An illegal traditional prison discovered in the 12-post area where 70 young people were detained and mistreated.

“One month chained in this room without seeing the outside world. I haven’t washed since I arrived here. “At night we sleep here in chains, we make a round”. “We don’t eat here, they snag us, they chain us up while our parents know we are here at the boarding school“…

These are testimonies of victims of physical abuse and ill-treatment in a Koranic school transformed into a traditional prison. This is in Ngaoundéré, the main town in the Adamaoua region. The discovery was served to the Cameroonian public on Tuesday, in a report broadcast on the national station  Crtv.

A total of 70 young people were taken to these places. They were entrusted to the marabout for rehabilitation by their own parents. The reasons given were varied, as the reporter’s I account and the speakers’ testimonies made clear. “was living a life that was not good. I was brought here under the pretext that I was walking with bad people”; “I was using drugs“, testify the speakers.

The framer, the one who serves as a teacher, tries to explain instead. He rejects the accusations of mistreatment and abuse. He insists that the victims are social cases, either mentally ill or bandits.

Because of these testimonies and the practices within this traditional prison, the administrative authority took up the case. The first decision was the immediate closure of the school, followed by an investigation. Because, “what is happening here is unnatural, it is deprivation of freedom. We condemn abuse, we are in an era of freedom. We therefore strongly condemn this way of seeing things”, says Governor Kildadi Taguieke Boukar.