Rose is from Cameroon and worked selling vegetable oil. One day when she was at the market, two Gendarmes (French for police) approached her and asked her who she was selling oil to. She said not to anyone specific, just the general public. They told her they would beat her if she didn’t tell the truth. She reiterated that she sold the oil to the public.

In front of her five-year-old daughter, they began beating Rose with cables then arrested her. They charged her with selling oil to separatist fighters, the government’s opponents. She was detained for three weeks and five days and for each of those days, she was beaten with cables by the police.

One day two officers with guns came into her cell and pulled her outside of the building and raped her. They said they would shoot her if she made any sounds.  They called her an Anglophone dog and continued to rape her on other days: “I became very sick. The commander sent me home because they knew I was going to die.” 

When she was released, all of the hospitals were closed because they were accused of supporting the separatists. Medical workers gave her some injections and antibiotics at her home and treated the wounds on her legs. It took her two weeks to recover. 

But the police came back to her house and arrested her again, and “they told me that since I did not die now I will have to die by boiling and that they will transfer me to another prison.” They said her life would end there.

Escaping to the United States for safety, Rose is afraid of the Cameroonian government and fears for her life if forcibly returned.