It was the last time Francoise Motoum Kamga would see her father
alive. On the 29th June 1997 SDF party activist Remy Kamga attended a
political meeting in Douala and had travelled back to his home town of
Bafoussam arriving late at night. Just outside his house, Remy was
attacked by a gang of government supporters and badly beaten. He was
taken to a local hospital where he clung to life for three hours.
Involvement in politics even at local level can have fatal
consequences in Cameroon. The French speaking West African state is a
shaky democracy with a poor human rights record. Under president Paul
Biya, the ruling party RDDP Rassemblement Democratique du Peuple
Camerounais suppresses dissent, ruthlessly eliminating individuals
felt to be a threat to the state. The Home Office Country and
Information Policy Unity bulletin on Cameroon - available on the
internet – spells out the dangers. Under the history heading (3.12)
the bulletin notes that “Cameroon was admitted to the Commonwealth in
November 1995 despite some concerns that little progress has been made
on either human rights issues or the democratic process.” Under legal
rights (4.15) comes the information that “Arbitrary and prolonged
detention…remains a serious problem.”
Remy was an obvious target. The local president for the popular
opposition SDF the Social Democratic Front, he had been campaigning
against soaring petrol prices that were increasing food prices and
transport costs in the oil rich state. Ignoring the obvious dangers,
Francoise took up her father’s cause and became a political activist.
She soon fell foul of the ruling party.
Francoise is now in the UK having been smuggled out of Cameroon two
years ago. In spite of compelling evidence of having been imprisoned,
tortured and raped, as well as being badly injured during an attempted
abduction she has been refused asylum and is now awaiting a judicial
review - the very last stage in a long drawn out legal process. A
photograph published in a Cameroon political pamphlet shows a
confident young woman, fashionably dressed, hair styled and tinted and
glossed lips parted in a smile. Today dressed in cast off clothes her
face scarred and immobile and with eyes downcast she looks much older
than her 29 years. If her appeal is rejected she will be returned to
her country of origin. This is her story.
Her father’s death was the catalyst that propelled Francoise into
grassroots politics. She joined the SDF and became a secretary and
organiser for the New Bell district of Douala, Cameroon’s capital
city. Coming from a middle class and supportive family, Francoise was
a devout Catholic. She had also just finished her nurse training and
was in her first year working as a midwife. A single mother, she
needed to start earning to support herself and her son Bemmo.
Evenings and weekends were dominated by politics. A lively speaker,
Francoise was picked to represent her views on Expression Direct, a
TV programme that provides a platform for Cameroon’s spectrum of
political opinion. She spoke in support of a taxi drivers’s strike
designed to draw attention to the escalating fuel prices. The
programme was broadcast on the state owned CRTV channel on 15th May
1999. Five days later she received a phone call at work. The local
president of her party needed to see her urgently at his home. He was
sending a driver to the hospital to collect her.
As Francoise later discovered that call was a hoax. As she was being
driven through the city an army lorry rammed her car at a crossroads.
The high speed crash was, she believes, intended to kill her. An
article in the Cameroonian political newsheet La Cause published on 2
June 1999 describes the crash and attempted abduction blaming the RDPC
and linking it to a series of abductions and politically motivated
murders including a similar crash in which another militant, Gustave
Sone, was killed. The journalist managed to find one witness to the
abduction who refused to be named but no eyewitness accounts of the
crash. Quoting an unattributed source, she says that the driver of the
car was “sent to Europe for intensive care”. No information exists
today as to his whereabouts. His disappearance remains a mystery.
The Medical Foundation for Care of Victims of Torture confirms that
Francoise’s present physical condition is consistent with the injuries
sustained in a car crash. A medical examination has revealed extensive
scarring to the right hand side of her head. Her right arm is severely
scarred below the elbow with the wound still containing embedded
glass.
The Foundation also found evidence of torture in the form of burn
marks to her abdomen. Shortly after recovering from her injuries - in
Feb 2000 Francoise had once again made another TV appearance talking
publicly for the first time about the crash. An unwise decision as she
was soon to discover.
