Cameroon: Readers’ generous gifts have set Alan and Otto free
More donations are needed to help 6 other innocent prisoners
By Jean Jacques Dissoke
CAMEROON — Gay lovers Alan and Otto, partners who met at work, fell in love and were imprisoned for that love, walked out of Mfou Prison last month as free men, thanks to generous readers who contributed money to pay their 200,000 CFA franc fines (about $687 combined).
Alan, age 22, and Otto, age 39, had met at a hotel in Mfou where they both worked as cooks. For their safety, they are identified here by pseudonyms instead of their real names.
Their boss filed a complaint with police, accusing them of homosexuality, which is illegal in Cameroon and subject to a sentence of six months to five years in prison.
They were arrested, tried, convicted and on Oct 12, 2022, were sentenced to six months in prison.
While they were serving that sentence, they were identified as victims of homophobia who were eligible for assistance by this news site’s Project Not Alone, which raises money to help innocent prisoners serving time for nothing other than homosexuality. They could have been released in April 2023, but they had no money to pay their fines. As a result, they had to remain in prison to work off their fines.
This year’s Project Not Alone began May 8 with the article “Help us free 13 imprisoned LGBTQ victims of homophobia”.
By June, readers had donated enough money to pay Otto and Alan’s fines and set them free, with assistance from the legal aid organization Défenseurs Sans Frontières (DSF).
After their release, Alan described their experiences to DSF: “It was a very difficult time. Between the denunciation and the conviction, I felt like I was living in a nightmare.” The financial support from Project Not Alone gave the couple renewed hope, he said.
Otto added, “I wondered how we were going to pay our fines when we had lost everything by going to prison and having no income.”
“This is really a great joy for us”, he said about readers’ helpful donations. “We’re very grateful for this kind gesture.”
Now that they are free, Alan and Otto hope to raise money to open a catering business.
What’s next for Project Not Alone
At this point, readers’ donations have paid the fines for six of 13 LGBTQ prisoners who qualified for help because they were locked up for whom they love — and nothing else. Four of them have now been set free — in addition to Alan and Otto, the Nigerian trans couple Helen and Uchechi — while lesbian prisoners Martha and Sally will be eligible for early release in December because their fines have been paid.
More help is needed
Six more victims of Cameroonian homophobia remain behind bars. None of them has even been convicted; they are still awaiting trial. Readers have donated enough money to assist two of the six. Those donations will cover the legal expenses of a DSF attorney working pro-bono for lesbian detainees Katie and Mimi in Mfou prison.
Project Not Alone has not yet received enough donations to pay for similar pro-bono work on behalf of four gay detainees in Bafoussam Prison. Tom, Ben, Stan and Sean (all pseudonyms) were all arrested in January at a movie-watching party. The family of Kurt, a fifth man arrested at the party, was released after his family intervened on his behalf.
So far, $1,000 has been donated to pay those legal expenses, which will total an estimated 800,000 CFA francs (about U.S. $1,333).
In addition, in the quite likely event that some of the six will be found guilty and fined, Project Not Alone will need money to pay those fines so the six will be eligible for early release. Based on the typical fines that Cameroonian judges have imposed in past homosexuality cases, the fines for the six detainees could total 1,200,000 CFA francs ($2,000).
Project Not Alone is seeking donations to feed and free all six. So far, this year’s Project Not Alone has included no deliveries of supplementary food and hygiene items to Cameroonian prisoners, even though the prisons are disease-ridden and food is limited to one dirty, poorly prepared meal per day. Instead, donated money has gone first to pay fines and cover legal expenses, which is what prisoners in the past have told us is their preference.
But if donations allow it, we would purchase food and disinfectants for bimonthly deliveries to the remaining prisoners — an estimated total of 960,000 CFA francs ($1,600) — until all the prisoners are released in early 2024.
For Project Not Alone, St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation, the financial sponsor of this site, collects U.S. tax-deductible donations and transfers 100 percent of them to Africa to feed and free the LGBTI prisoners there. For more information about the project, click here.
Your donation is needed. Taken together with others’ gifts:
- $20 is enough to cut a prisoner’s sentence by one week.
- $100 is enough to cut that sentence by 5 weeks.
- $200 is enough to cut that sentence by 10 weeks.
- $333 will pay that fine in full, eliminating the entire extra 16 weeks of imprisonment. (To be clear: Paying the fine in full is needed to set the prisoners free early, which is why many donations are needed.)
- $8 will pay for a sack of onions for a delivery to prisoners.
- $23 will pay for a large sack of peanuts to be shared by prisoners.
- $18 will pay the prison admission fee for the two LGBTI activists delivering food to LGBTI prisoners.
- $36 will pay both the entrance fee and the LGBTI activists’ cost of transportation to and from the prison.
U.S. tax-deductible donations to Project Not Alone 2023 may be made via:
- The “Donate” button on the Facebook page of the St. Paul’s Foundation (Our favorite because Facebook charges us no transaction fees, but the button might not appear on mobile devices.)
- PayPal
- DonorBox
- By sending a check to St. Paul’s Foundation, 21 Marseille, Laguna Niguel CA 92677 USA.) Please write “Project Not Alone” on the memo line.
Jean Jacques Dissoke, the author of this article, is a Cameroonian activist. Contact him at info@76crimes.com.
