By Abu Shaw in London (04/05/2021)
The US Millennium Challenge Corporation MCC has disappointed the majority of Sierra Leoneans for the scorecard pass to President Bio.
Citizens believe President Julius Maada Bio and his corrupt SLPP government do not deserve the MCC pass 2020. Withdrawing the MCC scorecard given to the Sierra Leone President is the best way forward to bring back the respectability to the MCC. It was a big mistake for the MCC to award President Bio who has proven to be clearly undemocratic, openly autocratic, and a leader who does not care for the human rights and the civil liberties of its citizens. These blatant abuses have been the hallmark of the SLPP/Paopa regime since April 4, 2018, when President Bio took charge of State House. (Photo: President Bio receiving MCC Scorecard from the disgraced US envoy Maria Brewer).
The MCC during the tenure of the former useless US Ambassador to Sierra Leone Maria Brewer was an eyesore because of the dubious issuance of the MCC scorecard pass last year to the corrupt SLPP government of President Bio. Orchestrated by the incompetent and one-sided US envoy Maria Brewer and assisted by many deceitful internal stakeholders like the Civil Society Organisations CSOs, etc, the respected MCC was turned into a laughing stock in Sierra Leone as most citizens in and outside continue to question the sincerity of the MCC.
To award President Bio and his SLPP government 85% pass mark for civil liberties did not only make the MCC an irrelevant American organisation, it also insulted the integrity of the majority of Sierra Leoneans who are the real victims of oppression, suppression, and human rights violations on a daily basis under President Bio’s tyrannical regime. Ambassador Brewer, who was rightly booted out of Freetown by President Joe Biden’s administration, should explain why the MCC organisers gave a pass to President Bio’s barbaric regime.
The truth of the matter is that there are no civil liberties and human rights and democratic governance in Sierra Leone today under President Bio’s SLPP government. There is nothing civil in Sierra Leone. Citizens have no rights to free expression, no rights to criticise without being arrested, beaten, detained, charged to courts, and even killed by State-sponsored police and military officers. Zilch protection of fundamental freedoms and no free press despite the recent hypocritical abrogation of the 1965 draconian criminal libel law by President Bio’s regime. The impending Cybercrime Bill being imposed by the SLPP government is a classic instance. No wonder there is massive opposition to it as it is believed to be a tool to trample upon the rights of the people. (Photos: Hastings murder late Alpha Kargbo, RIP, and the OSD police officer Foday Yillah, right, who shot Alpha).
Many instances of human rights violations before and it continue to occur today in Sierra Leone as the government of President Bio looks the other way and showing no concern. Examples of blatant abuses in Sierra Leone can be cataloged thus. On April 28, 2021, a day after Sierra Leone clocked its 60th Independence Day Anniversary, a citizen Michael Mansaray, peacefully expressed his disgust at the mismanagement of President Bio’s corrupt SLPP government. Poor Michael was arrested, beaten, stripped naked by the deadly SLPP Kamajor militias in civilian clothes in broad daylight in Bo, a stronghold of the SLPP party. Michael, an APC party supporter, who recorded his criticisms of President Bio in front of the Mini Stadium in Bio, has not been seen in public since.
Less than a week before Michael Mansaray’s episode, SLPP supporter Mr Maada Salia Kanneh was forced to flee into hiding by SLPP thugs led by the Kenema District Chairman Mr Moriba S Koroma aka Agbao. Salia’s only crime on April 23, 2021, in Kenema, a stronghold of the SLPP party, was for his mere criticism of President Bio’s misrule and corruption in high places. As a consequence, Maada Salia Kanneh’s family in Kailahun has been harassed by the SLPP thugs and they were further forced to make a press statement to denounce Salia Kanneh.
Two days before Salia’s ordeal, a pregnant lady on Wednesday, April 21, 2021, was hit persistently on the head with a loaded magazine detached from an AK-47 rifle by an OSD Police Officer in Freetown. The pregnant woman was slapped mercilessly many times. It was very a painful incident to watch. The victimised woman cried out in pain as the heavy magazine landed on her head in police-style precision. The pain was too much for her body to bear and eventually led to her miscarriage. She cried: “I’m menstruating. I’ve miscarried,” she yelled in tears but the brutal police officer paid deaf ears as he was only interested in thumping the poor woman’s head. (Photos: Michael Mansaray, left, still missing, and Fatmata Binta Bah, IPAM student beaten by police).