One day in April, she her car was stopped by police as she drove to
collect her son from school. “Three policemen stopped me. They wanted
to see my ID papers I produced them but they ordered me out of my car.
I said I had to pick my son up from school. They told me just leave
your car at the side of the road. I haven’t seen my son since.”
Francoise says that she was taken to a police station in the district
of Akwa and held for around two weeks unable to contact a solicitor or
her family. “A guard told me I would die in prison. They tell me I am
there by the orders of Madame Fonin (leader of the women’s wing of the
ruling RDPC).” Francoise draws a line on the floor with her foot to
show the size of the cell where she was kept – it is a space no more
than 2m by 1m containing a bucket for slopping out.
After that she was taken to a prison at New Bell. Prison regime in the
Cameroon is vividly described in a report by the Medical Foundation
for the Care of Victims of Torture entitled Every Morning, just like
coffee. Torture in the Cameroon. The report based on medical
examination and interviews with 60 Cameroon victims of torture and
published in June 2002 found that 93 per cent of women and 33 per cent
of men had been subjected to rape or other sexual assaults. Thirty per
cent of the group had been given electric shocks and 23 per cent had
been suspended in contorted positions.
Psychologist Olivia Ball author of the report says of Cameroon’s
political prisoners: “Don’t expect to be charged or brought to trial.
You can expect to be beaten and ill-treated and kept in foul
conditions. Stripped naked you will be housed in a dark, airless
overcrowded cell with no toilet. The guards may jokingly call your
daily excursions from your cell for a beating or a torture session un
petit café. It’s as regular as morning coffee.
“It may include beatings with truncheons, machetes and rifle butts,
often on the soles of the feet. If you are a woman your torture will
almost certainly include rape.” The tears stream silently down
Francoise’s face as she recalls her daily ordeal. “The prison guards
say, ‘You can have food but we want to sleep with you; make love with
you.’ I am ruined. My body ruined’ my head ruined."
Three months into her detention, Francoise was smuggled out of jail by
a corrupt prison warder in return for the promise of money. After
several weeks lying low in safe houses a sympathetic Catholic priest
helped her by arranging passage on a boat which eventually arrived in
a UK port in mid December 2000. Back in Cameroon, her son who she has
not seen since her abduction by the police is being cared for by her
mother and older sister.
The mental and physical scars of Francoise’s ordeal will take a very
long time to heal. Dr Petra Clarke a gynaecologist for the Medical
Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture knows Francoise and has
this to say: “She has many long term after effects and many scars both
from the car accident and from having been beaten. Having suffered
multiple rape fear of sexually transmitted disease has been
preoccupying her although thankfully she’s tested negative for HIV.”
Caroline Garland a psychotherapist at the Tavistock Centre where
Francoise regularly attends group therapy with other traumatised
asylum seekers and victims of torture has diagnosed her as suffering
from severe post traumatic stress disorder. Her hand written note on a
early mental heath assessment says “risk of suicide”. Francoise is
gradually coming to terms with what happened and over the months
Garland has won her confidence. She says: “Nothing I have heard, seen
or felt over the last 18 months has made me feel she isn’t telling the
truth.” However, Francoise’s fragile mental state has left her
scarcely fit enough to face the rounds of questioning from lawyers and
Home Office officials probing and crosschecking her story for
inconsistencies, not to mention hearings conducted through an official
interpreter.
Garland is also concerned that since the Home Office’s rejection of
her asylum claim she has had her financial support and accommodation
withdrawn. She says: “She is destitute and having to rely on the
kindness of strangers, and you cannot offer psychotherapy to someone
who is homeless and starving.”
On the medical evidence alone Francoise would appear to have a strong
case for appeal. But she also fears for her life if she is refused
asylum. In a low monotone she pleads wearily and without apparent
emotion: “If I go back they will kill me.”