PPP Calls for New Sit-Down Strike Today as Photo of Protesters Killed by Bio’s Thugs Surfaces
By Abu Shaw
The Peoples’ Power in Politics PPP has called on Sierra Leoneans for another sit-down strike today in solidarity with the hundreds of dead protesters.
It is now finally confirmed that hundreds of peaceful protesters were murdered by SLPP soldiers and police since the August 10 demonstrations. Photographic evidence hits social media yesterday showing corpses of protesters lying naked in the mortuary in Freetown. Young men and women lost their lives unjustifiably in the hands of the SLPP regime, simply because they exercised their fundamental rights to protest. The gruesome picture of dozens of dead protesters lying on the floor naked has hit the commonsense of all patriotic Sierra Leoneans, especially the international community that had all along been misinformed about the actual numbers of dead civilians so far. President Julius Maada Bio’s SLPP regime had always bandied around with the 21-dead figures of civilians which other independent sources including the Organiser newspaper had objected to from the initial stage. This newspaper had always insisted that hundreds of innocent civilians were gunned down by SLPP police and soldiers in broad daylight with thousands being incarcerated behind bars since August 10. (Photo: The corpses of dozens of innocent protesters displayed in the mortuary in Freetown).
Now, the whole truth has come out thanks to the horrific picture yesterday showing dozens of dead bodies that met their demise unwarrantedly that was leaked to the public. Sources say furious global partners are frantically calling for a thorough and independent probe into how such a large number of civilians had ended up dead. President Bio and his violent and wicked SLPP regime are in serious trouble. The terrible picture has justified why the sit-down strike expected today must go ahead. The protest is geared toward forcing the obstinate SLPP government of President Bio to immediately release all the peaceful protesters who are currently being persecuted in various detention centres in Sierra Leone and to explain the actual number of those murdered by state security. “We want our people to be freed now because they did anything wrong. They were exercising their rights to protest on August 10, 2022. It is their right to protest according to the Sierra Leone Constitution. The SLPP government has no right to arrest and detain any protester because it violates their human rights,” Adebayor, the PPP leader stressed yesterday.
Despite the growing resentment regarding the continuous detention of these civilians, President Bio’s regime has bluntly refused to listen to the cries of citizens. Adebayor, real name Mr William Kamara based in Holland, has therefore called on all Sierra Leoneans, especially the majority of citizens who are suffering under the autocracy of President Bio, to stay at home tomorrow in a sit-down strike in order to send the clear message that all the detained protesters should be set free without delay. The PPP has also reminded the SLPP government about the hundreds of civilians who have been killed by police and military forces to be handed over to their families for fitting burials. At the moment, the government is yet to hand over the dead to the grieving families even though press releases have confirmed that over 300 corpses of protesters have been released. But citizens are yet to see the freed protesters alive. Sierra Leoneans want those being freed alive to be shown on television or in videos to authenticate and verify whether what the government is saying is true or false. But from the look of things, the government is deceiving the people and the grieving families in particular. Observers are wondering why the SLPP government is reluctant to make available the detained protesters. (Photos: Adebayor and Maada Bio).
The procrastination by the SLPP government to act now has further fuelled the rife rumour that hundreds of the protesters have been killed by government police and soldiers and had been buried in mass graves. This disturbing information has been making the rounds in recent times in the media that hundreds of innocent protesters had been shot to death by forces led by Deputy Internal Affairs Minister Lahai Lawrence Leema and the Resident Minister North Abu Abu Koroma. Confirmed reports of house-to-house raids by the SLPP killers have been going on where civilians perceived to be protesters were dragged out of their bedrooms and shot at point blank range in the capital Freetown and in the northern parts of Sierra Leone, especially in Makeni and Kamakwei towns where the August demonstrations were prominent.
State House, the seat of power, and the Presidential Lodge, the official residence of President Bio are the two government premises where the systematic executions of innocent Sierra Leoneans have been planned, sanctioned, and approved. There is nothing that goes on in the country since April 4, 2018, when the SLPP government came to power, that is not in the knowledge of President Bio and the SLPP hierarchy. “Orders from Above” has been the terrible trend adopted by President Bio when crimes against humanity are being hatched and executed to the letter. Hundreds of innocent Sierra Leoneans have lost their lives, many arrested and detained unjustly, and so on. The August 10 demonstration is no exception. The August 14, 2022 summary assassination of social media activist Evangelist Samson real name Mr Hassan S Dumbuya by SLPP soldiers taking orders from the SLPP hierarchy is a victim of President Bio’s continuous killing machine.
Over and above all the bloody violence and unrest in Sierra Leone caused by the Bio presidency, the international community is very concerned about the security situation in the country. Serious investigations are being conducted by global partners to ascertain what happened and who the culprits really are. The ongoing media interviews by the BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera are all part of the interrogations and gathering of acts of figures regarding the unrest and killings that emanated from the protests of August 10 in Sierra Leone. But as the government refuses to release the correct number of those detained, and the dead, the PPP has no alternative but to call for another sit-down strike which is expected to begin today. This is the last thing President Bio’s government would like to happen because they know the economic and political repercussions that resulted from the last demonstrations. (Photo: Adebayor is more popular in Sierra Leone than President Bio).
Today’s sit-down strike is expected to commence this morning in Sierra Leone because of the thousands of peaceful protesters who are currently being incarcerated in various detention centres in the country. The PPP is demanding that all the protesting civilians arbitrarily and violently arrested and detained by the ruling SLPP regime of President Bio from August 8 and 9, and 10, 2022 must be accounted for. Otherwise, the sit-down strike will go ahead. The first sit-down strike on August 8 and 9 affected the Bio presidency enormously. Things took an astronomical trend on August 10 when civilians took to the streets and demonstrated in the country against the barbarism and dictatorship of President Bio. As a consequence of the August 10 historic demonstrations that brought the Bio presidency to its knees, President Bio unleashed his well-armed state security in the police and military sectors on the innocent protesters. PPP, the organisers of the August protests as well as today’s sit-down strike, is pressurising the violent-oriented SLPP regime to immediately release all the civilians who are in detention. And because of the reluctance of the Bio presidency to free the detained civilians, the protest is here to stay, sources intimated.
