Former CRTV GM, Amadou Vamoulke decries COVID-19 spread in prison

Three out of eight inmates sharing a cell with journalist Amadou Vamoulke at the Kondengui Central Prison in Yaounde have been tested COVID-19 positive.

This has been declared by the Former General Manager of Cameroon Radio Television, CRTV, Amadou Vamoulke in an open letter addressed to the minister of justice and keeper of the seal Tuesday, March 30, 2021.

The incarcerated former general manager of the state audio visual media expresses fear that COVID-19 is fast spreading in the detention facility hosting more that three thousand five hundred inmates that is, three times more than its 1000 capacity. He invites government through the minister of justice to decongest the prison.

Vamoulke regrets that Laurent Esso as minister of justice enjoys seeing people in pain reason why he gives no attention to the plight of those seeking justice.

“In your authoritarian regime, justice is independent of the power of the executive,” he adds.

Amadou Vamoulke has spent 1708 days in what he described as “…illegal detention with 64 adjournments in court”.

“Laurent Esso,” he said, “has gone beyond inhumanity and am aware my public criticism can cost me just as others that have been taken to SED after such pronouncements. I have never embezzled.”

Emphasising that his health situation demands intensive medical health care, Amadou Valmouke reminds Laurent Esso that the true meaning of the word minister is to be at serve people not to inflict pains on them. He declares that Laurent Esso wants to kill him just for his pleasure.

Last week, the minister of justice denied claims that congested prisons in Cameroon were fertile centres for the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Overpopulation in prisons, observers say, is frustrating the respect of COVID-19 measures and therefore the spread of the virus is inevitable.

Mbatho Ntan.