CONTENTS | ANB-BIA HOMEPAGE | WEEKLY NEWS
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Sierra Leone |
HUMAN RIGHTS
Sierra
Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)
has created an opportunity
for both victims and perpetrators
to reveal unreported stories from the civil
war years
The TRC has carried out hearings in different parts of the country to ensure that each province has access to the Commission. However, there are more victims than perpetrators willing to testify, with women predominating among the victims. They have suffered from gang-raping, mutilation and torture, and have been forced to witness the killing of their relatives.
In Makeni, the northern province’s administrative centre, two women who had had their hands amputated, described what happened to them. Adama Koroma told the TRC that after the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels had amputated their hands, they sarcastically told them: «Ahmad Tejan Kabbah (Sierra Leone’s President) will give you hands». Adama said that in fact, 26 people had been lined up in order to suffer amputation because they had supported President Kabbah. Other victims told the TRC that the rebels had cut off their hands because «it was these hands that were used to vote for Kabbah».
Many previously hidden atrocities came to light during the TRC hearings, not all of them committed by the rebels. Alex Santigie Kamara is a teacher in Makeni. He told the TRC that a fighter in the pro-government civil defence force (the Kamajors), killed his son, Alex Kamara jnr. He recounted that on 3 March 1999, his son was travelling to Makeni from Freetown when he was stopped by Kamajors at a checkpoint in Port Loko, in the north-west. Alex Kamara snr. travelled to Port Loko where he discovered his son had been beaten to death. «They buried him in a gutter at the rear of Port Loko Town Hall», he testified, adding that the leader of the Kamajors in Port Loko, Mohamed Karim, held a grudge against his son because they were rivals for the same women. So when Karim spotted Kamara jnr. at the checkpoint he accused him of being a rebel and ordered him to be killed.
Another woman victim gave her testimony in camera to the TRC in Freetown. She recalled how she had been abducted, gang-raped and used as a bush wife by renegade soldiers loyal to the ousted Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC)’s leader, Johnny Paul Koroma who is now a fugitive. (In 1998, when the West African intervention force ousted the AFRC, a large number of soldiers regrouped with the RUF and rebelled against the Government. Testimony made to the TRC revealed that these renegade soldiers committed many atrocities on civilians).
One such atrocity was perpetrated on another witness called Alpha. He told the TRC that renegade soldiers cut off his limbs and ears in Marten Village, Kono District, north-east Sierra Leone. He testified that the soldiers had demanded money from him, but he denied having any. However, when they searched him, they discovered a substantial amount of money on his person. He was then dragged off to join other villagers who were lined up to suffer amputation.
Many people still fear to testify before the TRC, but David Crane, American Prosecutor of the War Crimes Tribunal (known as the «Special Court»), has assured potential TRC witnesses that his Tribunal will not make use of evidence given before the TRC.
The TRC’s aims
The TRC‘s chairman, Bishop Joseph Humper, has repeatedly said that his Commission aims to establish an impartial historical record. It also hopes to rekindle hope, bring divergent parties together and foster reconciliation. The TRC finished its hearings in the provinces in July. Bishop Humper said these hearings had provided an opportunity for people to speak out, to be heard, to make suggestions. It also enabled perpetrators of human rights abuses to ask for forgiveness.
There is a divergent note. Many amputees, especially those living in the Amputees Camp, Aberdeen, west of Freetown, feel disgruntled. They have continually told the Press and have made their feelings heard at public meetings, that more has been done for the perpetrators through the disarmament and demobilisation programme sponsored by the international community, than for those who have suffered. «No provision has been made for us except for handouts from humanitarian organisations».
Generally speaking, however, in spite of the deep scars left on the minds of millions of Sierra Leoneans, they are showing willingness to put the past behind them. The civil war era has now become a story to tell posterity.
- Alpha R. Jalloh, Sierra Leone, August 2003 — © Reproduction authorised, with usual acknowledgment