A VISIT TO CAMEROON'S PRISONS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 YAOUNDE 000825

STATE FOR AF/C AND DRL
PARIS AND LONDON FOR AFRICA WATCHERS

SIPDIS
SENSITIVE

E.O. 12958: N/W
TAGS: PHUM PGOV CASC CM
SUBJECT: A VISIT TO CAMEROON'S PRISONS


1. (SBU) Summary: Embassy Yaounde's Political Specialist recently
visited the prisons of Douala New Bell, in the Littoral Region, and
Buea and Kumba in the South West Region. These three prisons often
top the headlines because of violence, revolts, and escape attempts.
Douala's prison is dismal and terribly overcrowded. The most
pressing problems across the board are a lack of infrastructure,
overcrowding, promiscuity and health challenges such as HIV/AIDS.
These prisons lack the most basic infrastructure, and prisoners must
rely on family members to provide many necessities. This message
details the situation in the three visited prisons. The Minister of
Justice and penitentiary and judicial authorities were receptive to
our visit and hoped for future collaboration with the USG. End
summary.

Prisons: Three Samples
--------------


2. (U) Douala New Bell: New Bell was a former military camp that the
colonial administration turned into a prison with a capacity of 700
detainees. Today, it holds 2,813 inmates, including 395 convicts,
2,266 pre-trial detainees and 149 detainees undergoing an appeal
process. Among the inmates, 60 are minors and 49 are women.
Pretrial detainees and convicts are mixed together. A staff of 150
people, including guards, is responsible for the prison. Many
prisoners run businesses, including "restaurants," barbershops, and
"general stores" that sell basics such as soap and canned food.
Living conditions have historically been so harsh that the
Cameroonian NGO Action of Christians for the Abolition of Torture
(ACAT) has called New Bell a "dehumanization center." Some new
construction at the complex will ease conditions for a portion of
the population (see para 5.)


3. (U) Buea: This decrepit colonial-era prison has eight cellblocks,
one dormitory for minors, and one dormitory for women. With an
initial capacity for 200 inmates, it now has 420. One hundred are
convicts and 320 are pretrial detainees, including six women and
twenty-four minors. Prison conditions are inadequate. Two of the
eight cells are reserved for pretrial detainees. Fifty prison
workers, including guards, take care of the 420 prisoners. All
roofs leak greatly when it rains, causing particular suffering
during the rainy season. Because there is little shelter, inmates
gather their beds in corners where there is less leakage. In one
building, the ceiling was covered with plastic buckets that inmates
had hung to catch water leaks.


4. (U) Kumba: The Kumba prison facilities are slightly better than
in Douala and Buea. The buildings are part of the colonial
heritage, but have had some maintenance over the years. The
seventy-seven year old prison was built for 200 prisoners. Today,
the prison holds 481 inmates, including 242 pretrial detainees (221
men, 4 women, and 17 minors). There are 239 convicts (181 men, 10
women, 9 minors). This population includes 39 foreigners, mostly
Nigerians. Minors and women live in separate quarters. Pretrial
detainees are separated from convicts. Forty prison workers,
including guards, take care of the 481 prisoners.

Living conditions
--------------


5. (U) Room and Board: In New Bell prison, the sixty-one minors have
moved into their new facilities. The forty-nine women will soon be
moving from a temporary building into a new facility, once their
beds are ordered. At the moment, all men live under "tents" made
out of plastic sheets. They sleep on two, three, or four-story
homemade bunk beds. These beds are constructed from pieces of
plywood, which are held together with rubber inner tubes. Cardboard
boxes serve as mattresses. Restrooms do not meet even minimum
sanitary standards. Tremendous overcrowding means that a
significant number of detainees must live outside, rain or shine.
The "VIP corner" (former ministers, former general managers of
public corporations, and some former high profile civil servants) is
better than the rest of the prison, with a dormitory and six
individual cells. In the Buea prison, a majority of prisoners have
one or two story wooden or iron beds. In some cells, there is only
one single bed for two detainees. Detainees without beds sleep on
"mattresses" or synthetic rugs that are placed underneath a bed.
The situation is not much different in Kumba where detainees also
share beds or sleep on the floor.


6. (U) Food and Water: Conditions in Douala have recently improved
due to an increase in the food budget. Prisoners now receive two
meals per day. Many inmates look malnourished, with bony cheeks and
protruding eyes. The prison diet is composed of corn, beans, rice,
and peanut sauce, all mixed with palm oil. In the Kumba prison, the
administration occasionally adds in vegetables and smoked fish, if
the food budget allows. The prisoners themselves prepare their
food, under the supervision of wardens. Families of prisoners can
bring cooked food, which has to be tasted by family members before

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it can be served to the prisoner or they can bring uncooked food
that the prisoner can cook himself. Running water is available in
Douala and Buea, but in Kumba water is stored in tanks.


