Rédaction Africa Links 24 with Edouard Djogbénou
Published on 2024-04-05 08:19:11
Through an open letter, opposition leader Reckya Madougou is appealing to the national and international community about her prison conditions.
In a letter sent to Beninwebtv, the former Minister of Justice under Boni Yayi and disqualified presidential candidate in the 2021 election has drawn attention to the suffering she has endured at the Missérété civilian prison where she has been incarcerated for several years.
In her open letter, the detainee at Missérété states that her fundamental rights as a prisoner, such as making phone calls, receiving medical examinations, and access to information, are systematically denied to her. Deeply affected by her prison situation, she expresses her deep discontent in a letter titled “The heartfelt cry of a political detainee with rights violated even in the jail.”
“In what rule of law is a prisoner prohibited from even calling their children and their treating doctor when they are ill, and without regard to the law? This is what I am the only one enduring at the Missérété prison. I will bear my cross and survive you, thanks to God, no matter what torture and humiliations you inflict on me. The ordeal I endure day after day is indescribable, in disregard of the demand for my release by the UN Working Group which has declared my detention arbitrarily tripled. The real ‘witchcraft’ is to forcibly detain opponents, deprive them of their fundamental rights, and try everything to silence them so they are forgotten and abandoned. All in vain. You will hear from us. Despite the ostracism of which I am a victim. No injustice is meant to be hidden under a bushel for long,” wrote Reckya Madougou in her letter.
She continues: “I have heard from my loved ones all the falsehoods alleged by the authorities that contradict themselves on the torturous and discriminatory management of my prison life. And this, for three years. My silence at one point did not mean consent but a personal choice related to the spiritual journey I imposed on myself. However, there are moments when the abuse of oppression requires protest for survival,” reads the open letter.
“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Nelson Mandela Rules, the United Nations Convention against Torture, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women are also international legal instruments that establish the rights of detainees, but you, Mr. Director General of the APB, have deliberately chosen to deprive me of the enjoyment of them to preserve your position. Moreover, I do not ask for favors from you, I only invite you to carry out your duties in accordance with the provisions of Article 35 of our Constitution. Indeed, Mr. DG, you have been blatantly and discriminately violating my elementary rights for three years, including the right to call my children. While all prisoners, even those with blood on their hands, enjoy it daily. Imagine that under the sordid apartheid regime, the most famous prisoner in contemporary history, Mandela, could still use the telephone booths of the Robben Island fortress prison,” emphasizes Reckya Madougou.
She highlights in her letter that even a call to her son on the day of his exam was refused to her: “I still remember the eve of the middle school exam during June 2023. Even though it was within my rights, I begged your collaborators to allow me to make a call to my son to tell him how much I love him and advise him to be mentally strong to face this turning point in his studies, as every parent advises their child approaching school exams. I suggested to my jailers to be present during the call to follow the conversation if they wished. Saddened, your people reassured me that this time I would have my way, even alleging that you were present in the detention center and that the Minister of Justice Détchénou was also informed and would quickly give us a supposedly favorable response. Oh no! It was just a bluff. I was wrong to believe in any humanism towards me from you. But I let it pass again. I should not have, because any unreported bullying paves the way for more dramatic excesses.”
She mentions the refusal of a medical visit: Addressing the Director-General of the Benin Penitentiary Agency, Reckya Madougou reminds that the authorization for medical examinations that she had requested for two years remained unanswered and was finally recently granted.
She states, “You also state in your statement that I receive visits from my doctor. But you conveniently forget to recall, on the one hand, that it was obtained after a great struggle for a whole year and especially since 2022, when I have experienced various health crises requiring a battery of examinations prescribed by specialists who examined me, your successive wardens have never taken me out to have them done. (…) Without delving into the episode of my crisis in 2021, since 2022 where every night is a atrocity that I constantly expose to the prison administration, to the wardens, to the PS, to the ministers of justice, how many letters have my lawyers and I sent? It is only in these early days of April 2024, more than two years later, that I am allowed to undergo my examinations. At least partially. Because a new request must be submitted to the PS, who had previously received several letters on the same issue. What meanderings, even dilatory ones on health issues! And yet, every day my fellow inmates go to public and private health centers, some several times a week. In two years, anything could have happened to me, since the recent consultation with my doctor clearly mentioned serious risks.”
