Who will police the police?
Buea , January 17, 2010
By Fiona McAlpine and Clíona Martyn
- Buea prisoners at GCI workshop
Following the Legal Facilitation Session, organised by Global Conscience Initiative, held at Buea Central Prison on the 15th January, I was left with a strong rancid taste of injustice. A story of police brutality, a realisation that the police must also be policed, and justice must always be fought for.
As I sat in the crowded workshop, in a dusty store room of Buea Central Prison, I was struck with a surge of panic. Not due to the rusty gun perched behind me or the creaking roof that threatened to cave in every time someone sneezed. But because of the words and stories of the detainees, the simplicity of their crimes, the fact that they were no different from me. I could see myself, in another life, positions reversed. I could imagine myself chewed up and spat out by an impoverished society, one in which the rights of man are not universal, but available on purchase.
One of the stories stood out starkly, that of Agbor Collins. A teenager when arrested for aggravated theft in July 2006. He claims to have been arrested by association, and was not at any time handling any weapon. Collins claims that after arrest he was shot in custody two times, resulting in four bullet wounds, two entry wounds and two exit wounds, each wound I saw personally. He claims to have been shot by a man who now holds a senior position – a delegate no less of the South Western Region who lives unaffected by the every day horrors of life in a penitentiary facility.
Collins’ family don’t live in Buea, so without support he must rely on a single meal of plantains or fufu per day to subsist. He has been in Buea Central Prison for years with no progress been made on his case, and without charge. As he stood before us relaying his story, he did not raise his voice once, his eyes did not flicker with anger. The boy had lost hope.
The session was attended by other civil society members, who (although Collins remained emotionless) were outraged by these allegations. Deputy State Counsel advised Collins’ to get a family member, to visit the State Counsel to commence the investigation into this alledged act of police brutality. . It was also attended by a team of pro bono lawyers – a truly noble endeavour in a country where nothing comes for free. Sunday evening we took an injured pregnant woman to the hospital in the middle of the night, and when we finally found a taxi we were not met with an “are you all right?” or “can I help?” but with a robotic “how much”.
The pro bono lawyers pledged their assistance to defend those who have been held without trial, including Collins, when their court dates finally roll around. These court dates are like a wedding cake arriving on your fifth wedding anniversary, a positive gesture, but one that is so overdue it is almost insulting.
Four years is a long time for anyone to be imprisoned, without trial, believing to be unjustly accused, and without knowing when you will be free. Four years in a penitentiary facility for a teenager means that over 20% of his entire life, the most formative years of emotional, educational and spiritual development, have been squandered. Lewis should have been graduating from high school, browsing university courses, jogging with his friends. No wonder the spark had gone from his eyes.
I have no legal background, so cannot look into Collins’ case further. But I can plead for the right people to step forward – the State Counsel, the pro bono lawyers, and all other members of civil society. I sincerely hope that justice will triumph and the coward who rained bullets upon a child will cease chuckling with his cronies, growing his belly out. People who use such despicable violence destroy the integrity of all law and order. These should be the people locked behind their own bars, scrappling for plantains.
“No one truly knows a nation until one has been inside its jails. A nation should not be judged by how it treats its highest citizens, but it’s lowest ones.”
-Nelson Mandela, 1994
I eagerly await Collins’s verdict, and the investigation which must follow into this allegation of police brutality. I hope when he is rightly released he can regain some semblance of normality, that the experience does not leave scars as permanent as the bullets in his legs.
If anyone reading this article has any information regarding Collins’s case, I urge you to contact Global Conscience Initiative, Suite No. 9, Fakoship Plaza, Buea, or alternatively call the Prisoners’ Rights Project at 79391884.