A week earlier, at Hastings near the capital Freetown, an innocent citizen Mr Alpha Kargbo was shot and murdered on Thursday 15th April 2021 by police for simply defending their legitimate land that belongs to the Kargbo Family. Police Inspector Rebecca Douglas was the brain behind the shooting of poor Alpha Kargbo at Hastings. The OSD police officer who actually shot Alpha Kargbo was the idiot called Foday Yillah and the report says he has been suspended. Legal documents seen by theorganiser.net newspaper have shown that the lawyer representing the Kargbo Family had given stern warnings to the Police Inspector Rebecca Douglas to stop the trespass of the disputed land but she refused because of her police connections that led to Alpha’s untimely demise.
Another human rights violation took place at the University of Sierra Leone IPAM campus where students were protesting on Monday, April 12, 2021. A female student Fatmata Binta Bah was publicly molested by police and military officers stripping her naked, injured, arrested, and eventually placed and four other students in police custody. They were later released in court. Freetown was like a war zone that fateful Monday morning when aggrieved IPAM students were mobbed by well-armed police personnel leaving many badly wounded with beating marks glaring on their bodies.
2020 was the worst year for abuses in Sierra Leone. On April 29, 2020, in the early hours of that eventful morning, armed Presidential Guards, consisting of police and military officers, stormed the Pademba Road Prisons compound in Freetown and shot to death over one hundred inmates and a prison officer. The sad event took place in the presence of the Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Lahai Lawrence Leema and the SLPP National Women’s Wing leader Fatmata Sawaneh and other top SLPP government officials. Nothing tangible has so far come out of it. The government is still paying deaf ears as if nothing had happened. (Photos: Makeni victims and the Pademba Prison murders, right).
A few months later on July 17-18, 2020, in Makeni, the stronghold of the main opposition APC party, many youths who protested peacefully were gunned down and murdered under the direct orders of the violent Resident Minister North Abu Abu Koroma. The youths were massacred for simply protesting against the forceful removal of a standby generator by the SLPP government. Not to mention the massacres in Lunsar, Tombo, Thonko Limba, all these towns are coincidentally in the stronghold of the opposition APC party. It was clear that 2020 witnessed the highest form of state-sponsored killings of innocent citizens by President Bio’s regime.
Pathetically, President Bio had kept silent on all these violations of civil liberties and human rights abuses and killings. He has made no public statements on the radio and television stations, not even a press conference to sympathise with the bereaved families. Nothing whatsoever! President Bio’s conspicuous silence on crimes against humanity is an indication that he had condoned and planned and still continues to aid and abet these systematic massacres and harassment of innocent Sierra Leoneans. It is a crime today to exercise one’s fundamental rights as expected in a democracy.
Recently, during a pre-arranged media interviews by President Bio in Freetown, he mentioned for the first time the killing and massacre at Pademba Road Prisons, the massacres in Makeni, in Lunsar, in Tombo, etc. Surprisingly, President Bio missed the golden opportunity to publicly apologise to the bereaved families, the victims, and to the nation in general for the atrocities. Rather, President Bio only defended the actions of his violent-oriented state security and blamed the poor victims for causing the problems. Does such a leader deserve an MCC scorecard pass? Far from it because the majority of Sierra Leoneans believe President Bio has failed the nation.
Yet, the Millennium Challenge Corporation MCC, manipulated by the corrupt former US envoy Maria Brewer, had the audacity to fool the international community by dishing out such a prestigious award to the most totalitarian government in living memory in Sierra Leone. It is in this vein that the people of Sierra Leone are calling on the new US Ambassador David Dale Reimer to immediately revisit the MCC award and do the right thing. Withdraw the MCC Scorecard from President Bio and his inefficient government forthwith. This is the only way to restore the dignity and respectability that the MCC deserves.
