Last week, the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP) went too far when they arrested a lunatic young man and sent him to court for criticizing President Maada Bio. This apparently insane behavior of the SLPP Government to hold a mentally-challenged individual for speaking his mind about the President sent social media into overdrive with outrage. But it would seem like the SLPP have no regard anymore for public opinion . Nor are they willing to draw the line between the mental and physical capacity of citizens they subject to their now nationally and internationally-damned human rights abuses .
This week, the SLPP Government has done it again. They have arrested a stroke victim for speaking against President Bio, who now appears to be a demigod that should not be criticized. The victim this time is the former Minister of Transport and Aviation in the past All People’s Congress ( APC ) Government, Mr. Kemoh Sesay, who had to be physically assisted to walk to the CID and later to court by family members and Police.
The audio and photos of the physically handicapped Kemoh Sesay, hobbling and dragging his numb feet as he is helped along , cut a pitiful and damaging picture, as equally worse as last week’s videos and photos of the lunatic man in court , holding his mouth as if to create an image of the kind of society Bio wants Sierra Leone to become.
Sierra Leoneans have gone on social media once again to condemn President Bio and the SLPP Government for their inhumanity to the disabled and for their chronic assaults on free speech in Sierra Leone. The question everybody is asking is, “What kind of government is that that it has no pity on the mentally deranged or the physically-handicapped ?” The Government is losing political capital with the people and the international community every day for its horrendous human rights abuses .
“What is wrong with a citizen speaking his mind about his President or the government ?” The SLPP have charged Kemoh Sesay with cyberbullying , but how does criticism of a president translate to cyberbullying ? Sierra Leoneans are asking on social media.
SLPP supporters on social media, who never see anything wrong with the actions of their party, are justifying the two arrests –of the lunatic man and the stroke victim–asserting that citizens should control what they say about the president and the government. They have failed to take cognisance of the fact that it was this same government who last year decriminalized free speech by amending the 1965 Public Order Act. What is now obvious that last year’s action was just a hypocritical act to deceive the international community that the SLPP Government had respect for Freedom of Speech. The SLPP has conveniently replaced the Public Order Act with the Cybercrime Bill.
The sick Kemoh Sesay appeared in court on Thursday . According to the particulars of the offence, “Hon. Kemoh Sesay between March and April 2022, through social media, via WhatsApp, in Port Loko District, Bakeloko Chiefdom in the Northern Province of the Republic of Sierra Leone, did willfully and repeatedly communicate directly to the President, His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio, in a manner that he knows to be false, for the purpose of causing danger, obstruction, insult, injury, criminal intimidation, enmity, hatred, ill will or needless anxiety to His Excellency President Dr Julius Maada Bio or causes such a message to be sent. ”
An application for bail by Counsel for Mr. Sesay, Lawyer Melron Nicol, was denied by Principal Magistrate, Sahr E. Kekura . Mr. Nicol drew attention to Regulation 7 of the Bail Regulation of 2018 on disability, but the Prosecution insisted that the alleged crime had to with the First Gentleman of the nation and it had nothing to do with the health of the accused. The ailing former minister was therefore taken to Pademba Road Prisons where he has been incarcerated , awaiting his trial.
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THE COMMUNICATIONS UNIT OF THE SIERRA LEONE JUDICIARY RELEASED THIS REPORT
*Magistrate Kekura Remands Kemoh Sesay In Custody*
