African Media and Conflict
By Abiodun Onadipe and David Lord
Part Four - In Their Own Words
A Sojourn in Hell - By Mike Butscher
A civil war started in Sierra Leone on March 23, 1991, when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), assisted by their Liberian allies, launched its first attack at Bomaru near the Liberian border. This attack was led by National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) Special Forces commander Anthony Marquee Nagbe, who, I later learnt, was clubbed to death by his own combatants in a Liberian prison.
Eight years on, more than 70,000 people have died; men, women, the aged and children -- many of whom were used as child soldiers and sex slaves -- and more than 500,000 are living in squalid conditions in refugee camps in neighbouring Liberia and Guinea. At the time of writing, the killing and maiming was still continuing, as remnants of the rebel forces roamed the eastern and northern countryside and the Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces carried out "mopping up" operations.
It has been a war of unrivalled brutality and attrition, resulting in the removal of the one-party government of the All Peoples Congress (APC) led by Joseph Saidu Momoh in April 1992, and the ouster of his nemesis, Captain Valentine Strasser, who, at 25, was then the world's youngest head of state. He ruled Sierra Leone from April 1992 to January 1996. Justifying the overthrow of Strasser, self-promoted Brigadier Julius Maada Bio accused Strasser of attempting to manipulate the democratic process and install himself as a civilian president. Sierra Leoneans were also sceptical about Bio’s sincerity to continue with the democratic process that Strasser had initiated, so they defiantly pressed on for the elections through the instrumentality of the elections commission chairman, James Jonah, now Sierra Leone's Finance Minister.
Bio was prevailed upon at a National Consultative Conference by a majority of the delegates to hold elections before peace agreements were negotiated and signed, despite severe security threats and intimidating tactics used by the soldiers who wanted to delay relinquishing their hold on power. It was not that the majority of Sierra Leoneans who wanted elections were unrealistic, but the people saw elections as the only way to remove the military from power. Confidence in the army had evaporated as the soldiers continued their repressive acts against the people.
Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was elected in March 1996, as president of the republic. The election results were widely acclaimed as a step in the right direction, albeit amid suspicions and accusations of election rigging by the opposition. The exercise was monitored by international observers from the United Nations, European Union, the Commonwealth and the Organisation of African Unity. These allegations of electoral malpractice were not surprising because it is the usual "cry-foul" tactics used by unsuccessful politicians. One such critic, Dr. Abass Bundu, knew he did not get one per cent of the votes cast because he had ostracised himself from his own people. President Kabbah won more votes in Dr. Bundu's home town, Gbinti, than the homeboy himself. It was then surprising that Dr. Bundu became chief critic of the results.
President Kabbah signed a peace agreement with Corporal Foday Sankoh, RUF leader, in November 1996, brokered by Ivorien President Konan Bedie in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Following the signing of the Abidjan Accord, doubts and fears expressed earlier were realised as the RUF disregarded the peace agreement and continued with its killings, mutilations, arson and looting. I saw the remains of some of the towns and villages, schools, hospitals and markets that had been destroyed, as well as the dead and survivors of RUF atrocities in Kenema and Kailahun districts.
Then there was the most unpopular military coup in the world on May 25, 1997, when the rump of the Sierra Leone Army, led by Major Johnny Paul Koromah, took power and invited the "enemy" -- the RUF rebels whom they had been fighting for seven years -- to join forces and form a government.
The Kamajor peoples militia, a group of local hunters who had gallantly fought alongside the army and Nigerian and Guinean troops to dislodge the RUF, suddenly became the enemies of soldiers because the Kamajors discovered that the army was not fighting to liberate the country. Officers and men of the army were colluding with the rebels in perpetrating atrocities on their own people.
In December 1995, I returned home to Freetown after six years residency in the United Kingdom, lured by the promise contained in the transition to democracy programme. I said to myself that I had written so much about the problems of my country in West Africa, New African, Index on Censorship, The Voice (Britain's best black newspaper), it was now time to return home and contribute towards rebuilding our country. My family in London could not understand why I suddenly became so desperate about returning home. When I broke the news of my plan to return to Sierra Leone at the Voice, one of my colleagues, Anthony Andre, remarked that I was mad to return to a country where people were killing each other like chickens. Unfortunately, I had a strong desire to return to the land of my birth and I was prepared to defy the odds to return.
I survived Christmas but was left broke after I arrived in Freetown. Everyone wanted something for Christmas. Through a contract I had in London to edit an entertainment magazine, Rapture, in Freetown, I opened an office on Pademba Road, near the historic Cotton Tree. By February 1996, frustrations started creeping in, as my employer could not fulfil the terms of our contract and I embarrassingly could not meet distribution deadlines in Freetown -- Rapture was printed in London. Then I started realising the difference between working in London and Sierra Leone.
I got a break from my anguish when the Commonwealth Press Union invited West African journalists to participate in a regional newspaper design clinic for editors at the University of Ghana, Legon. I was in Accra while voting went on in Sierra Leone and I learned how soldiers had opened fire in Kenema, a town in the east of the country, apparently to intimidate voters, but the people defied the gunshots and cast their ballots. Ghanaians were also preparing for their presidential and general elections that November.
