UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER
IRIN-West Africa Update 151, 98.2.23

IRIN-West Africa Update 151, 98.2.23


U N I T E D N A T I O N S Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Integrated Regional Information Network for West Africa

Tel: +225 21-73-54 Fax: +225 21-63-35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci

IRIN-WA Update 151 of Events in West Africa, (Saturday-Monday) 21-23 February 1998

SIERRA LEONE: ECOMOG fights for control of Bo

The Nigerian-led West African intervention force, ECOMOG, battled at the weekend with troops from the deposed Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) for control of Sierra Leone's second city, Bo, media reports said. According to AFP, ECOMOG forces and Kamajor militia, loyal to Sierra Leone's civilian president Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, had won control of the east and the north of the city by Monday. However, AFRC troops and their Revolutionary United Front (RUF) allies were reportedly still holding out in the west. AFP reported civilians fleeing to Kamajor-controlled parts of Bo.

Meanwhile, ECOMOG had captured the provincial capitals of Makeni in the north, and Kenema in the east, media reports said. AFP quoted a Nigerian defence spokesman in Lagos as saying AFRC troops had fled Kenema, while in Makeni fighters had surrendered and pledged to support Kabbah. However, media reports said AFRC and RUF soldiers had gone on the rampage in Makeni before surrendering. AFP said shops, homes and the offices of international agencies were looted.

The Nigerian spokesman also warned that suspected RUF supporters had infiltrated Sierra Leone from a neighbouring country. According to AFP, it marked the second time in ten days Nigerian military authorities had alluded to the alleged involvement of Liberian fighters in the Sierra Leone conflict.

EU demands release of hostages

The European Union (EU) has demanded the immediate release of EU nationals being held hostage in Sierra Leone, AFP reported on Friday. At least seven westerners were captured last week by suspected RUF soldiers, according to media and humanitarian sources. They included humanitarian workers and missionaries.

Meanwhile, Guinean ECOMOG troops evacuated some 19 Catholic missionaries on Friday following RUF attacks in the Port Loko area, 57 km northeast of the capital, Freetown. They were taken to the main ECOMOG base at Lungi, outside the capital.

New aid shipments

Meanwhile, the international aid community said more food and medical supplies would be shipped to Sierra Leone by sea during the week. According to an ICRC spokesman in Sierra Leone quoted by AFP, the first new shipment would be carrying a consignment of cooking utensils, drugs and assorted food from Monrovia.

It said the ICRC, Action Contre la Faim (ACF) and other humanitarian agencies had already started distributing an estimated 800 mt of food and medical supplies delivered by WFP at the weekend.

Deputy ECOMOG commander denies Freetown operation was "wholly Nigerian"

The Ghanian deputy ECOMOG commander, Brigadier General JA Kwateng, has denied that the ECOMOG operation to depose the AFRC was a "wholly Nigerian affair", Ghanaian radio reported at the weekend. Speaking to Ghanaian journalists in Liberia's capital, Monrovia, Kwateng said the capture of Freetown had been a joint effort by member nations in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).

Former president arrested in Freetown

A former Sierra Leonean president, Joseph Momoh, has been arrested in Freetown, according to weekend news reports. Independent Star Radio said ECOMOG had arrested Momoh for "conspiring" with the AFRC. Jengo Stevens, son of another former Sierra Leonean president, Siaka Stevens, was also reportedly arrested.

NIGERIA: Coup trial to be held in camera

The Nigerian authorities reaffirmed at the weekend that the trial of 26 people charged with plotting to overthrow the country's leader, General Sani Abacha, would be held behind closed doors, news organisations reported on Monday. Dispelling Nigerian media reports that "observers" could apply to the tribunal to attend its hearings, the defence ministry's chief administrator, Rear Admiral Festus Porbeni, told Radio Nigeria: "Visitors to the tribunal venue are not allowed. It is not open to public and only people who need to be there will be informed."

Only the closing session, like the opening of the tribunal, would be open to the press and the public, he said. Of those facing charges of plotting a coup against Abacha, which carry the death sentence, 15 are senior military officers, three of them generals. They include Major General Oladipo Diya, formerly Abacha's second in command. The trial being held in the central city of Jos was expected to last about one month, officials said.

Public executions draw crowd of 2,000

Six common law prisoners were publicly executed on Saturday by a firing squad before a chanting crowd of some 2,000 people at Kirkiri high-security prison in Lagos, media reports said at the weekend. The six, convicted on various charges of armed robbery, had been in jail six years before they were led chained and manacled before an eight-man firing squad on Saturday morning. The prisoners, who were not blindfolded, were given Islamic and Christian last rites, allowed to make brief statements to journalists, and then shot. They were reportedly buried in a common grave.

In July 1995, there was an international outcry at a similar public execution of 43 convicts at the same prison.

SENEGAL: Six killed by suspected Casamance separatists

Six people were killed on Saturday in Singhere, near the Guinea-Bissau border, during an armed attack allegedly carried out by the separatist Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de la Casamance (MFDC), AFP reported. In an earlier attack last Tuesday, seven villagers were killed by separatists. AFP reported, however, that the situation has been relatively quiet in Casamance province since the MFDC secretary-general, Father Augustin Diamacoune, called for a ceasefire on 13 January.