7. (U) Bathrooms: In New Bell prison, "bathrooms" are very narrow
rooms with no doors for privacy. All the latrine pits are
overloaded, and when it rains there is overflow which spreads all
over the prison yard. The odor is pervasive throughout. In the
Buea prison, each of the eight cellblocks has a bathroom. In the
Kumba prison, there is a very simple courtyard where prisoners can
take bucket baths. In all three prisons, women and minors have
their own bathrooms.

Health
--------------


8. (U) There is a infirmary in each of the three prisons. New Bell
has eight beds, Buea three, and Kumba one. The New Bell prison has
one permanently posted medical doctor and five nurses. The Buea
prison has one permanently posted medical doctor and one nurse. The
Kumba prison has a senior nurse who takes care of patients. The
Kumba prison warden recently signed an agreement with the Saint
Francis Clinic, a private hospital, for pro bono consultations and
treatment. For serious cases, prisoners at all three prisons can be
transferred to a hospital, provided that the family pays for
transportation, medical appointments and any needed medicine. As
three wardens noted, many prisoners have no one to cover such costs
and as a result there are occasional deaths due to the lack of
advanced medical treatment (although no case was reported in any of
the prisons in 2009).


9. (U) The availability of drugs remains an issue, although basic
drugs (painkillers, anti-malarials) are available in limited
quantities. In New Bell, the total budget for pharmaceuticals is
$5,000. The Douala Archdiocese provides drugs to treat
tuberculosis, while the German development agency GTZ provides
testing and drugs for HIV/AIDS patients. To make more drugs
available and at cheaper prices, the Kumba prison warden also
recently signed an agreement with a private pharmacy. Diarrhea,
skin diseases and tuberculosis are the primary illnesses seen in the
prisons. HIV/AIDS is increasingly becoming a serious issue. All
three wardens noted that they had several people living with
HIV/AIDS in their penitentiaries. None were able to provide post
with any statistics, citing confidentiality concerns.
Tuberculosis-infected patients are isolated from the other
prisoners.

Relaxation
--------------


10. (U) Entertainment: In all three prisons, there were television
sets, CD players, stereos, and DVDs in cells or open spaces. The
detainees can listen to music and watch television programs of their
choice, without any restrictions. They can also watch movies,
without any censorship. This may change in the Kumba prison in the
near future as the warden feels that violent television programs or
movies should be limited, but no formal decision has been made. Of
the three prisons, Kumba is the only place where prisoners have a
sports field. Buea is the only prison with a library, which is well
attended.

Other Critical Issues
--------------


11. (U) Criminality: Prisons, especially New Bell, harbor an
underworld, and extortion and harassment are reportedly common.
"Anti-gangs" (some of the heavily-sentenced convicts) are the bosses
inside the prison. They control facilities such as beds and
bathrooms and extort money from prisoners who wish to use them.
There are occasional violent outbreaks when a group of prisoners
rejects subjugation.


12. (SBU) Corruption: Corruption is also rampant in the prisons.
Wardens are often the initiators of such corruption. In Buea for
instance, the State Counsel told post about a warden who collected
money from a detainee with the promise that he would help accelerate
the processing of his file. The prosecutor demanded that the
detainee be reimbursed, and gave the warden a warning. The warden
continues to work at the prison.


13. (U) Transportation: The New Bell prison has received two new
trucks for the transportation of detainees to and from court, but
the Buea and Kumba prisons function without a single vehicle.
Wardens walk with detainees to and from the courthouse. For those
detainees who have family members who can afford it, the
penitentiary administration calls a taxi to take the detainee and
the warders to court. For the most dangerous prisoners, both the
administrative personnel and warders contribute money to rent a

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taxi. The fact that wardens walk city streets with prisoners
exposes them to potential assaults by the accomplices of the very
dangerous prisoners (who are afraid the prisoner might testify
against them),by persons holding a grudge against the accused, or
by accomplices helping the prisoner escape. Various officials told
Poloff that they had to cancel planned vehicular transfers of
dangerous prisoners to the courthouse due to lack of money and
vehicles, thus forcing courts to adjourn cases.

Other prison practices
--------------


14. (U) Constrained detention: This term refers to those prisoners
who are kept in jail after serving their prison term because they
have not been able to pay the fines and/or damages that were part of
their sentence. Although none of the three wardens was able to give
specific numbers, New Bell officials estimated they had dozens of
such cases, while Buea and Kumba had just a few. In Douala, the
nongovernmental organization Action of Christians for the Abolition
of Torture (ACAT) estimated that there are approximately one hundred
such cases. Minors and seniors above sixty years of age are
released, even if they have not been able to pay these fines. The
prison administration acts under the judiciary branch, which argues
that such constrained detention is the sole manner to ensure all
fines and damages are paid.