While in Ghana, I had a strange experience with some journalists there. President Rawlings expressed his willingness to meet CPU journalists, for him to share views with us. Since our arrival we had been bombarded by nothing but criticism, insults and everything negative about Jerry Rawlings and his wife from newspapers belonging to the private "opposition" press, comprising mainly journalists from the Ashanti region. This, I argued, was their chance to get the president's side of so many sensational and largely unsubstantiated stories, but they refused. At the end of the day, four of us, the
defiant ones from Gambia and Sierra Leone, attended the meeting. While our visit was broadcast on state television, and covered by the Daily Graphic and the Mirror (both government-owned), the so-called independent press gave the meeting a total blackout.
If this is press freedom, then where is the fairness, I thought to myself. No wonder Ghanaian papers have probably the highest rate of libel cases in the region. At the time of my visit in February 1996, there were nearly 50 pending suits filed mainly by public officials, including the First Lady.
When Major Johnny Paul Koroma and his bunch of renegades seized power in Sierra Leone on May 25, 1997, they started on the wrong foot by inviting the RUF -- the peoples’ arch-enemy who they fought for six years -- to join in their illegal government and also announced the banning of the Kamajor militia. It came like a shock for many who had pinned their hopes and aspirations on the 1996 elections as the panacea for arresting the decline of our nation, or at least, get the soldiers out of politics. From where I was in Kenema, we knew the upheaval was coming because of the rebellious attitudes of soldiers and their treatment of civilians. The writing was on the wall and only the government could not see it.
I was an associate editor of the fiery Democrat, and from my base in Kenema, 150 miles east of Freetown, I wrote a number of articles, warning, advising, urging and many times blaming the government for its careless approach to an issue that could plunge our nation into anarchy. For instance, on May 23, 1997, I wrote an article in the Democrat headlined: "President Kabbah Urged to Act with Speed". This was after soldiers had battled Kamajors in Kenema for three days and nights. Twenty persons were killed and more than 150 shops looted by soldiers acting on the orders of their officers.
In early April, soldiers engaged the Kamajors in a fight for supremacy in the heart of Kenema town. The soldiers did not confront the Kamajors, who they were scared of because of their legendary mystical powers, but raided houses and engaged in massive looting, brutalising anyone perceived as a Kamajor supporter. That day, soldiers stole all the solar panels providing power to the telephone exchange in Kenema. Concerned, I toured the government hospital, which was a risky thing to do because bullets were flying around. I had to dare it at least for the world to know what was happening to us in Kenema.
I left the hospital in a rage after seeing bodies of the dead, injured women and children, some as young as seven years, caught by stray bullets. I can still see the face of a five-year old girl whose painful stare haunts me each time I recall the atrocities committed by those mindless soldiers, many of whom, I had previously seen roaming the streets of Monrovia, capital of Liberia. It was one of those rare moments when I shed tears.
When I left the hospital, I went straight to the police station, where I discovered that the telephones were dead. I asked the Police Commissioner and chief Police Officer of the region for protection, as I was afraid for my life. They replied that they could not help me. "My own official vehicle was taken from me, so these boys don't listen to us, we are just like you -- civilians -- to these boys," said the commissioner.
Still desperate to get to a telephone, I ran about 500 yards to the Resident Magistrate's house, which was adjacent to the brigade headquarters. On my way, I counted six bloated bodies of men dressed in Kamajor outfits near the Catholic cathedral. They had been there for two days, because the Red Cross had been ordered not to collect the corpses by army officers.
When I got to my destination, the magistrate was sleeping and his telephone line was also down. As I sat on his porch looking at drunken and drugged soldiers, most of whom were in civilian clothes, I just could not believe what was happening to my country. Then I saw a man in shorts, shirt-less, drunk and drugged, threatening to kill any civilian who expressed sympathy for any Kamajor. I knew he was a soldier, so I went up to him, as if possessed, and accused him. "You are supposed to be a trained and disciplined man and should show more restraint and protect civilians. After all, we pay for your food, uniforms, houses, guns and even the bullets you now use to kill innocent civilians." The soldier replied, cocking his rifle: "I see. So you are one of them f-----g Kamajor supporters?" Since the brigade was just next door to the magistrate's house, we were now surrounded by a crowd of soldiers, all wanting to have a go at me. I was taken into the barracks and detained for three hours. It was the longest three hours of my life, as soldiers took turns assaulting me, threatened to kill me or cut my private parts, hurled abuse, insults. Even two women working for the army intelligence corps attempted to strip me naked and torture me. All the while the story I had written on the atrocities of the day was in my pocket. I kept praying that I should not be searched.
By a stroke of luck, a senior officer came in and after a while ordered my release. Next day was the Sunday morning that a Corporal Tamba Gborie announced the coup from Freetown. Then we all trooped into exile, as all seemed lost.
Mike Butscher, a Sierra Leonean journalist exiled in Monrovia, Liberia, works for Talking Drum Studios
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