Tag Archives: Sierra Leone

A deafening silence

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Bonthe is like nowhere else I’ve ever been. It has no cars, no real roads, and just a few motorbikes. It is like stepping back in time. Crumbling colonial buildings line the town’s shore, looking across to the mainland. Behind them, are a mixture of mud houses, simple modern bungalows and metal shacks. For the most part, the only noises to break the silence are those of kids’ laughter, calls to prayer from the mosque and the ‘put-put’ of the odd boat, weighed-down with goods like rice, cement and petrol. It could be 1913 or 2013.

Bonthe is home to around 10,000 people.

Bonthe is home to around 10,000 people.

Bonthe is the main town of Sierra Leone’s biggest island Sherbro Island. It juts-out from the coast of Sierra Leone, a five-hour drive south of Freetown. It’s home to the island’s hospital, council offices, police station and prison. That small prison was one of the first stops on our JHR reporting trip to Bonthe.

There is no electricity on Bonthe, unless you have a generator.

There is no electricity on Bonthe, unless you have a generator.

The biggest prison in the country is Freetown Central Prison (a.k.a. Pademba Road Prison). It currently holds three or four-times the number of inmates for which it was designed. Many JHR-trained journalists have reported on these conditions over the past few years. This month the government said it plans to replace the facility. Because of Pademba Road’s reputation, I was prepared for even worse when visiting a small prison on an under-developed island in the Atlantic.

When we arrived outside Bonthe Prison, the staff knew nothing of our visit. It took a few phone calls back to Freetown to confirm that a white man did indeed submit a visitor request the week before. We were in.

The main entrance to Bonthe Prison.

The main entrance to Bonthe Prison.

The cramped reception office had two prison-bar gates on either side – the only barrier between prisoners and freedom. A blackboard inside the office categorized the prisoners. Long-Term: 7, Short-Term: 8, Remand: 2, Trial: 0. Total: 17.

The courtyard in Bonthe Prison.

The courtyard in Bonthe Prison.

The dusty courtyard inside was a little smaller than a tennis court. A toilet block beside the offices, and cells on the three other sides. Two or three male prisoners sat about in the shade. They seemed almost uninterested by our visit.

This prisoner is facing a charge of Wounding with Intent.

This prisoner is facing a charge of Wounding with Intent.

We spoke to the Discipline Officer. He told us there were 23 inmates. He was quickly corrected by the Reception Officer who said there were indeed 17 inmates:  Long-Term: 8, Short-Term: 8, Remand: 0, Trial: 1. Ultimately there was no practical way to find out which numbers were real.

A prison cell in Bonthe Prison.

A cell in Bonthe Prison.

Of the seven cells, four were in use. Four or five men to a cell. The ones we saw measured around four-by-three metres, and had two or three single beds each. The officers told us that men are allowed out of their cells from 6:30 a.m. until around 5 p.m. They are all required to preform “hard labour” in local paddy fields. Not an easy life, but nothing compared to conditions in Pademba Road. And I’ll be honest, while I was inside, I sized-up how easy it appeared be to escape over the low roof.

Bonthe Prison toilet facilities

Bonthe Prison toilet facilities

We made the five second walk back outside. Our story wasn’t what we had planned it to be (a better one later developed). As we walked away, JHR’s Bonthe-based trainer Samba Koroma pointed out a yellow building beside the prison. He told me that it was the original site of the Special Court of Sierra Leone (SCSL). (The permanent SCSL compound is now in Freetown.) The SCSL was set up to prosecute for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the latter half of the 1991-2002 Civil War.

The former Special Court building in Bonthe.

The former Special Court building in Bonthe.

The courtroom section of the SCSL in Bonthe is open on two sides. Unusually for government buildings in Sierra Leone, the walls seem barely scuffed, but the SCSL logo behind the bench is beginning to peel away from the wall. The wooden dock stands to the right of the bench. In March, 2003, rebel leaders like Foday Sankoh were indicted on this stand and kept in the prison next door. That month, the court also issued an indictment for then Liberian President Charles Taylor.

