A text message, three years in prison and a lonely death
A text message as grounds for arrest: Roger Jean-Claude Mbede was persecuted in Cameroon for loving a man. He died at 34.
On 10 January 2014, Roger Jean-Claude Mbede died in Ngoumou, his home village not far from the Cameroonian capital Yaoundé. He was thirty-four. His "crime" consisted of a single text message.
In the spring of 2011, Mbede had written to a man: "I'm very much in love with you." The message ended up with the authorities, Mbede was arrested and shortly afterwards sentenced to three years in prison. In Cameroon, same-sex acts carry up to five years in prison. For the court, the text message was proof enough.
Mbede spent sixteen months in Kondengui central prison in Yaoundé, where he was diagnosed with a hernia. Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience, and people around the world campaigned for him. In July 2012, he was provisionally released to receive treatment. Even so, he was not free. Because his name was now known throughout the country, he mostly lived in hiding. His case dragged on; in the end he was waiting for a decision from the Supreme Court.
It never came. Mbede was seriously ill and had no money for treatment. After his death, his lawyer Alice Nkom, one of Africa's best-known defenders of queer people, made serious accusations. The family had taken him out of hospital, kept him locked in a room and let him die. But Nkom saw the real blame with the state, which persecutes queer people and leaves them unprotected. Human rights organisations called for an investigation.
Mbede's fate became a symbol of the persecution of queer people in Cameroon. Nkom announced that she would keep fighting until the highest court ruled on the ban. The law under which Mbede had been convicted remained in force.