J Rémy Ngono tells hiss galley at Kondengui
[ Yaoundé - Cameroun ] ( 26/09/2003) T.G. Gango & E. Olga Fouodjo
J Rémy Ngono: Kondengui is a hell? The big hold-up men are mixed with simple pickpockets.
When they come for the first time for vagrancy, they come back the next time for murder. They
are creating vagrants and criminals at Kondengui.
Former head of Radio television Siantou (RTS) channel tells his martyrdom at the central prison
of Yaounde.
[Before you read this interview, the editor of The African Independent and former publisher of the
weekly Le Nouvel Independent, Seme Ndzana, informs you that he was arrested three times et
detained twice for a total of six months in the 1990s at the central prison of kondengui. The
accounts J Remi Ngono makes are not exaggerated and correspond to what Seme also witnessed in
that ?death place?. The saddest fact Seme had witnessed is the death of a boy at Kondengui. One
night, at a police cell in downtown Yaounde, policemen threw in a boy they had just shot. The boy
was severely wounded on the hip. He told Seme that he was a homeless from the Northern side of
the country. He was trying to run away when the noise of shootings awoke him at an abandoned
building he slept in. He was shot. During two long weeks the boy was suffering the hell in the
overcrowded and dirty police cell. No policeman cared. Instead they bit him several times asking
him to shut up. He was transferred by the republic attorney (who never saw him) along with Seme
and other young thugs. At kondengui they left him in the empty sickroom where the practitioner
shows up only once a month. The boy?s leg was being eaten away. The big mice were eating his
putrefying leg. Day and night he was crying to death. Nobody cared. One day, his body was
transported out. Nobody cares at Kondengui where five bodies on average are sent out every day.
Prisoners try to survive by all means in that hell, while prison guards get the most of their networks
of bribery and of drug, alcohol and cigarette trade. Kondengui is also the hell political opponents
and honest journalists are thrown into by the powerful who constitute the ruling dictatorship. Seme
was twice tried for offense to the head of state Paul Biya.]
You have just stayed for one month in the central prison of Nkondengui where you were
imprisoned for a procedure of violation of the press laws you have been sentenced guilty of.
Under which conditions were you detained?
These were painful conditions. As soon as they took me from the legal research centre, they stripped me
and they directly sent me in a cell full with mosquitos. The following day, they directly sent me to
Kondengui. My family did not know where I was. My close relations who went to the parquet floor
thereafter were not informed of my situation. There was no committal order. When I arrived at Kondengui,
certain prison guards said that they could not receive me. The gendarmes who brought me in had not left the
arrest warrant which is essential.
In which circumstances were you arrested?
I am sure it?s a fabricated plot. In a document from legal authorities, one may note that it is not me who
presented the broadcast, that I was not even anymore director of Rts, that I was not involved with the
broadcast in which there were talks about Mr. Jean Ketcha who swore to have my head. But, nevertheless
I am sentenced. It is something that was fabricated since a long time ago. I mean I met lieutenant colonel
Meka Meka Emmanuel who let me understand that he had an important file to entrust to me. We agreed for
an appointment, which I did not respect. He harassed me. Thereafter, I decided to go and meet him. We
met one evening at a bar in the Omnisport district. When I arrived, his elements were there. They directly
embarked me. I protested by saying that I was not a fugitive. They maltreated me and after a stopover in
their services, they directly transferred me to Nkondengui.
What happened at Kondengui?
When we arrived at the station in Nkodengui, as certain prison guards found that my arrest was illegal, they
asked that they should bring me back I don?t know where. I refused because I was afraid for my life,
because it was night. As the gendarmes did not want to get out again with me, they put me in the transit cell
of the prison where there were only hooligans and gangsters. There inside, you sleep on the floor with walls
mottled with blood. You are exposed. There are big mice passing around all the time. The night was long.
The following day, when they assigned the prisoners in one of the 13 districts of the prison, I was forgotten.
I spend there 48 hours of suffering and torture. They sent in a strapping man and a prison warder over to
me to try their way to make me understand that I often gave the government, the president of the Republic
and his ministers a rocket. They told me that I will eat the excrements. Then, they tortured me with the noise
of whistles several hours long. They have torturers who are prisoners. I left there with Orl problems (note:
he shows medical documents signed by his attending practitioner). In Kondengui, there are prisoners who
are charged to supervise other prisoners. They are called the commanders of districts. They are 15 or 20
years prison sentenced individuals. After them, there are the police chiefs and the mayors who are also
prisoner henchmen of the prison manager. They do it for certain advantages. There are people who are
prisoners in Kondengui but who do not live there. I know a gentleman who used to leave every morning
and returned only the evening. I was even told that for two months, he spent all his time outside.
