives of Cameroonians, moves the President of the Republic in office: whether it is the massacres of the Boko Haram sect in the Far North Region, or the thousands of dead and the million internally displaced persons and tens of thousands of refugees from the civil war in the North-West and South-West, the tragedies that occurred in Ngouache, Bafoussam, the deadly landslide of Mount Mbankolo in Yaoundé, the deaths in Olembe during the African Cup of Nations, the deadly floods of Mayo Danay, the numerous traffic disasters such as that of Kombé on the Yaoundé-Sangmelima road, or the devastating landslide of the Dschang cliff, to stick to the most serious cases that occurred in recent years. What is the President of the Republic doing while holed up in his palace? Do he and the members of his Government have a heart? Who are they governing, if the fate of Cameroonians does not interest them, even when they are in the greatest distress?

What are the many security services doing, whose zeal one is tempted to believe is only manifested when they have to monitor, arbitrarily arrest and torture CRM militants, as everyone saw during the savage repression of the Peaceful Marches of 2019 and 2020?

Indeed, by making the hypothesis – which remains to be confirmed by serious investigations – that the unfortunate victims of the Sikoum tragedy were kidnapped in Yaoundé, or in Douala, or in Edea itself and then taken to Sikoum to be executed, one can wonder what is the purpose of all the police, gendarmerie, customs, Ministry of Transport agents, water and forests control barriers as well as the mixed brigades, which block the Douala-Yaoundé road? Should we conclude that intelligence, whose strategic function is knowledge and anticipation, only works in our country when it is necessary to monitor opponents and civil society actors?

The CRM asks the President of the Republic and the Government to urgently speak out to provide clarifications on this terrible Sikoum affair in order to reassure the populations, in particular those in the area concerned who are now overcome by psychosis. The CRM asks the judicial authorities to inform the public of the progress of the investigations into this case.

The CRM asks Parliament to launch, at the opening of the session next March, a parliamentary inquiry to establish all responsibilities in the occurrence of this security and humanitarian scandal which traumatizes Cameroonians abandoned to themselves by the power whose only reason for living is to survive in order, it hopes, to succeed itself.

Done in Yaoundé on February 20, 2025

Maurice KAMTO, National President of the CRM,

Candidate of the CRM and the PAC in the upcoming presidential election.