Inside the SCSL courtroom in Bonthe.

Inside the SCSL courtroom in Bonthe.

Sankoh died from a stroke later that year. Taylor is currently being held in The Hague, appealing his 50-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The silence inside the SCSL courtroom seemed to ring inside my ears. I didn’t feel like hanging around, so I took a picture and quickly walked outside.

I squinted in the sunlight and saw my colleagues chatting to each other in the distance. It was so quiet I could hear what they were talking about. That very different, timeless silence again. In Bonthe, it can be any year you want it to be, but it’s a safe bet that no one’s wishing for 2003.

JHR Present Sierra Leone Human Rights Reporting Awards

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December 10 was International Human Rights Day, and jhr celebrated by presenting awards for the best human rights stories produced in Sierra Leone. The stories were produced by journalists during an eight-week reporting workshop focused around the 2012 general elections. These stories contributed to a peaceful and transparent election, and heightened the awareness of human rights during this crucial period.

It was a difficult decision for the panel of judges from jhr, UNIPSIL and the Independent Media Commission. In the end, there could only be four – two from print and two from electronic media.

International Human Rights Day with (from left to right) jhr Sierra Leone Country Director Yeama Thompson, award-winners Sallieu Sesay, Lansana Mansaray, Mariama Bah, and Hassan Bangura, and UNIPSIL Secretary General, Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen.

Read the stories here:

Hassan Bangura of Salone Times Newspaper - A Call for Equal Representation of People with Disabilities in Government

Sallieu Sesay of the Torchlight Newspaper - Sallieu Sesay – Ahead of the November 17th Polls, Blind Feel Neglected 

Listen to the Stories here:

Lansana Mansaray of Skyy FM - Lansana Mansaray – Violence and Security for Women During the Election

Mariama Bah of Cotton Tree News - Mariama Bah – The Rights of Blind Voters

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JHR Leading Workshop Series on Human Rights Reporting in Sierra Leone for 2012 Elections

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In less than two months, Sierra Leoneans will head to the polls for the third time since the end of a civil war. The country has been peaceful for just over a decade, and though the past two elections have been relatively free of civil unrest or violence, some worrying political events of the past year are causing concern whether 2012 will be a peaceful one.

The media plays a significant role disseminating and communicating information to the public throughout the election process. It can help to facilitate peaceful and transparent elections, but it can also be a tool for inciting violence and discrimination, jeopardising human rights.

The media are also able to use elections as an opportunity to hold politicians accountable for the promises made during the campaigning period. After all, the results of these votes will affect the entire country for the next five years.

On September 12, 2012, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution to assist in the preparation and conduct of the elections. They call the elections a “key benchmark” for peace consolidation in the West African country, extending  the mandate of the UNIPSIL, as the United Nations presence in the country is known, until the end of March 2013, in part, to assist the Government in the run-up to a “potentially transformational event.”

In this meeting, the Security Council emphasised the the important and positive role that the media can play through accurate and balanced reporting, and called on practitioners to remain committed to providing professional, independent, and factual coverage and to promoting public education and dialogue during the electoral period.

In the lead-up to the November 17, 2012 polls, Journalists for Human Rights is receiving support from the UNIPSIL – the United Nations Integrated Peacebuilding in Sierra Leone- and the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to host an eight week workshop series for Sierra Leonean journalists.

Beginning on October 11, journalists from media houses across Freetown will study and report on a variety of human rights concerns that emerge during the election period. Topics covered will include election timelines, human rights issues, election legislation, story-gathering techniques, and safety considerations. Participants will produce three human rights election stories each, for publication or broadcast at media houses. The workshop series will conclude with an awards ceremony, coinciding with International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2012.

Though it is natural for a certain amount of tension to exist in the lead-up to such a momentous event, this application of democracy has great potential to encourage  politicians to commit to improving human rights in their constituencies.

To learn more about jhr’s work in Sierra Leone during the 2012 Presidential Elections, visit http://www.jhr.ca/en/sled.php.

