The Sierra Leone People’s Party ( SLPP ) Government yesterday arrested and detained the Deputy Spokesman of the opposition All People’s Congress ( APC ) , Mr. Sidi Yaya Tunis, for criticizing the government and urging Sierra Leoneans to work hard to ensure that the SLPP was voted out of power in 2023.
Sidi Yaya Tunis made the comments when he appeared on the Radio Democracy 98.1 Good Morning Sierra Leone program.
The Criminal Investigations Department ( CID ) intimated that the opposition spokesman was being held for making inciting statements, but this came as a big shock to Sierra Leoneans. What riled many Sierra Leoneans yesterday and provoked a storm of protests on social media was that free speech had just been decriminalized by the very SLPP government last year when it led Parliament to expunge Section 5 of the 1965 Public Order Act. President Maada Bio signed into law the amendment to the constitution which made free speech and sedition no longer criminal offenses in the country.
That the SLPP Government could arrest an opposition member for speaking out his mind ran counter to the dangerously misleading contention held by some sections of the international community, especially the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation ( MCC ) that President Bio was doing well in promoting democracy and the Rule of Law in Sierra Leone. The country has rather regressed seriously in these areas since President Bio came to power in 2018, with the constant arrests and detention of opposition figures and the politically – motivated killings of innocent civilians demonstrating against the government in many towns , including the capital.
Surprisingly , yesterday’s undemocratic arrest of the the opposition leader came at the heels of disturbing news from the African Union ( AU ) Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, that President Bio has assumed the Chairmanship of the AU’s African Peer Review Mechanism ( APRM ), which was established in 2003 by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Heads of State and Government Implementation Committee (HSGIC) as an instrument for AU Member States to voluntarily self-monitor their governance performance.
A report in the The Sierra Leone Telegraph newspaper on the issue , said that : “President Bio of Sierra Leone has once again shown that neither he nor his chief of police – Ambrose Sovula respects the country’s constitution, civil liberty, freedom of speech and human rights, after throwing Mr Sidi Yahya Tunis – spokesman for the country’s main opposition APC party, behind bars yesterday.”
The report went on to say : “There is public anger this morning, especially among supporters and members of the main opposition APC who in the last four years since the SLPP won elections in 2018, have shown a lot of restraint despite provocations and harassment from supporters of the ruling SLPP and worse – police intimidation and arrests.”
Mamoud BahAs a human rights defender, I’ll never keep my mouth shut in a situation like this. Dissent should be respected because it is the safety valve of democrcay
