Yaoundé: Hope and Despair in the Kondengui Maximum Security Prison ⁰

Tsi Conrad, a Cameroonian journalist who has been unjustly imprisoned since December 2016, is hopeful that President Donald Trump will continue to call out the Biya regime’s abuses and push for democracy in Cameroon.

When the news that Donald Trump had been reelected reached my cell in Cameroon’s Yaoundé Central Prison, I was filled with both hope and despair. I felt despair because it was a reminder that I have been wrongfully imprisoned for eight years—I was arrested in December 2016, in the wake of his first electoral victory. But I also felt a glimmer of hope, because during his last administration, President Trump took important action to hold the government of Cameroon accountable, and I am hopeful that he will continue to call out the Biya regime’s abuses and push for democracy in Cameroon.

As an independent journalist in Cameroon, I always knew that my work could land me in trouble. Reporters Without Borders has called Cameroon “one of the continent’s most dangerous countries for journalists,” and with good reason—journalists have been harassed, arrested, kidnapped, and even killed. My reporting is particularly sensitive, as it relates to the Anglophone crisis—the civil unrest in the country’s English-speaking regions —and the abuses and atrocities that have occurred in these areas. This topic is not just a professional interest, but a personal one as well: I am from Bamenda, the epicenter of the Anglophone protests.

On December 8, 2016, I was arrested while filming a demonstration at which police shot and killed four people. The police seized and destroyed my camera and tortured me into signing a false confession. In May 2018, after an unfair trial in which I was not even allowed to call defense witnesses, I was convicted on a variety of baseless charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

It is widely recognized that my detention is nothing more than retaliation for my reporting. In fact, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention not only found that my detention is arbitrary and in violation of international law, but also concluded that it “resulted from the exercise of [my] right to freedom of expression.” Numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the American Bar Association Center for Human Rights, and Human Rights Watch, have similarly called for my release.

December 8, 2024, marked the eight-year anniversary of my detention. If this is to be the last Christmas that I celebrated in prison, and if human rights in Cameroon are to stand a chance, then the Trump administration will once again need to step up.

First, the new administration should refuse to reinstate Cameroon’s benefits under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). In 2019, the Trump administration suspended Cameroon from trade preference benefits under AGOA due to “persistent gross violations of internationally recognized human rights,” including “extrajudicial killings, arbitrary and unlawful detention, and torture.” However, Cameroon has recently been lobbying for reinstatement, and the outgoing US ambassador to Cameroon reportedly told Cameroonian officials that the United States is ready to support the country’s reinstatement. But this would send exactly the wrong message, as Cameroon has only become more repressive over the past few years. In 2017, for example, Cameroon received a score of 24 out of 100 in Freedom House’s annual Freedom in the World report; by 2024, its score had declined to 15 out of 100. And as the US State Department has documented, extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and torture remain serious concerns.

Second, the United States should impose targeted sanctions on the government officials responsible for serious human rights abuses. Despite Cameroon’s consistently deplorable human rights record, including the repression and detention of journalists, there are no government officials on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons list (though the US State Department did announce a policy of imposing visa restrictions relating to the Anglophone crisis in 2021).

And third, with Cameroon’s October 2025 presidential election fast approaching, the Trump administration should emphasize in all its meetings with Cameroonian officials that a free and fair election cannot occur without a free and independent media. While there are many restrictions on the media that need to be addressed, perhaps the most important—and the easiest for the government to fix—is the detention of journalists who criticize its actions. The United States should therefore demand that I and the other detained journalists be released before the election so that we—and the many others who have been intimidated into silence—can do our jobs.

Culled from Freedom House.Org