Government accuses Amnesty International of bias

The Senegalese minister of communication, Serigne Diop, on Friday said Amnesty International was exploiting the Casamance conflict for its own "personal and business reasons", media sources reported. Diop said an Amnesty report this month on human rights violations in Casamance should be discounted because no "proof" or hard "evidence" had been given. He added that Amnesty was biased in its approach and sought to damage the Senegalese army's reputation.

The Senegalese media have noted that Amnesty's secretary-general, Pierre Sane, is from the Casamance. The Senegalese government of has also accused him of pursuing his own personal agenda.

LIBERIA: Human rights commission criticises conditions in Liberia

A Catholic human rights group in Liberia, the Justice and Peace Commission (JPC), said that human rights and national reconciliation remained a challenge for the new government following the end of the seven-year civil war in Liberia, according to weekend media reports. Independent Star Radio quoted the JPC as saying although the government had committed itself to a national reconciliation process, there was little evidence it was working. The report said President Charles Taylor's appointment of a former rival faction leader, Alhaji Kromah, as head of a reconciliation commission was "meaningless" because Kromah had not taken up his post and because no other committee member had been named. The report also attributed rising crime to incomplete demobilisation of former combatants.

The JPC also said the recent murder of opposition leader Samuel Dokie, the abduction of a journalist and the suspicious death of a former faction commander, General Manneh Zekay, in an alleged armed robbery incident, were further examples of human rights abuses.

NIGER: IMF to release funds

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced on Friday that it would release credit worth US$ 73.8 million to Niger, Reuters reported. Following a two-week visit to Niger, an IMF delegation said "progress had been made ... notably as regards control over public spending and the privatisation of state firms".

THE GAMBIA: President visits France

President Yahya Jammeh of The Gambia was scheduled to meet French President Jacques Chirac on Monday during a four-day official visit to France, AFP reported.

The Gambia is to assume the rotating one-month chairmanship of the UN Security Council in March. In January, The Gambia was elected to the Council as a non-permanent member.

BURKINA FASO: New opposition coalition formed

Ten opposition parties in Burkina Faso have formed a new coalition called the Front Uni pour la Democratie et la Republic (FUDR), Radio France International reported on Friday. It said the coalition was seeking the establishment of an independent electoral commission to prepare for presidential elections scheduled in December.

SAO TOME E PRINCIPE: Taiwanese visit

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Jason Hu visited the island state of Sao Tome e Principe, which last year switched diplomatic relations from Beijing to Taipei, Taiwan's Central News Agency reported at the weekend.

Hu, currently on a West Africa tour, has visited Chad, Guinea-Bissau, The Gambia, Liberia and Burkina Faso.

WEST AFRICA: Western-backed peacekeeping exercise

With backing of military advisers from France, the United States and Britain, more than 2,500 soldiers from eight West Africa nations started a week-long peacekeeping exercise at the weekend in a remote area near the point where the borders of Mali, Senegal and Mauritania converge, news organisations reported.

The largest contingent of 1,400 soldiers participating is from Senegal. The exercise, code-named Operation Guidimaka after the village where the main camp is located, also involves troops from Mali, Mauritania, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde.

Reuters said the exercise forms part of the joint Recamp (Reinforcement of African Peacekeeping Capabilities) programme. It was initiated last year by the three Western countries as a means of reducing the exposure of their own troops to the dangers of African peacekeeping.

Senegal River nations meet

Senior officials of the Senegal river authority grouping Senegal, Mali and Mauritania began talks in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on Monday to discuss shared water resources, AFP reported. In a brief dispatch it said the ministerial committee of the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du Fleuve Senegal (OMVS) would discuss the implications of a new Senegalese dam project. It said Mauritania had raised concerns that the project, aimed at providing irrigation for arid lands in northern Senegal, could compromise its own access to the water resource. Newspapers in Senegal said the country's president, Abdou Diouf, had "buried" any plan which would upset Mauritania and the international donor community.

In the past 30 years, the OMVS, which is based in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, has overseen the construction of two damns at Diama in Senegal and Manantali in Mali which were built to regulate the water flow and improve irrigation in desert areas.

Abidjan, 23 February 19:30 gmt

[ends]

[The material contained in this communication comes to you via IRIN West Africa, a UN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. UN IRIN-WA Tel: +225 21 73 66 Fax: +225 21 63 35 e-mail: irin-wa@africaonline.co.ci for more information or subscription. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this report, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. IRIN reports are archived on the Web at: http://www.reliefweb.int/emergenc or can be retrieved automatically by sending e-mail to archive@dha.unon.org . Mailing list: irin-wa-updates]

--

Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:51:56 +0300 (GMT+0300) Subject: IRIN-West Africa Update 151, 98.2.23 Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.3.91.980224093121.8525A-100000@dha.unon.org>

Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar

Previous Menu Home Page What's New Search Country Specific