Newspaper Page Text
Page 10
— Griffin Daily News Thursday, August 18,1977
AP newsman writes
about imprisonment
in Central Africa
Editor's Note — Michael Goldsmith, veteran AP foreign
correspondent, was imprisoned for 30 days recently in the
Central African Empire. He was arrested July 14 and
released Aug. 14. This is a first-person account of his
ordeal.
By MICHAEL GOLDSMITH
Associated Press Writer
I recovered consciousness in a bare, windowless prison
cell. I was handcuffed, dressed only in my underpants and
covered with blood from open flesh wounds all over my
body.
For a long time I lay motionless, trying to limit the pain
and to recall how I, a foreign correspondent of The Associ
ated Press, had fallen into this situation.
The memory returned only gradually. I remembered I
was on assignment in the Central African Empire and had
been arrested on what I assumed correctly was the
previous day, accused of being a South African spy.
On the evening of July 14, Bastille Day, I had been taken
70 miles from the capital, Bangui, to Berengo, the birth
place and residence of Emperor Bokassa I, the former
sergeant in the French colonial army who had proclaimed
himself the hereditary ruler of his nation.
I recalled how Bokassa, in blind fury at the supposed
spy, struck me without warning with a heavy stick,
knocking me to the ground and opening a gaping wound on
the left side of my forehead. I remembered being kicked
by Bokassa and his aides until I lost consciousness, and
someone deliberately crushing my spectacles underfoot.
I guessed I must have remained unconscious for at least
15 hours. I knew at once that it would be a long time before
I could hope to regain my freedom. Bokassa could not
easily allow the world to see the injuries he had inflicted
on me. Bokassa and his police who arrested me somehow
had to find a justification for the ill-treatment.
For six days, I remained handcuffed and often with
chains on my legs in the small cell where a rough concrete
slab was the only furniture. Once a day, guards opened the
heavy steel door to bring me some boiled manioc, an
African staple root, and a mess can filled with brackish
water.
No one treated my injuries, which quickly became in
fected. My body was covered with the bites of malaria
mosquitoes. The sequel of a particularly vicious kick in
the small of my back made every movement an agony. I
had nothing on which to rest my aching head. During the
frequent tropical rainstorms, I was bitterly cold, without
blanket or cover of any kind.
Apart from occasional jibes from an army major whom
I later knew as Maj. Ngongo, the prison commander, no
one spoke to me, interrogated me or gave me any kind of
explanation. My requests to talk to someone in a
responsible position or to a representative of the
American Embassy drew only laughter from the guards.
Every time the cell door was opened, half a dozen soldiers
pointed cocked submachineguns at me.
I was sustained by the hope that international pressure
on my behalf was building up. The Deputy Chief of
Mission at the U.S. Embassy, Grant Smith, had witnessed
my arrest so at least the outside world knew. I had not
disappeared without trace.
Late on the sixth day, my situation abruptly improved.
My handcuffs were removed for the first time, I was given
two blankets and placed in a larger cell with a wooden
plank for a bed. The following morning, a medical orderly
cleaned my wounds and put six stitches in my head. And,
astonishing luxury, I was brought a copious, European
style meal from a nearby hotel.
The medic came daily for ten days, gave me regular
penicillin and anti-tetanus injections and may have saved
my life. The good meals continued to come, once a day,
until the end of my imprisonment.
But as my health improved and the pain receded, the
agonizing doubts over my future increased. Day after
day, I was confronted with endless hours of inactivity,
almost no one to talk to and certainly no one to give me
any information about the fate in store for me.
I soon made up my mind that I faced the likelihood of
imprisonment until Bokassa’s coronation, scheduled for
Dec. 4, when a general amnesty was likely. That made a
total of 143 days. I carved a calendar on my cell wall,
leaving space for the four months yet to come.
Although never very strong in mathematics, I began
filling in time with enormous calculations scratched on
the walls. I divided telephone numbers by each other to 50
decimal points, then re-multiplied the fractions to test my
accuracy. The guards decided my long rows of figures
were some kind of magic and took away the small piece of
plastic I used to scratch on the walls.
I never realized before how slowly empty time moves.
Thoughts of my family often led to increasingly
panicky, self-pitying onslaughts of fear. What would I do if
Coronation Day came and went and I was not released?
A previous prisoner had carved a crucifix on one of the
courtyard walls. On Aug. 11, to occupy time, I colored it
with brick dust mixed with water. Maj. Ngongo saw my
effort and ordered me returned to the punishment cell for
“defacing” the prison.
“That will teach you to harass us with your white man’s
symbols,” he said to me.
Unknown to me, though, my ordeal was at an end.
Before Ngongo could carry out his threat, I was taken out
of the cell and returned to Berengo. There I was informed
that a pathetic message from my wife had softened
Bokassa’s heart and I would be put on the next plane two
days later. It was exactly four weeks since my arrest.
Bokassa himself appeared and lectured me without
interruption for two hours. He told me over and over again
that it was only the loving message he had received from
my wife — and not the multiple diplomatic efforts on my
behalf — that had led to my freedom.
On the final day, Sunday Aug. 14,1 was again driven to
Berengo and interrogated for six hours by policemen
using every trick in the book to get me to incriminate my
news sources in Bangui. Under threat of renewed im
prisonment, I was forced to confess to “espionage, plot
ting to undermine the security of the state and insulting
the personality of the Emperor.”
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