What does the interior of the prison look like?
The districts are distributed according to social classes. In district n°1, there are people like Mounchipou
Seydou (former minister). Over there, there are at least 200 people. There are also special districts such as
the 11th district where Pierre Désiré Engo (former minister) is and the 12th district that hosts people of a
certain social class. But the most dangerous districts are the 8th and the 9th called Kossovo. It is there that
I was imprisoned. People who were with me are robbers and gang members who had already several times
been in prison. Figure out that initially built to host 300 people, Kossovo now hosts approximately 1300
prisoners. I was in the cell n°101, 4x5 meters, built for 15 people. I was the 48e individual. We slept on the
floor, since the beds were occupied. We were called the "sleepers-on-the-floor" (pronounce it dormatère).
Which means prisoners who do not have a mandate. The mandate means a small bed with three levels.
There are 5 of them in each room. There are some who spend two years sleeping on a completely naked
floor, with cockroaches, mice and all that you can imagine. It often happens that, in spite of that, they
awake you late in the night to go washing the toilets and cleaning the courtyard.
There was an alleged murder attempt you have been victim of. What happened?
I did not have any visit. Even my friends Sam Mbendè and Ange Ebogo Emérand who came to visit me
were driven out. The only person who could see me was my wife. As soon as she entered, they caught her
by the hips and they disappeared with her like a vulgar prisoner. She was yelled at and she was thrown
outside. Since that moment, I refused to eat because I did not trust anything any more.
What do you eat there?
All that I had at the beginning were bananas. In Nkondengui, they use to give a 5 liter bucket of boiled corn
per day and per cell. I point out that a cell contains 47 to 56 people. Which means that a prisoner is entitled
hardly to a handful of corn per day. The visit days, they serve rice in the same 5 liter bucket. It is cooked by
prisoners themselves because there is no cooker. The sauce made of a handful peanuts fills a 100 liter
bucket for all the prison population. For each cell, they serve one cup of that sauce. The equivalent measure
of these small cups is the cup used to sell water in the street for 10 francs each. No prisoner at Nkondengui
can have more than two spoonfuls of sauce per day.
There is nevertheless the food coming from close relations?
Unfortunately, receiving food from outside is a lottery game. Despite the certificate of communication, when
you arrive at the prison, the guards ask you money. Once in the prison, there are those called the taximen, a
category of prisoners who make the small, paid errands. The bench on which you seat down during the
visits is paying. A visit requires a lot of money. There are prisoners who are in Kodengui since their
childhood and who have never received a visit. The result of it is that many prisoners eat in the dustbins.
After your release, you suffered health problems ?
Currently, I practically do not hear any more on the left side. When you survive Kossovo, it is a miracle. I
went in there with certain people who died. I have problems of Orl, but also at the belly level. In prison,
cells do not have doors. Anyone can poison you or kill you. Since I left, I have droplets of blood which I
notice in my stools. In Kondengui, there are only three old toilets without doors and only one tap for all the
prison. Anything can happen anytime. A total insecurity reigns there. Many profit of this chaos to settle
scores. It is a death place.
How does one pass his daily life in Nkondengui?
They are creating vagrants and criminals at Kondengui. This prison is not any more useful for anything. The
majority of prisoners I found are there since their childhood. I mean people who where arrested for
vagrancy when they were minors and who once finally in prison learn only homosexuality. Every night, we
have cases of homosexuality. Children who are afraid and who are defenseless are taken by strapping men
called totems. Meaning old prisoners with 20 to 30 years prison terms and having lost any hope to find a
woman one day.
How does that happen?
It sometimes starts with a cup of couscous costing 50 francs. As these children are hungry and sleep on the
floor, the "totems" propose them to share their bed. The aforementioned bed has a cloth which hides all. As
soon as it is drawn down, you imagine what follows?
There are also allegations of drug at Nkondengui?
There is too much of it. 30 minutes after my arrival, that is the first thing I was proposed to take. Over
there, they call drug the "malicious tea". At about 10:00 PM, almost everyone takes some of that herb
before sleeping.
How do they succeed to making the drug pass through into the prison?
It is through the penitentiary authorities that drug gets in. There are networks. It is the most vulgar trade at
Kondengui. The prisoners make seams of hemp they call "small Guinness". Besides that, there is an insane
mixture. The big hold-up men are mixed with simple pickpockets. When they come for the first time for
vagrancy, they come back the next time for murder. Kossovo is a hold-all and the majority of prisoners I
spoke with swore that once they leave, they will hurt. That is what they learned over there.
The daily newspaper Mutations
Talks collected by Thiéry Gervais Gango and Elodie Olga Fouodjo