Alice Nkom, the tireless defender of LGBT in Cameroon

Only her cane betrays the great lady whom her young clients nickname “Mum”. She is 76 years old but she would be given 60. Alice Nkom, dean of Cameroonian lawyers and defender of LGBT rights, is not ready to retire. “I have no reason to stop, I have one last fight to fight: to get the decriminalization of homosexuality in my country”.

Traditional clothes sporting a badge in the colors of the rainbow, she has just completed a tour of LGBT associations in France. The calendar is not left to chance, its passage shortly before the holding of the Africa-France summit which brings together in Montpellier, from October 7 to 9, actors from the business world and African civil society, at the invitation of the French President, Emmanuel Macron.

In Cameroon, Alice Nkom was the first woman to be admitted to the Douala bar in 1969. A bar that she helped with others to found in Cameroon, at a time when the profession was mainly practiced by white men from France. She is 24 years old and she says “she did it for love”, inspired by a husband who believed in her.

Become a Cameroonian state prosecutor? It would have been too easy for this hard work. “They argue for condemnation and often win. I had the bad idea of ​​defending human rights, “laughs the one who worked as a business lawyer before devoting herself to the defense of LGBT people.

The first association for the defense of Cameroonian homosexuals

In a country where homosexuality is prohibited, the lawyer sees parade in the correctional courts, in the early 2000s, young homosexuals risking up to five years in prison. “During my hearings, I saw these poor young people who were systematically condemned for homosexuality and who only asked for one thing: to run away and be forgotten after their conviction. For me it was unacceptable! ”, Remembers Master Nkom. “I started to study the question and to ask myself how I could bring this debate on the national table. They needed a megaphone to explain that they are full citizens and not entirely separate citizens ”.

Very quickly, Alice Nkom stepped up to the plate and founded, in 2003, the first anti-homophobia NGO in Cameroon: the association for the defense of homosexual rights (Adefho). For this gesture, she will be summoned by the prefect, furious that a Cameroonian organization mentions the word “homosexuals”. A fine speaker, the lawyer will eventually convince him, but very few young LGBT people will dare to join Adefho. “The association was openly intended for them but they feared the ‘outing’ [la révélation de leur homosexualité]”, She sums up. Whatever, a step has been taken. His organization paves the way for others.

At the same time, Alice Nkom goes through other means to get closer to young Cameroonian homosexuals rejected by their families and often isolated for fear of reprisals. “Taking into account the advice of members of the Cameroonian LGBT community”, the activist lawyer founded a second association, more focused on the health of these young people: Sid’ado, which takes care of adolescents facing AIDS.

Threatened, insulted, attacked in court …

But the more she publicizes her fight, the more she is threatened. “I sometimes pleaded in Yaoundé accompanied by bodyguards” she says. “At one point, I was getting phone calls day and night. I was called a witch, I was told that I encouraged children to ‘get their asses smashed’… It was very violent. I had become the person to avoid. These people thought they could forbid me to advocate for whoever I want. ”

Alice Nknom does not let herself be discouraged, however. “I went around the courts, I watched for trials for homosexuality throughout the country and I formed myself in the defense of these young people that no one took care of.”

In 2007, in an interview with RFI, the lawyer castigates the law against homosexuality in Cameroon. This time, it is the Minister of Justice who attacks him through the Cameroonian Magistrates’ Association. A complaint for “apologia for the crime” was filed against the activist, but without leading to a conviction.

Alice Nkom deplores the lack of education of the population but, according to her, it is above all the system that must be changed. “This will not change as long as there is not a minimum of democracy and respect for the values ​​of human rights,” she says. “When the power is in the hands of a single person and the separation of powers is a lure, we must divert the attention of the populations on something”, she elaborates, aiming at barely veiled words the Cameroonian President Paul Biya, in power since 1982. “Homosexuals are a ready target.”

However, in Cameroonian civil society, mentalities are changing, promises Me Alice Nkom, even if attacks and arrests – often on denunciation – are increasing. “It is enough that someone denounces you because you have a thin voice or a woman’s gait, on a facies offense, for the hand of a court to fall on you”, explains the lawyer whose cabinet never empty.

More than a hundred LGBT people arrested

Thanks to a collaborative platform bringing together around forty associations, reports are going up. And the numbers are not good. Since the beginning of 2021, more than a hundred arrests have been recorded, some defendants are awaiting trial and more than forty people imprisoned because of their sexual orientation. “As recently as this morning, a young man in prison calls me to tell me that there are 20 homosexuals locked up with him”, reports Alice Nkom, who centralizes a lot of information.

Since February, the lawyer has been working on the case of Shakiro and Patricia, two transgender women arrested while in a restaurant, sentenced to five years in prison for homosexuality and private indecency. Me Nkom has been granted provisional release for his two clients and is awaiting an appeal trial in October.

In the domain of Alice Nkom, victories are rare. So the lawyer gets the most out of each of them. Recently, at the UN platform, US President Joe Biden mentioned Cameroon as one of the most homophobic countries in the world, along with Chechnya. “It’s not nothing,” she said, proud to have succeeded in alerting the situation of Cameroonian LGBT people to the White House.

The lawyer is counting on international pressure to change the Cameroonian authorities and encourage them to decriminalize. “The United States is one of Cameroon’s main development partners, they have the power to ask the authorities to loosen the legal grip on homosexuals”, rejoices the one who does not hide her regular contacts with the embassy American, which she considers “listening”. This is not the case with France, she laments.

“I expect everything from France and for the moment I have nothing”, she says a bit bitter. “France signs charters, conveying values ​​such as human rights, the rule of law, respect for the environment. She tries to apply them to herself, but she allows her partners to violate them with impunity before her eyes ”adds the one who calls for the bringing together of civil societies to“ put pressure ”on decision-makers. For Alice Nkom, the Montpellier summit is the perfect opportunity, at least that’s what she hopes.