By John Leigh
The usual democratic Freedom of Speech & Freedom of the Press rights that were effective in the Western Area from 1792 to circa 1970 — the Glory Years of Sierra Leone’s existence — have steadily eroded to the point where people today are in jail for speaking out or writing in the internet, etc. pursuant to legislation that criminalizes free speech.
Today, a former minister of the Opposition APC prior administration, Mr. Kemoh Sesay, is in detention without trial for merely exercising his rights. It is a violation of his Constitutional rights.
Hence there is nothing to legitimately celebrate!
Free Press rights also have been badly damaged by the prior long, gratuitous detention of Ms. Blyden — the Awareness Times proprietor, without trial as well as by the Protectorate Ordinance- (P.O.)-like recent legislation.
Some regimes controlled by Protectorate people remain unschooled to this day about the value and extent of Free Speech and Free Press rights to our country. This is so even though the P.O. expired in 1951 and superseded by the 1951 Unitary Constitution.
Such regimes are usually deeply corrupt and persist in engaging in the abusive spending of limited public while people suffer. They go on and on behaving as if they are operating under the 1898 Protectorate Ordinance. As we know, the P.O. protected chiefs and their Tribal Authorities against their subjects to help royals control and subjugate their subjects.
Our unschooled Protectorate leaders need to understand that without genuine Free Speech and Free Press rights, Sierra Leoneans are doomed to poverty and the painful suffering of endless hardships in our everyday lives.
On top of all this, continued government abuses of the people can lead to instability. And instability is the experience we DO NOT need
in our country.
*Celebrants are probably mostly citizens who grew up in homes dominated by the rules and customs that arose from the Protectorate Ordinance of 1898.
PHOTO below shared from a post by Mr. Patrick Lansana in My Sierra Leone My Responsibility!
