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Sierra Leone Covering events from January - December 2000 SIERRA LEONE Republic of Sierra Leone Head of state and government: Ahmad Tejan Kabbah Capital: Freetown Population: 4.8 million Official language: English Death penalty: retentionist 2000 treaty ratifications: Optional Protocol to the UN Children's Convention on the involvement of children in armed conflict; Optional Protocol to the UN Women's Convention; Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court The 1999 peace agreement collapsed after rebel forces captured UN peace- keeping troops in May. Killings, mutilations, rape and abduction of civilians, including women and children, by rebel forces increased. Government forces were responsible for extrajudicial executions, torture and ill- treatment. Several hundred alleged government opponents were held without charge or trial. Renewed insecurity added to already large numbers of refugees and internally displaced people. The international community made efforts to resolve the crisis, including by strengthening the UN peace- keeping operation and taking action to halt the diamond trade used to procure arms. In a significant move to end impunity, the UN Security Council resolved to establish a Special Court for Sierra Leone. Background information Before its collapse in May, implementation of the July 1999 Lomé peace agreement between the government and the armed opposition Revolutionary United Front (RUF) was limited: attacks on civilians by rebel forces continued and thousands remained held captive; disarmament and demobilization was slow; large areas of the north and east, including diamond-producing areas, remained under rebel control; and up to a million people remained beyond reach of humanitarian assistance. With the capture by RUF forces of some 500 troops of the UN Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL), hostilities resumed. Government forces comprised the Sierra Leone Army and a civilian militia, the Civil Defence Forces (CDF). Rebel forces included the RUF and renegade soldiers from both the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) - in power from 1997 to 1998 - and from the army. Some demobilized combatants again took up arms. United Kingdom (UK) troops were deployed until mid-June to defend Freetown and support UNAMSIL. Several hundred UK troops remained to train the Sierra Leone Army. All UNAMSIL captives had been released by July after intervention by Liberian President Charles Taylor. Following his arrest in May, RUF leader Foday Sankoh, who had been given a government position following the peace agreement, was succeeded by Issa Sesay. There was little contact, however, between him and the authorities and it was unclear whether he controlled all RUF forces. On 10 November the government and the RUF agreed a 30-day cease-fire in Abuja, Nigeria, under the auspices of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Although this agreement included deployment by UNAMSIL in rebel-held areas, this had not begun by the end of the year. From September hostilities between armed groups along Sierra Leone's borders with Liberia and Guinea resulted in further population displacement. Indiscriminate shelling by Guinean security forces of villages close to the border in Kambia District resulted in civilian casualties. Responding to fears of conflict spreading throughout the region, ECOWAS planned to deploy an observer mission along the borders. Abuses by rebel forces In early 2000 human rights abuses against civilians - abduction, rape, looting and destruction of villages - by rebel forces occurred almost daily in Northern Province, particularly Port Loko District. From May deliberate and arbitrary killings, mutilation, rape, abduction and forced labour and recruitment increased. Aid workers were attacked and forced to withdraw from rebel-held areas. Although abuses in and around Makeni and Magburaka, Northern Province, decreased from September, refugees forced to return from Guinea were attacked and pressured to join RUF forces in Kambia District. A group of renegade soldiers known as the West Side Boys terrorized civilians through killings, rape, torture, abduction and ambushes along major roads in the Occra Hills area east of Freetown until September, when their leader was captured and many surrendered or were arrested. Deliberate and arbitrary killings Large numbers of civilians were killed by rebel forces from May, particularly in areas around Port Loko, Lunsar, Makeni and Magburaka. ● On 8 May RUF members killed about 20 people and injured dozens of others when they fired on some 30,000 people protesting outside Foday Sankoh's residence in Freetown against RUF attacks on UNAMSIL. ● A man was killed and decapitated in June after he tried to prevent the abduction of his 15-year-old