Generous readers set free 3 women imprisoned for homosexuality in Cameroon
More donations are needed to help innocent victims of African homophobia
Donations are still needed to free five more prisoners in Cameroon and Nigeria.
By Steeves Winner
Donations from readers of Erasing 76 Crimes have set free three young women imprisoned on homosexuality charges in Yaoundé, Cameroon.
Their liberation is a key achievement for Project Not Alone 2026, but the project needs further donations to accomplish this year’s goals, including getting the three women get back on their feet and freeing five more innocent prisoners.
The three friends — for their safety, identified here by the pseudonyms Addie, Diane and Sonia — had been arrested on Nov. 20, 2025, after an online sting operation,
Cameroonian law enforcement officers lured Addie, age 27, into a trap using a fake profile on a dating site. Police arrested her as soon as she arrived at the meeting place, searched her phone, discovered information about her friends there and soon arrested two of them: Diane, 33, a hairdresser, and Sonia, 28, a shopkeeper.
After a quick trial, the friends were sentenced to six months in prison under Article 347-1 of the Cameroonian Penal Code, which criminalizes same-sex intimacy. The women’s release was conditional upon the payment of fines totaling 360,000 FCFA (about US $628). They did not have enough money to pay, so they remained incarcerated until readers’ donations to Project Not Alone covered the fines. For that help, they expressed deep thanks to Project Not Alone and the reaaders of Erasing 76 Crimes who supported it.
Addie, Diane and Sonia are three of the eight prisoners that Project Not Alone aims to set free this year in addition to raising money to pay for mandatory upgrades of the free Qtalk app, which has offered private counseling to thousands of LGBTQ+ Nigerians since it was launched in 2020.
Harsh conditions of detention
During their incarceration at Yaoundé Central Prison, the three young women lived in difficult conditions, never visited by family members, fed only one sparse and dirty meal each day, enduring stigmatization from homophobic guards and other prisoners.
Upon their release on June 10, they were homeless, without resources, but determined to rebuild their lives. Rejected by their families, they were staying temporarily with an acquaintance, a precarious solution that cannot last. Project Not Alone hopes to help them rebuild their lives with dignity, re-establishing a safe and stable living environment, providing them with basic short-term material support, and assisting them in resuming income-producing work.
Diane hopes to reopen her hair salon. Addie and Sonia want to relaunch a small clothing business, their only source of income before their arrest.
An emblematic case of the criminalization of LGBTI people
The case of these three young women illustrates the persistence of criminalization and institutional violence against LGBTI people in Cameroon.
It highlights the persistence of:
- Police using fake online profiles and ambushes to entrap LGBTI people,
- Targeted digital surveillance,
- Violations of the right to privacy,
- Social and familial stigmatization.
Their release does not end the injustice: On the contrary, it reveals the urgent need for human, social, and economic support.
Please donate to help them, to free five other innocent LGBTI victims of African homophobia, and to make necessary updates to the Qtalk phone app so gay Nigerians will keep their access to its free, confidential counseling services.
Project Not Alone is a program of the non-profit St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation and its Erasing 76 Crimes news site. U.S. tax-deductible donations to Project Not Alone 2026 may be made via:
- PayPal (for U.S. dollar contributions). For other currencies, send PayPal donations to stpaulsfdr@gmail.com
- DonorBox
- GoFundMe
- Alternatively, you could send a check to St. Paul’s Foundation, c/o Colin Stewart, 5517 Paseo del Lago East Unit 1B, Laguna Woods CA 92637 USA. Please write “Project Not Alone” on the memo line and send an email to info@76crimes.com to let us know it’s coming.
Steeves Winner, the author of this article, is a Cameroonian journalist who writes under a pseudonym. Contact him at steeves.w@yahoo.com.