A Debate on Reporting Skills

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How do journalists go about reporting fairly and accurately- especially during crucial times like elections?

In just under three months people in Sierra Leone will hold elections.

The media will play big role during this time period.

That was why JHR and the Academia of Sierra Leone joined forces and held a public debate on “Conflict Sensitive Approaches to Media Reporting” recently in the country’s capital, Freetown.

I attended the program along with my JHR colleagues curious to hear what would transpire throughout the day.

The head of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Sierra Leone, Memunatu Pratt was Chairperson. And the lead Speaker was Dr. Julius Spencer who has served as a Minister of Information during the Tejan Kabbah administration and now owns Premier Media-one of the leading media houses in Sierra Leone.

Dr. Spencer points out that some journalists tend to sensationalize reporting. Even the way someone uses words in a story can sway a reader he says. He also spoke of how sensationalized headlines can have an effect on how someone views a story. He says that can cause conflict between people and even result to violence.

Another issue he touched on was how some reporters tend to cover only press conferences where they get their transport paid and a lunch. As a trainer I have seen this firsthand. And it ‘s something I try to discourage journalists here from doing. Or at least if covering a presser get other voices as well to balance out the story and put a human face to it. But as one person from the audience pointed out during the debate, many journalists do not get paid on time and some not at all. And they have to stay until the end of the presser to get their money and by then they are close to deadline and have to get back to file. Plus, when you have to put food on the table- what are you supposed to do? And that’s a solid point too and another thing I have witnessed. Many journalists here also pay for their own transport and cell phone calls for interviews.

One comment that came from several people throughout the day was the lack of actual journalists who attended. Perhaps they had too much on their plates already that day with looming deadlines. So I decided to seek out a journalist who did make it, Mohamed Wurie to see what he thought.

He agreed with much of what was said during the debate, “Most journalists are not paid by media houses,” he says. “Most just do programs when they get transport paid.”

But he adds that he is hopeful and positive some attitudes will change. He says the debate was worth having because it was a lively and thought provoking discussion. And even if only a few local reports are done it’s a step forward.

I think that is an important fact too. And I think that it’s always good to keep a conversation going and discuss how to move forward and improve on a craft.

No steps are too small.

JHR trains Law Enforcement and Justice Officials in Northern Sierra Leone

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(Separate group discussions by the Sierra Leone police, Prisons officers and Local Courts Representatives).

During a three day workshop organized for Law Enforcement & Justice Officials (LEJOs) by Access to Justice, a local NGO working in the Northern districts of Sierra Leone, I was contacted as JHR/BBC Media Action trainer to facilitate a session on the Child Rights Act and the Three Gender Acts.

The session was intended to train 90 Law Enforcement & Justice Officials in the three districts with emphasis on the gaps as well as the roles and responsibilities of the LEJOs – specifically in dealing with access to justice issues and the implementation of the Three Gender Acts of 2007 and 2009 and the Child Rights Act of 2007.

The training attracted LEJOs from Bambali, Kambia and Port Loko districts including police, local and magistrates court personnel and prisons officers. The objective of the training was to increase the ability of women and children to access justice through the provision and strengthening of legal services by discussing the roles and responsibilities of the LEJOs.

It was a very interactive event and the LEGOs were impressed by the link between human rights, the media and other stake holders.

 

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Sierra Leone’s National Dance Troupe Fights to Return to Glory Days

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I went along with my colleague at Cotton Tree News, Kevin Lamdo, to produce his program entitled “My Visit,” where he highlights the everyday life of different groups of people in Sierra Leone. The show has featured everyone from Paramount Chiefs to scrap metal collectors.

This week, the program went to the Aberdeen Cultural Village, the official centre for arts in Sierra Leone. Despite being located inside the city, it lives up to the title of “Village.” Generations of families live here, growing small crops and raising livestock. Chickens squawk running in between bathing children while pots of rice simmer on open fires.

This is the home of Sierra Leone’s National Dance Troupe, who tell me they are happy to be making a living doing what they love, even though their salaries barely allow them to make ends meet.

