Testimonial

In 2015, Renaud Meysonnier set off on a trip from France to Asia. A few months later, at the border between India and Nepal, he was arrested for using counterfeit currency, and sentenced to a year in prison. Renaud spent one month in the small Nepalese prison of Bhairahawa, and was subsequently transferred to the prison in Kathmandu, the capital. This is his story.

I was not as afraid as I should have been; entering a prison was becoming a habit for me.

The detainees sleep under a flimsy tin roof on mattresses placed on the floor – no insulation anywhere.

It is a filthy, disorderly ghetto

A putrid odor emanates from everywhere, a stench of garbage and stagnant water which can’t make it to the sewer and slowly rots. A combination of dead rats, mold, soap, piles of refuse...

There are no doors, no gates; the entrances to the cellblocks are wide open 24 hours a day. We come and go as if through revolving doors.