“OVER TWO YEARS to obtain a simple authorization to go for medical examinations in hospitals on national territory. And to top it all, despite the worsening of my pains, confirmed by the X-ray, I am forbidden to call my personal doctor to transmit to him the results of the tests carried out and discuss with him the identified pathology, pending his next trip to Benin. Yet none of you is unaware that the law gives me that right and that other detainees benefit from it. Moreover, health is a matter of confidentiality, security, and trust.”
On the right to information: “Furthermore, my right to information and leisure for my mental balance is also not exempt from the indictment of my deprivations. Having a simple radio set, like the other inmates each have at their disposal as they wish, is impossible when you are called Reckya Madougou. In a prison where individual air conditioners, refrigerators, freezers, televisions with access to international channels, microwave ovens, video game consoles… are legion among the privileged, as noted by international NGOs passing by. I will not provide further details on the matter because restoring justice in my favor will not be achieved by you but rather you will come to simulate a dispossession of the parties who will not take a month before reintroducing said household appliances into the house. And it is their right to enjoy them. That’s the circus you indulge in whenever your policy of ‘double standards’ is denounced. I am the beast you seek to knock out at all costs. But ‘He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world,’ wrote the opposition detainee in Missérété.”
“As for the news of Wednesday, March 29, visitors of all kinds have been visiting the prisons of Benin, from north to south, meeting with detainees including political detainees for ages. They do not present a visiting permit. The same visitors, civilians as well as politicians, who are common acquaintances of political detainees scattered in Beninese prisons, have never presented any visiting permit before accessing other detainees and they are surprised every time that only Reckya Madougou is not accessible to them, sometimes even thinking it’s a whim of mine. Mr. DG, taking you at your word, since February 2023 when you miraculously exhumed, from the rubble of the revolutionary prehistory of our country, the condition of a visiting permit against me, many are the members of my biological and political family, friends, and relatives who have written to the PS to obtain this sesame, without success. You impose on us peripeties to which no follow-up is ever given! But, how cynical! Contrary to the allegations circulated, many have been my family members and personalities who have come individually to Missérété and have been prevented from seeing me. Not only are my group visitors turned away. Particularly Honorable Nourenou Atchadé, former Minister Alassane Tigri, ex-minister Galiou Soglo, Deputies from Les Démocrates taken individually, and many sympathizers with my pain have sought individually to see me. All are consistently turned away at the gate. (…) ‘Last but not least,’ last year, you crossed the Rubicon by banning access to the detention center for all my lawyers. There was even a warden, the one on duty at the time of the events, to justify this measure with a ridiculous argument out of nowhere: ‘you are already convicted, right?’ This is of course a denial of the criminal procedure code, very distressing for an officer in charge of managing a prison.”
In conclusion, Reckya Madougou asserts: “I had the honor of being Minister of Justice. I have never instructed any prosecutor, magistrate, or prison official to deprive anyone of their rights, regardless of the charges against them. On the contrary, in my position, I have always exerted my energy to ensure the necessary distance is maintained so that justice is always served without thinking about the interest of the position I held. My friend and former colleague, the Minister of Justice Victor Topanou, has testified to this several times in certain circles. He and I had confronted each other in a case against the government where I stood firm, despite the potential consequences I faced.”
“The role of administering degrading treatments that you are willing to assume should no longer be possible in our country since 1990. I denounce it so that no one will suffer it tomorrow, not even those who subject me to it today.”
“Even in the tomb, Jesus is Lord. My soul blesses Him abundantly. Therefore, focus on the hope that Easter brings, a message of resurrection, love, and peace for all! Happy Easter to you who still have the chance to enjoy your rights.”
Reckya Madougou
Read the original article(French) on Benin Web TV