I visited the village in the morning and for hours they practiced singing, dancing, acrobatics and playing drums – traditional Sierra Leonean music from around the country. But, they tell me, they often can’t afford to maintain their costumes and repair their instruments.

For a time, the troupe performed everywhere from Canadato China. In 1963, the National Danced Troupe was founded by John Joseph Akar, a Sierra Leonean entertainer and repeat guest on the Merv Griffin Show. Under Akar’s leadership, the troupe was invited to the United States to perform at the New York World Fair, at the Negro Arts festival in Dakar, Senegal and went on a four-month tour of Europe.

Today, little seems to be invested in promoting the culture of a country that is best known around the world in popular culture primarily for blood diamonds and civil war.

The Troupe still entertains at foreign diplomatic events and, performs for state functions – including last year’s 50th Anniversary celebrations of the country’s independence. But this kind prestige didn’t last. Several corrupt governments and an 11-year civil war left little room in the government budget for the Ministry of Tourism and Culture,

Lansana Kelfala has been a musician with the dance troupe since 1963, and for a while, he says he felt the pride of traveling the world representing his newly-independent country.

“We used to travel, perform and get paid all the time. Now we can go two or three years without going anywhere,” said Kelfala. “We want the government to give us more help and we want the people to support us so we don’t starve.”

Sierra Leone is Still Waiting for a Freedom of Information Law

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Though the government of Sierra Leone has been making very public displays of initiatives that aim to promote transparency, since even before the current government came into power in 2007, there have been discussions about if and how to go about creating a Freedom of Information (FOI) Law.

Generally speaking, the purpose of FOI legislation is to legally require governments to release documents to journalists and other concerned members of the public. At the moment, Liberia is the only West African country with an FOI law, while South Africa, Zimbabwe and Uganda are the only others on the continent.

Sierra Leone currently has a bill in Parliament for the creation of an FOI Law. After it was first drafted, it was twice discussed in cabinet, was then moved to parliament, where it was discussed by the legislative committee on Communication and Information. It is yet to be passed.

The Sierra Leone FOI Bill was first proposed in 2005 by the Society for Democratic Initiatives in cooperation with the London-based human rights organization, Article 19. In 2008, Sierra Leone’s Information and Communication Minister, Alhaji Ibrahim Ben Kargbo signed a commitment which agreed to pass the Bill into law.

Now, more than three years later at the Commonwealth Forum on Media and Development in Sierra Leone, Kargbo said that he hopes the bill will pass in the next six months.

“It has been delayed, but when parliament resumes the bill will be passed,” said Kargbo.

The government has been promoting its initiatives which they say aim to improve transparency of their operations. One example is the recently completed Government of Sierra Leone Online Mining Repository System, which publishes information on financial transactions between the government and mining companies. Though some see it as a step in the right direction in terms of increasing transparency in one of Sierra Leone’s biggest industries, it is not a replacement for real Freedom of Information legislation.

“As much as the system is promised to address issues of corruption, I don’t think it will holistically address the problem when there is the tendency for the officials of the ministry to only upload information that is in their own interest and not crucial information that the public will want to know about,” said Mohammed Konneh, Secretary General of the Association of Journalists on Mining and Extractives. “Without the [Freedom of Information] law, the system will not work well more so the people that are responsible to run the system will in some cases will be afraid to put certain information that the government considers confidential.”

The draft for the bill argues that FOI laws are not only as crucial to participatory democracy, accountability and good governance, but also as a fundamental human right, protected under international and constitutional law.

To view the 2005 draft of the bill, visit http://www.article19.org/data/files/pdfs/analysis/sierra-leone.foi.05.pdf

Maintaining Community in Women’s Prison

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I visited Freetown’s prison for women with Martha Kargbo, jhr’s first BBC World Service Trust Fellow in Sierra Leone. She is producing a feature on how women behind bars maintain contact with their families and communities. What we found is that they often have very little contact with the outside world. Phone calls are difficult and visits with family – including children – are extremely limited. Aside from the problems making contact, there is also a stigma against women who are convicted of crimes and can be stigmatised by their communities even after they are released.

