Never let a good crisis go to waste, it is said. That the World has a crisis on its hands is even more true. But what is most true is that Cameroun not only has a great crisis on its hands but that Cameroun will sure let the crisis go to waste.
The COVID 19 is a world crisis. It is forcing the greatest economies and political systems to their knees. As part of the World Community, it is very sad to recognize that Cameroun is pretending at best to be part of the world solution to COVID 19. It is sadder to know that COVID 19 is an epidemiological pandemic that could not be prevented. It is most sad that Cameroun is doubly ill prepared for the pandemic and behaviorally incompetent to handle the situation. This is glaringly clear from the way Cameroun is treating its prisoners and prison population.
Prisoners in Cameroun are divided into two main groups. The first group is made up of those awaiting trial for charges against them. The second group is made up of convicts who have been found guilty and are serving prison sentences. It suffices to say that the fact that these two groups are always housed together is just as disheartening as it is unconscionable. For one thing, those awaiting trial are supposed to be shrouded by an iron cloak of the constitutional ‘presumption of innocence’.
Furthermore, the threshold for charging somebody in Cameroun is almost nonexistent. The probable cause for charging, denying bail and holding somebody in prison (not a jail) interminably, is as sure as the horrendous conditions under which these persons are held. The worst part of this group of illegal detentions is the fact that speedy trials are not assured either by law or by prosecutorial practice. The legal Department in Cameroun is completely immune to any kind of violations of datelines and all other prosecutorial transgressions.
The second group of Prisoners in Cameroun is purported convicts serving their sentences. The same thing that can be said about the prisoners awaiting trial can be said of the second group except that they have been presumed convicted. Even if one were to presume and conclude this premise, it is very clear that by national and international law, convicted prisoners are an integral part of the society that has convicted them. In fact, convicted prisoners are supposed to be treated as a protected vulnerable class in the society. Just as these same owe a duty of paying a criminal debt to society, society conversely owes them the safeguard and protection of their fundamental rights to life and protection.
In the face of COVID 19 it is obvious that the main protective and proactive ways of containing the pandemic are testing, quarantining, self isolation and social distancing. Prior to the advent of the pandemic, it was common knowledge, in Cameroun, that the Prisons conditions were deplorable at best and inhuman at worst – overcrowded, insanitary, dilapidated, disease festering and drug infested.
In the midst of the COVID 19 Pandemic, is it not obvious that the prison system will totally fail its inmates who are powerless in the face of their incarceration? Who has been testing these inmates, that is if they even have the testing kids? Considering that most of the inmates have underlying conditions like age, kidney disease, tuberculosis, HIV and hypertension, what is the Cameroun government doing to address this situation? Considering the lodging and accommodation situation in Kondengui Central Prisons, as representative of all the prisons in Cameroun, how on earth, can ‘social distancing’ be observed? Or better still, in the event of a positive ‘test’ where will the inmates be quarantined?
These worries to this freelancer, like many other scribes, who might have been partially numbed and become complacent because they are disturbingly obvious that a continuous attempt to identify them calls for self ridicule instead of collective national shame and introspection on the part of Cameroun.
Even so, there are two very deep-seated questions that cannot escape this discourse. First, of all these questions raised, can anybody, lay, secular, civil society, ecclesiast or Cameroun government, tell any observer, where one can go to have answers to these questions? Secondly, should COVID 19 ravage the prison system in Cameroun, who will be criminally held accountable? Will the families, friends and compatriots of these vulnerable population just be told a bunch of ‘fabricated truths’?
Every society, it is said, must be measured from the way it treats its vulnerable populations. The prison population in Cameroun is as vulnerable as they are hapless and helpless. In the face of Corona virus, Cameroun must not allow a good crisis go to waste.
Ancestral Mbonwei
Monitoring COVID 19