'Every Morning Just Like Coffee'

Executive summary

If you have been tortured in Cameroon, you are probably dead.

If you have been tortured and have survived and escaped to Britain, our study shows that you are probably a young man or woman of around 28, married with children. You are likely to be Roman Catholic and speak French. This is probably not the first time you have seen the inside of a police lock-up, nor the first time you and your family have suffered grave human rights violations by agents of the state. You are a political, human rights or labour activist, although you may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

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 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. You may be tortured with electricity or suspended in some excruciating position. If you are a woman, your torture will almost certainly include rape.

The prevalence of torture in Cameroon was such as to warrant a country visit from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture in 1999. He describes the use of torture in Cameroon as "widespread and systematic."

The Home Office concurs with his assessment. The phrase is almost identical to that used in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, to which Cameroon is party. The Statute defines "widespread or systematic" use of torture against any civilian population as a crime against humanity, and the Court will have jurisdiction to prosecute any such international crimes committed after 1 July 2002.

This report provides evidence of torture and other persecution provided by 60 Cameroonians who fled to the United Kingdom and first sought the assistance of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture in London in 2000 and 2001. Specific findings concerning these 60 cases are to be found in section 7 of this report.