To cope with this isolation from society, we saw that these women formed their own communities, much like a large extended family. Some are in for a few months if they are convicted of marijuana possession, some for years, and one or two on life sentences. They work together sowing clothes and making beaded purses.

It is a right for women with newborns to be able to look after their babies, even if they are in prison. So when there is a baby in the prison, we were told that it is often not only cared for by the biological mother, but by all of them.

The women’s prison in Freetown is not a large facility. It is housed in the former UN Special Courts for war crimes in Sierra Leone. It is not large – there were only 24 women incarcerated at the time of our visit.

When women are released from prison, they face unique challenges reintegrating into society.  They often do not have as many job opportunities as men, and the stigma against female convicts can remain in their communities. There are few government programs available to provide assistance, and correctional services say the look to international organizations for support. Some women who have been released meet every week at a local NGO called Advocaid, and have formed something of a support network. There they discuss legal issues, as well as those affecting their careers and personal lives.

Much like in the prison itself, the support group provided acted not only as a network for navigating legal issues after these women were released, but as a community for those who had lost much of theirs during incarceration.

On the Road in Sierra Leone

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'Moto' rides in Sierra Leone are punctuated by roadblocks, bribes and bumpy roads

The sky was just beginning to lighten as the roar of a motorcycle drew near.

Moments later, there was a light tap at the door.

“He’s here,” said the young man who runs a guesthouse in the diamond-studded eastern Sierra Leonean town of Kenema.

Out on the street, motorcycle driver Abraham Bungara balanced my bag on the handlebars, rammed a helmet on my head, and we sped off on a 140-kilometre journey to the Liberian border.

A minute later, we rolled up to a police checkpoint.

It was the first lesson in the art of bribery school — a necessity in some West Africa countries where authorities supplement painfully low salaries with a handshake that leaves a few banknotes in their palm.

The practice drives up the cost of transportation, a form of informal taxation, and wreaks havoc on many services that should be free: paying bribes for treatment in a hospital, for passing grades in school, or for a job application to be reviewed. Corruption means even basic services for citizens, many of whom live in extreme poverty, are free only on paper.

At the roadblock, several men sat in a mud hut next to a line of strings knotted together to form the barrier.

“Moo de bodee,” said Bungara.

“Huh?”

“Moo de bodee,” he said. “Off.”

He was speaking Krio, a Sierra Leonean dialect comprised of buccaneer-style English with lots of local flavour that originated from freed Jamaican slaves who settled in Freetown in the 19th century.

We clambered off the bike and Bungara disappeared into the hut. A minute later, the strings were lowered to the ground and we roared off into the wilderness of the Gola Forest.

As we tore along the gravel road, knees kissing the dirt on the corners, the sun was rising over the dense forest, painting the mist that still hung on the hills pink.

Soon, we reached another checkpoint.

Bungara went into the hut with a policeman in a tired blue uniform too large for his skinny fame. A woman in a bright orange tank top and jeans approached me and introduced herself as Alice.

“Can I see your documentation?” she asked.

“What documentation is that?”

“Just your documentation,” she said.

I held up my passport.

“What organization do you work for?” I asked her.

“INTERPOL.”

Bungara finished ponying up the bribe money with a smile and a handshake and we were on our way again.

“Did she really work for INTERPOL?” I asked him.

“Sure,” he replied.

At the next road block and the next, we repeated the process. Each roadblock cost 4,000 or 5,000 Leones, the equivalent to about $1 CAD. Over the 140-kilometre trip, we passed through six or seven of them.

Should you refuse to pay, said Bungara, you could be detained.

“But you haven’t done anything wrong or illegal.”

“They’ll still detain you,” he said.

“And then what?”

He shrugged.

“You’re detained.”

We reached the border a couple hours ahead of schedule, which made Bungara smile proudly. The faster he goes, the more trips he can do, and so, the more money he makes.

With an awkward hug, we said goodbye and I headed into the maze of immigration offices, braced to grease more palms with banknotes on my journey to Monrovia.