15. (U) Administrative detentions: In order to maintain public
order and fight crime, the administrative authority (Governor or
Prefet) has the power to order the arrest and detention of an
individual for a period of fifteen days, with one possible
extention. This legal provision has resulted in abuses by some
authorities, as we have documented in previous human rights
reporting. The New Bell prison was the only place where such
detainees (about fifty) were found. These fifty detainees, ranging
from students to prostitutes, had been detained for about two months
at the time of Pol Specialist's visit to the prison. The Prefet of
Wouri Division ordered their administrative detention, following
their arrest during a neighborhood sweep. The New Bell Prison
warden expressed his frustration with having such detainees and on
the morning of Pol Specialist's visit to the prison, he had just had
a meeting with the Prefet to demand their release. The Douala
prosecutor, when asked about these administrative detainees, said
that administrative detention was a prerogative of the territorial
command administration and that the judiciary could do nothing. He
added that the judiciary could intervene if the concerned filed a
complaint against the administrative officer who ordered his/her
detention.

Reintegration programs
--------------


16. (U) Education of minors: The three prisons that post visited had
a classroom for the education of minors. Teachers were fellow
detainees, who may or may not have been trained teachers.


17. (U) Vocational training: Only Buea and Kumba run reintegration
programs to teach vocational skills. In Buea, male prisoners can
learn poultry and plantain farming techniques. Women can be trained
as seamstresses, in collaboration with local professionals. The
European Union will soon be sponsoring masonry and carpentry classes
in Buea. In Kumba, there are three sewing machines to train
inmates. Prisoners can also learn to grow pigs through a program
with the Divisional Delegation of Fisheries, Cattle-breeding, and
Animal Industries. After their release, prisoners who participate
in this program will receive two pigs (male and female) to start a
business. Prisoners in Kumba can also learn to make handicrafts
such as market bags. Because of limited funds at all three prisons,
the number of prisoners who can participate in vocational training
programs is very limited.

Pre- and Post-trial Follow-up
--------------


18. (U) During the visit of the Buea and Kumba prisons, pol
specialist was startled by the number of inmates who followed the
visiting group, which included the State Counsel. Many of the
detainees wanted to voice their grievances to the State Counsel.
The role of the State Counsel is to make sure that the rights of
prisoners (processing of files, issuance of convocations for
hearings in courts, etc.) are guaranteed and respected. For this
reason, he/she is required by law to regularly visit prisons. The
State Counsel also has the right to delegate this function to
assistants, but in this case assistants apparently had not been
fulfilling their job responsibilities, as many prisoners had never
met with State Counsel staff. One example was the case of a police
officer who had been detained since February 2007 for the
unauthorized use of his gun during the student riots at the
University of Buea. The State Counsel noted that he was surprised

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to hear so many complaints as he sends his assistants to the prison
every week in order to monitor all cases. He promised to return in
order to devote more time to those in need of his action and the
power of his authority. Post has since learned that he fulfilled
his promise by returning to the prison, and he has also been
investigating assistants for not fulfilling their job
responsibilities.


19. (U) The follow-up of detainees' files is a critical issue.
Detainees who can afford a lawyer are always aware of their case's
progress (dates and times of appearance before the instructing
magistrate or the court, date of release, etc). For the rest, cases
are occasionally lost in the bureaucratic shuffle for years. Post
learned that it is common for detainees to miss several hearings on
their case simply because they were not informed of the hearings.
The State Counsel for the Douala High Court told post that this
situation is unfortunate, but that the ongoing computerization of
courts and prisons should reduce this problem. Under the
computerized system, once the instructing magistrate has forwarded
the detainee's file to a judge, this information will automatically
appear in the prison's computer. The prison administration would
likewise be automatically informed when the judge sets a trial date,
thus ensuring adequate advance notice to arrange for the prisoner's
transfer to the courthouse. The Ministry of Justice, with financial
and technical assistance from the Commonwealth, hopes to complete
the computerization process in 2012.

GRC Wants to Improve
--------------


20. (SBU) The GRC acknowledges its prison problems and has asked
the Embassy for help in improving the situation. In January 2009,
Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Justice Amadou Ali provided post
with his ministry's action plan to improve conditions in Cameroon's
prisons, including the New Bell, Buea and Kumba prisons. Among
other things, the plan calls for refurbishing New Bell prison,
constructing a new central prison in Douala, and purchasing two
trucks. Some of those projects have already been implemented, but
most improvements have moved slowly, ostensibly because of budget
constraints.

Comment
--------------


21. (SBU) The Minister of Justice granted Embassy Yaounde immediate,
unprecedented access to the prisons, with only 48 hours notice, and
he seemed genuinely interested in a readout after the visits. Pol
Specialist was able to inspect all corners of the prison, and felt
that little "make-ready" had been done before his arrival. The
prison situation is one of Cameroon's major human rights challenges
and has been highlighted in several post human rights reports over
the past few years. We will continue to engage the government, NGO
activists and other donor partners to improve prisons and will look
for ways to materially support the GRC in its prison reform efforts.
Post is not aware of any American citizens detained in these
facilities. End comment.

Peterson