Sierra Leone: Local journalists' dilemma
By David Tam-Baryoh Posted Fri, Sep 1 2000
In today’s Sierra Leone, local journalists face a dilemma: If they are critical of the government, they are considered rebel collaborators. The penalty is treason; the punishment, death by hanging. If they are critical of the rebel Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and then caught by the RUF, the punishment is summary execution.
For those who can afford it, the option is to leave the country.
Ever since Foday Sankoh’s cynical RUF first attacked Bormalu, a village in Kailahun district in east Sierra Leone and killed three border guards in March 1991, the bloody and aimless war has claimed some 300,000 lives. It has not only brought a once peaceful and promising nation to its knees, but also spelled doom for the media — journalists have had to defend their lives from the rebels as well as from government forces.
The latest victim was Saoman Conteh, a reporter with the privately owned weekly New Tablet in Freetown. Conteh was killed on May 8, along with 18 others, after RUF rebel guards opened fire at the 20,000 people protesting against Sankoh outside his Freetown residence.
In an earlier brush with death, Conteh fled to Guinea for safety in August 1997. He was arrested and detained with fellow journalist Betty Foray by Guinean soldiers upon allegation that they could be rebel sympathizers. They were sent back and released after the intervention of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists. This time, however, he was not so lucky.
In fact journalists have been caught in this deadly web ever since Major Johnny Paul Koroma overthrew the government of President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah on May 25, 1997 and set up his own regime, the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC).
In April 1998 BBC northern province reporter, Sylvester Rogers, reported that the RUF and their allies within the Sierra Leonean army had supplied local gin to pro-junta demonstrators in the town of Makeni. The demonstrators demanded the withdrawal of the Economic Community of West African States peacekeeping forces (ECOMOG), which had come to restore President Kabbah to power. The RUF declared the journalist wanted, dead or alive, putting a price tag on his head.
Rogers went underground and a week later was heard reporting on the BBC from the Guinea/Sierra Leone border town of Kambia. In that report he explained how the government forces were losing the war due to indiscipline and lack of logistics. As a result the government of President Kabbah ordered the arrest and prosecution of the journalist for what official sources called “creating tension and discord among loyal troops.”
In September 1998 BBC stringer Victor Sylva reported that an ECOMOG shell had landed on a civilian residence in Freetown, killing three children. ECOMOG denied the report. Sylva then ran into trouble with the other side when AFRC strongman Abu Zogalo of Koroma’s regime ordered the arrest and detention of the journalist for failing to address him by his full titles during a broadcast on the BBC.
After his release Sylva ran to the ECOMOG for safety. An ECOMOG commander threatened to send him back to the AFRC-controlled part of Freetown because he thought Sylva’s reports on ECOMOG operations had been biased and not objective.
After the coup that toppled President Kabbah, many journalists, seeing loved ones raped and hacked to death, fled to Guinea for safety. Sierra Leonean government functionaries living in exile in Guinea looked upon the fleeing journalists with suspicion that they had waited far too long to leave the country, suggesting they were probably RUF sympathizers or fifth columnists. A few were arrested and detained by Guinean security forces.
To cap it all, during a provincial tour of Kenema in the eastern part of the country in February 1999, Chief Sam Hinga Norman, Deputy Minister of Defense and the traditionally acknowledged leader of the local militia, the Kamajors, told supporters of the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party that “all Sierra Leonean journalists were rebels” because of what he perceived as negative reports about the war by the local press.
This statement exacerbated the mortal dangers faced by Sierra Leonean journalists and made them easy targets for political thugs, said Frank Kposowa, president of the Sierra Leone Association of Journalists. The association protested and demanded an apology from Norman.
To think that linking journalists to the dreaded RUF would endear them to Sankoh’s bandits is a mistake. Three days after Norman’s threats, Eddy Smith, who worked for BBC and the News Storm newspaper, was in company of government troops traveling from Makeni in the north to Kono in the east. They fell in a rebel ambush. Four, including Smith, were captured by the rebels and beheaded.
The social impact of the war in Sierra Leone, especially that on the defenseless journalists and their immediate families, cannot be overemphasized. Two children on average have been left behind by each of the 12 Sierra Leonean journalists killed before the Lomé peace agreement in July 1999.
A number of journalists were abducted by rebel soldiers and held captive. All have horrendous stories to tell.
Abducted on Jan. 9, 1999 and held captive for six months by renegade AFRC soldiers, Christopher Coker, who worked for the Advocate newspaper, says that his captors once threatened to kill him if he did not clap and smile as they raped three schoolgirls. He says 36 people, including children, were once lined up and had their limbs amputated. Another group of rebel soldiers placed dried grass on 57 people and set them ablaze. After his release through the help of a rebel commando’s girlfriend, the government forces were slow to accept Coker as a genuine released captive; they feared that he might be a spy.
Freelance journalist Momodu Adams, who spent three months in rebel captivity, says his wife was snatched from him by an AFRC soldier who threatened to kill him if he ever spoke to her while in the camp. Adams was assigned to carry the personal belongings of a commando’s wife. On several occasions he was asked to stand guard as child combatants raped four middle-aged women. On his release in April 1999, he was so traumatized and frightened that he refused to speak to government intelligence agents, saying, “These guys are everywhere; they will kill me if I talk.” His silence was interpreted not as that of a scared victim, but that of a willing rebel collaborator and spy.
Based on the prevalent distrust and suspicion of journalists, the Sierra Leonean government has spared no effort in bringing charges against some journalists for what Solomon Berewa, attorney general and minister for justice calls “alarming and disquieting reports.” Between March 1998 and September 2000, nine journalists and newspaper proprietors were charged with offenses ranging from failing to cross-check war-related stories with authorities to disquieting reports.
Parliament has not been left out in harassing journalists, either. In 1997, it charged and convicted Touchlight newspaper editor Sheka Tarawally for publishing that the government had given Le4 million (US$2,700 then) to each of the 80 legislators to buy cars, while teachers and nurses were on a sit-down strike. The journalist spent four weeks in prison.
Between April 1998 and April 1999, the government tried six journalists for treason, the penalty for which is death. Despite convictions in all six cases, the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. The accused were later freed in accordance with the Lomé peace accord; however, former News Storm newspaper editor Marouf Sesay was executed with 23 others after a military tribunal found them guilty of treason and misprision of treason.
In January 1998 when the heat was on Koroma’s regime to leave power willingly or face forceful removal by the combined forces of the local Kamajor militia and ECOMOG, Hilton Fyle reported on his radio FM 103 that Koroma’s forces had removed rival troops from the Lungi International Airport, winning the war against the international community’s resolve to reinstate President Kabbah.
The truth was that several hundreds of Koroma’s fighters had perished in an ECOMOG ambush around the airport. The AFRC knew that, so they took Fyle’s report as provocative and insulting. He was arrested and detained for three days.
After the reinstatement of President Kabbah’s government in February 1999, Fyle found himself on the government list of the most-wanted state criminals. He has since fled to the United States.
For according to Kamajor leader Norman, “only non-patriotic Sierra Leonean journalists can leave the country and criticize President Tejan Kabbah and his ministers of technocrats.”