The Dungeon

In the centre of the vast African continent, there is a constellation of misery. Fetid, isolated, and often illegal, Burundi’s single-cell “cachot” prisons are off the radar of even many of the country’s human rights organisations. Children as young as ten crouch in the reeking dark of these dungeons, sometimes for years, often with no evidence against them, and rarely having seen the inside of a court room. The Burundian constitution states fourteen days as the maximum imprisonment; the reality is a violent miscarriage of any sense of justice.

For many prisoners, the only crime they have encountered is that of their imprisonment, and torture at the hands of the police. Arrested for infractions as myriad as sorcery and murder – or in the case of 10 year old Eli-Davide in Cibitoke, for just watching a stranger stealing DVDs – the unlucky pass from the violent hands of the police to the abuses of life under prisoner chiefs: “If someone new can’t pay the cachot tax, he can spend a week without sitting down, without eating – he must live in the corner where we shit in the night.” Without documentation or representation, these losers of the seemingly random justice game are truly lost.

Text by Laura Gabrielle Dix, photographs taken in Burundi 2009

“The Dungeon” will be exhibited at the Gallery bar floreal in Paris starting the 26. November 2009. The exhebition called “Les Visas de l’ANI” is innitiated  by Association Nationale des Iconographes(ANI) / French national photo editor’s association and will be also shown at Visa pour l`image, Perpignan 2010.

OPG (Officier de la Police General), general police officer, responsible for the detention cell in Buhinjuza, near the city Muyinga.

25 year old Miboro infront of his cell in Buhinjuza, near the city Muyinga Burundi 2009. He has been arrested for raping a young girl. The girl will be forced by her family to marry him, a decision made by the two families, and he will be freed without a trial in the next days.

Insight the detention cell of Cibitoke, where 38 man and children are captured. Most prisoners are held there up to 2 Years. By law the prisoners have to be judged after being captured for max. 14 days.

The prisoners receive no food by the government in these detention cells. The family members outside have to bring it to them. Some prisoners have no food for weeks and they beg the others to get the left over’s.

10 year old Eli-Davide with his friend who where both captured in a CD shop while some other people stole cd`s and run away. They have been held since three weeks and no family member has contacted them jet.

11 Year old Marie who is captured since 3 weeks after stealing the cell phone of Muyingas Administrator.

14 year old Jamila who is captured since 4 days because of helping her friend stealing money from her landlord. Women are sleeping generally in the floor-part. The Policeman say that there is no contact between the man and the women, but the man have to cross the floor to use the toilet.

Judges waiting in Buhinjuza, near the city Muyinga.