Victories 23 and 24: Donors free gay couple from Cameroon prison
When Cam and Don walked out of Yaoundé Central Prison, the liberation of those two young men marked the successful conclusion of last year’s Project Not Alone, through which generous readers donated funds that won early release for seven imprisoned victims of Cameroonian homophobia. Since 2018, Project Not Alone has supplied food to 27 LGBTI prisoners and arranged for the early release for 24 of them.
To support the ongoing work of Project Not Alone, CLICK HERE (PayPal) or HERE (Donorbox).
By Courtney Stans
Cam, a tall, slim 24-year-old, formerly was a nurse who worked at a clinic in Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. For two years, he had been in a loving relationship with Don, age 26, the manager of a perfume store.
The two young men had each left their family homes without explaining why. Because each of them had a steady job, they made enough money to move together into a small apartment where they lived discreetly, far from their parents and, they hoped, away from judging eyes.
But then their families discovered what was going on.
“We never imagined that our families would find us,” Don said. “Our goal was not to shock anyone. We knew that people would judge us if they ever found out about our relationship.”
At first, their parents had no idea that Cam and Don were in love, but they did want to know where their sons had gone. The two families live close to each other, so they searched together — in vain, initially.
Then young people in the neighborhood told the parents: “Your children are fags. We saw them in a distant neighborhood where they act like man and wife.”
Armed with that tip, the parents went to police, who concluded that Cam and Don must be violating Cameroon’s anti-homosexuality law, Article 347-1 of the penal code, which provides for prison sentences of up to five years and fines of up to 200,000 CFA francs (about U.S. $420*).
A team composed of the parents, neighborhood youths and police officers spent three days looking for them.
On March 17, 2022, the searchers found them. Police arrested Cam and Don, transported them to the police station and forced them to confess to being homosexuals.
On March 22, the couple was moved to pre-trial detention at Kondengui prison, where they remained for four months without a lawyer and without a trial. None of their family or friends visited them in prison.
In June, LGBTI rights activists working on Project Not Alone 2022 (Projet Pas Seul 2022 in French, or PPS22) interviewed them along with five other LGBTI detainees in Yaoundé who also were imprisoned only for homosexuality and not for actual crimes. As such, all seven were eligible for help from Project Not Alone.
The project, run by the Erasing 76 Crimes news site and Cameroonian activists, is funded by donations from readers of Erasing 76 Crimes. The finances are handled by the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation, a California-based charity, which guarantees that all donations to the project are transferred to Cameroon to help unjustly detained LGBTI prisoners.
Food
In July, activists working for PPS22 made a delivery of food and hygiene items to the seven detainees at the central prison, which is crowded, unsanitary and serves its prisoners only one meal per day. The rice, cooking oil, pasta, bananas, eggs, peanuts, and garlic/onion cubes, plus bleach, bathing soap and antiseptic soap cost 243,000 CFA francs ($510, or about $73 per person), which came from readers’ donations.
In August, an attorney from the human rights legal-aid organization Défenseurs Sans Frontières (DSF) began representing Cam and Don, working pro bono with expenses paid by PPS22. The attorney pushed for a trial, which arrived in October. Both defendants were convicted and sentenced to eight months in prison, with credit for the time they had already served.
Freedom
They had no money to pay their fines of 200,000 CFA francs ($420) each and court costs of 38,700 CFA francs ($81) each, which ordinarily would have meant that they would have to remain in prison for four months to work off those debts. But readers’ donations to PPS22 paid for them, so Cam and Don were set free on Dec. 13, 2022.
They were in good health, but remained outraged about the injustice of their incarceration and disturbed by lingering memories of prison.
“Love has no limits and we don’t choose who to love, so why should we be imprisoned if we love each other?” Don asked.
During their months in prison, he said, “I never slept well. Bad smells, dirt and disease were our daily life.”
“I am traumatized for life. I don’t know if I will ever set foot in a police station again,” he said.
Both men expressed thanks to PPS22 donors.
“Words will not be enough to thank them,” Cam said. “Providing us with a lawyer, food, paying our fines and freeing us is a proof of great generosity.”
Don added, “I thank them from the bottom of my heart. May God bless them and their families.”
Next: a small business
Cam and Don had lost their jobs when they were imprisoned, so they had no source of income. They asked PPS22 whether it could help them launch a small “call-box” business — a common type of enterprise on the streets of Yaoundé in which mobile phone owners rent their devices on a pay-per-call basis.
PPS22 was able to provide them with 190,000 CFA francs ($399) because readers had donated a bit more than was needed for food deliveries, fines and legal costs.
The money will be used to buy two inexpensive mobile phones ($84 each), a portable table, an umbrella to shield the table from the sun and a start-up supply of telephone company data credits.
A gay-friendly advisor with experience in “call box” business is advising them.
Overview
Over the past five years, Project Not Alone has assisted 27 imprisoned victims of Cameroonian homophobia.
In 2018, in the first phase of Project Not Alone, three LGBT prisoners in Yaoundé received food deliveries to supplement the one meal a day that Cameroonian inmates receive. In 2019, the project paid fines that freed three gay prisoners in Muslim-majority northern Cameroon. In 2020, two lesbians and a trans woman gained early release from a prison in eastern Cameroon after Project Not Alone paid their fines. Project Not Alone 2021 set free 11 LGBT prisoners, once again in Yaoundé. In each of these cases, donors’ contributions only benefited prisoners who were incarcerated for whom they love, not for other, unrelated crimes.
In summary:
2018 – 3 prisoners in Yaoundé (food deliveries, before we learned that prisoners would be set free if we paid their fines)
2019 – 3 prisoners in the Garoua area
2020 – 3 prisoners in Bertoua
2021-22 – 11 prisoners in Yaoundé
(Accounts of those 20 prisoners are here.)
2022-23 – 7 prisoners in Yaoundé
(Accounts of those 7 prisoners are in this article and here.)
Courtney Stans, the author of this article, is a Cameroonian journalist who writes under a pseudonym. Contact her at info@76crimes.com.
* In this article, conversions to U.S. dollars are based on approximate currency conversion rates net of money transfer expenses.
