No Freedom after Free Speech in Sierra Leone
By Mohamed Sankoh (One Drop)
By expunging Part Five of the Public Order Act 1965 and bringing the Cybercrime Act 2020; the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) has figuratively robbed Sorie to pay Ngor. Even with all the self-apportioned accolades, that the “Paopaists” and “drunkardnomists” have been trying to bestow on their failed government, the fact is: Sierra Leone is now a country where there seems to be no freedom after free speech! And the Sierra Leone Police are now acting like the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. But that is expected of the seemingly “Yes-Sir; Yes-Ma” leadership of the police. Our police reached their nadir, in terms of moral sanity, when they recently arrested a madman, popularly known as Blacker, and charged him to court for merely exhibiting his madness! (Photo: Maada Bio has failed the nation big time).
This noticeable “Madmen and Specialists” (to borrow the title of Wole Soyinka’s play) situation is being captured by lawyer Ady Macauley in a recent tweet: “The question is, between Blacker and the police that arrested him, who should be sectioned to a psychiatric home?” I dare not say or write, who should be sectioned to a psychiatric home. But when you have an Inspector General of Police who overtly dances to the melody of “Tha Yeabu” like an over-intoxicated clown entertaining a disorganized circus; then your guess will be as good as mine. The fact is: our police have been carrying out their duty to the point of embarrassment. I’m still trying to un-muffle my muffled laughter in trying to picture the picture of a sane policeman sitting down Blacker, a madman, and painstakingly taking down his statement “with the painful slowness of half-literacy” (to quote Chinua Achebe’s Anthills of the Savannah)!
But that’s the Sierra Leone Police for you; trying to sanitize their insanity! Since the Bio-led administration took over the rudder of state in 2018, the Sierra Leone Police appear to be at the beck and call of the SLPP government. Now, opposition politicians are either arrested or invited to CID headquarters in Freetown for merely exercising their Freedom of Speech as enshrined in Chapter Three of the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone. Recently, the interim leader of the Teachers’ Solidarity Movement, Mohamed Salieu Khan, was arrested right at the gates of the AYV television to the chagrin of the AYV management which, unprecedentedly and surprisingly, issued a press statement showing its displeasure at how Sierra Leone is fast becoming a sort of police state.
The seeming transformation of Sierra Leone into a kind of police state is not lost on the tell-it-to-your-face young lawyer Augustine Sorie-Sengba Marrah. In one of his recent tweets, he notes that “Report of the arrest of the Teachers’ Movement leader reminds us of how far the police can go to try to make a police state out of our democracy. The Supreme Court has recently called out the police leadership on its excess”. According to TheOrganiser.net, an online Sierra Leonean newspaper, “The government of….President Bio has proven times without number that their government is intolerable as far as peaceful demonstrations are concerned. The ruling government does not entertain nor welcome any citizen or group of Sierra Leoneans or institutions to exercise their democratic rights through protests to force the government to pay attention to their demands or grievances….”
Despite his Independence Day broadcast, on Wednesday 27 April 2022, President Julius Maada Bio said that “no journalist is in prison for the practice of journalism”; it is a fact that many perceived supporters of the All People’s Congress (APC) in Bo, Bonthe, and Kenema Districts are constantly harassed, intimidated, and at times arrested for merely voicing out their displeasure at, or being critical of, the SLPP government. And in most of these cases, the Sierra Leone Police are often accused of complicity in that harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary arrests!
Such a fact is also highlighted by the Institute for Legal Research and Advocacy for Justice (ILRAJ) which, in a press statement on 30 April 2022, urged the Sierra Leone Police to desist from arbitrary arrests and detentions of citizens because of their critical statements against the Bio-led government. The ILRAJ stated further that, “the Police must act in accordance with the Constitution and the laws of Sierra Leone” not by the impulse of the Inspector General of Police or those working at, or walking on, the corridors of power! Little wonder the Chief of Mission of the European Union Election Follow-up Mission, Hon. Norbert Neuser on 29 October 2021, noted that the police were part of those institutions whose “reputations are less trusted than is needed.”
And the Bio-led government’s peacekeeping missions in Tonko Limba during the local council by-election; in Makeni during the generator protest; in the fishing village of Tombo during the ‘boats allocations’ riot, and at the Pademba Road Correctional Centre – all in which helpless citizens were reportedly gunned down in gangland-style – are just microcosms of how the SLPP government has been violating citizens’ fundamental human rights with the participation of our security forces of which the police are part of. Even the Bombali Human Rights Committee Report-April 2021, titled: “Study on Youth Disenfranchisement And Protest in Sierra Leone: Response And Recommendation,” is mindful of the fact that the police have always been using disproportionate force to respond to situations in which citizens are exercising their fundamental human rights.
This Report wants the police to know that “engaging in protest is a right… protests must not be seen as a crime but as a democratic right of citizens to exercise their freedom of expression”. It adds that even “when [a protest] becomes violent, there must be a proportionate response on the side of the security forces….” It is on that note that I will end today’s One Dropian dropping with the notorious quote from Idi Amin, the former Ugandan dictator, that: “There is freedom of speech, but I cannot guarantee freedom after speech.” This is the situation that now exists in Sierra Leone! No wonder “Blacker” pins his lips to symbolize the death of Free Speech in Sierra Leone.
Courtesy: By Mohamed Sankoh – [email protected]/+232-76-611-986