daughter as his family fled from Makeni. ● A man from the village of Magbile recounted how his sons, aged 11, 21, 23 and 25, were shot and killed in June when they refused to join rebel forces. ● In early September rebel forces attacked Guinean villages close to the Sierra Leone border, killing Sierra Leonean refugees. Torture, including mutilations and rape Many civilians had limbs deliberately amputated; others had the letters RUF carved into their flesh. Abduction of girls and women, rape and sexual slavery were systematic and widespread. Most victims had contracted sexually transmitted diseases and many became pregnant. Often, abducted women and girls, without adequate support, were unable to leave the combatants who had forced them into abusive relationships when they disarmed and demobilized. ● During a rebel attack on Lunsar in late May several people suffered amputations, some of both hands. ● Civilians near Mongeri who escaped from six months' captivity in October had been used as forced labour and repeatedly beaten and threatened with death; women had been repeatedly raped. ● A woman with a five-month-old baby was stripped and raped by several combatants when rebel forces attacked Masiaka in May; she was then abducted and subjected to further rape. ● A 19-year-old woman from Magburaka reported the rape and killing of her sister during an attack in May; her husband was also killed. ● Nine women and girls abducted by West Side Boys in August were taken to the village of Makupr where they were beaten, raped and threatened with death. Hostage-taking On 25 August, a Sierra Leone Army officer and 11 UK military personnel were taken hostage by West Side Boys in the Occra Hills. Five were released after five days and the rest were rescued on 10 September in an operation in which one UK soldier and at least 26 West Side Boys were killed. Human rights violations by government forces Members of the CDF and the Sierra Leone Army were responsible for summary executions, arbitrary detention and torture of captured or suspected rebels and recruitment and use of child combatants. The CDF, operating in Eastern and Southern Provinces, became increasingly undisciplined and usurped police authority. Civilians were also arbitrarily detained at CDF headquarters, including in Bo, Koribundu and Kenema. Ill-treatment and extortion of money and property at checkpoints were common and several incidents of rape, previously rare, were reported. ● In May, five unarmed RUF combatants travelling with civilians were intercepted at a CDF checkpoint at Baiima, north of Bo; one was summarily executed and the others detained. ● A detainee captured by the CDF in May and held in Bo lost an ear and suffered cuts to his back after being beaten with a bayonet; others reported being stripped and beaten with sticks until they bled. ● In September, two men were killed and a third injured when they resisted recruitment by the CDF. ● In September the CDF attacked police headquarters in Kenema, and detained and beat a senior police officer. ● Making no attempt to involve the police or investigate, in September the CDF stripped two young boys accused of stealing money and beat them in public in a village near Mile 91. ● In October Jia Kangbai, a journalist with the Standard Times newspaper, was detained in Freetown for two days by the CDF, and kicked, beaten and pistol-whipped, after publication of an article considered critical of the CDF. Civilian casualties from aerial attacks In May and June, attacks by government forces from a helicopter gunship on suspected rebel positions in Northern Province resulted in up to 30 civilian deaths and many other casualties. Attacks often appeared to be indiscriminate and undertaken without adequate measures to safeguard civilians. Although warning leaflets were dropped in Makeni and Magburaka, attacks followed shortly afterwards. Civilians fleeing Makeni, however, said that they were forced out of their homes by rebel forces as the gunship flew overhead. At least 14 civilians were killed in Makeni and at least six were killed in an early afternoon attack on the market in Magburaka. Child combatants The resumption of hostilities in May halted demobilization of child combatants, leaving several thousand still to be released by rebel forces, and resulted in further recruitment. RUF forces continued to abduct and forcibly recruit children in Northern Province. Recruitment of children by the CDF also continued in Southern Province, despite assurances to the contrary given to AI representatives in May by the Deputy Minister of Defence, who is also National Coordinator of the CDF. In May about 25 per cent of combatants fighting with government forces near Masiaka were observed to be under 18, some as young as seven. The government reiterated
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