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IRIN-WA Update 309 of Events in West Africa, (Saturday-Monday) 3-5 October 1998
SIERRA LEONE: Thousands flee renewed fighting
Thousands of civilians have fled renewed fighting north of the capital, Freetown, between the West African intervention force, ECOMOG and rebels loyal to the ousted military government, the BBC reported yesterday (Sunday).
It quoted refugees arriving in Freetown as saying the fighting had started a week ago in the Kambia district, some 90 kilometres to the northeast, near the border with Guinea. A Guinean officer told Reuters that Guinean ECOMOG units had intervened, "leading to fighting in towns and villages in the area in which about 50 people died".
Some 5,000 civilians are thought to have fled into Guinea, the BBC said, adding to more than 100,000 others already there.
UNHCR reports new exodus
Meanwhile, the UNHCR reported today that more than 3,000 Sierra Leoneans had crossed into the Forecariah area of Guinea on 29 September after rebels killed civilians and burned dozens of houses in Kukuna village, four kilometres from the border in northwest Sierra Leone. The UNHCR said it gave each refugee two weeks of emergency rations and transferred them to existing camps.
The UN agency said rebels had previously attacked refugee camps in Guinea, along the border with Sierra Leone. In a raid 1 September on Tomandou camp, near Gueckedou, rebels killed seven refugees and several Guineans. For this reason, it said it had moved thousands of refugees from Tomandou to camps farther inside Guinea.
AFP reported that Guinea has beefed up security along its entire border with Sierra Leone and has banned all movement after dark.
Rebels resume campaign of rape, torture and mutilations
After a relative lull in August, rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) allied to the ousted junta, have resumed their campaign of raping, torturing and mutilating civilians, AFP reported at the weekend.
"We have noticed an rise in the number of mutilations, amputations, rapes, tortures, people burned alive, and villages destroyed," it quoted a diplomat as saying. Sierra Leonean hospitals, AFP said, were treating children, women or men "with their private parts missing". The campaign of mutilation has been widely condemned by the UN and international rights organisations.
It said humanitarian organisations in Freetown estimated that "only one in three mutilated people could survive". These humanitarian bodies, it said, estimate that between 3,000 and 4,000 people have been mutilated since the military government was ousted by West African troops in February and July at the beginning of the rainy season.
Rebels allegedly seeking peace talks
Reuters reported yesterday that rebels allied to the ousted junta had asked the government for peace talks backed by the UN and the Commonwealth. The agency quoted a diplomat as saying that rebels had contacted the UN office in Freetown and the Commonwealth Secretariat in London "asking them to facilitate talks".
However, Septimus Kaikai, the spokesman for Sierra Leone President Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, said the government was not interested in "power-sharing" talks with the rebels.
"We made that categorically clear to them when we talked with rebel leader Colonel Sam Bockarie on the phone a few days ago," Kaikai told Reuters.
NIGERIA: High turn-out for voter registration
Media reports said today that initial turn-out at voter registration stations across Nigeria had been high as thousands of people signed up to cast their ballot in a series of polls designed to restore civilian rule by May next year.
AFP said Nigeria's new Independent Elections Commission (INEC) had hired over 222,000 registration officials and some 11,000 supervisors to deal with the expected 60 million voters expected to register before a 19 October deadline. INEC has also run a series of advertisements on local and national radio stations encouraging the electorate that "your vote is your power".
Nigeria's new military ruler, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, announced the election programme and pledged to end military rule after he came to power in June following the sudden death of his hardline predecessor, General Sani Abacha.
Nigeria's last successful poll was in 1979. Since then the opposition has complained that the military has used coups and stage-managed polls to maintain its grip on power.
However, many Nigerians are optimistic that the army is now ready to hand over, media reports say.
Abubakar sacks press secretary
Abubakar has sacked a press secretary media reports said had been closely associated with Abacha's administration. AFP said David Attah had been asked to vacate his office by Monday. Abubakar had not named a successor.
GUINEA BISSAU: President trafficked weapons
Guinea Bissau's rebel leader, General Ansumane Mane, accused President Joao Bernardo Vieira on Friday of setting off the June army mutiny himself when he blamed Mane for trafficking weapons to separatists in neighbouring Senegal, AFP reported.
The news agency quoted Mane as telling the Lisbon weekly, 'Independente', that Vieira would have stopped the weapons flow had he not himself been responsible.
He said: "The President wanted to make scapegoats of us. We refused and he then orchestrated plans to kill us." Mane has repeatedly demanded that Vieira release a Guinea Bissau parliamentary report on the arms affair, which Mane says proves he repeatedly warned Vieira that weapons were being sold to the Senegalese separatist Mouvement des forces democratiques de Casamance (MFDC).
The fighting in Guinea Bissau started on 7 June after Mane seized a military base in the capital and took control of the international airport after he was fired by Vieira. In the fighting, which ended with a truce three months later, the UN estimated that 350,000 people had been forced to flee.
BURKINA FASO: Three presidential candidates approved
Burkina Faso's Supreme Court has approved three presidential candidates for elections due 15 November, agencies reported yesterday. They are the incumbent Blaise compaore, 47, Congres pour la democratie et le progres (CD); Ram Ouerdraogo, 48, of the Verts, and Frederic Fernand Guirma, 67, of the Rassemblement democratique africaine (RDA).
Agencies said nine other parties had called for a boycott of the poll because the Independent National Election Commission is "not independent".
NIGER: Local elections postponed
Niger has postponed next month's local elections until 7 February "to ensure it takes place calmly and with full transparency," news reports said at the weekend. The quoted government spokesman Abdoulrahamane Seydou, the minister of state for youth and sports, saying the Commission electorale nationale independante (CENI), "had asked for more time to prepare for the poll".
AFP said all parties, even opposition parties which had boycotted the 1996 polls, had confirmed their participation in the coming elections."
GABON: Fifth opposition candidate
The leader of Gabon's main opposition Rassemblement National de Boucherons (RNB), Father Paul Mba Abessole, at the weekend officially declared himself a candidate to run against President Omar Bongo in elections scheduled for December, AFP reported.
Analysts had earlier questioned whether the RNB would be able to hold together following a rift between Abessole, and his former deputy, Pierre-Andre Kombila, whom Abessole accused in July of "treachery and indiscipline". Kombila supporters held their own congress in turn to accuse Abessole of "high treason" and nominated Kombila to run against Bongo as an independent candidate. The RNB is the only party thought to have a chance of defeating Bongo.
Abidjan, 5 October 1998, 17:30 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 or can be retrieved automatically by sending e-mail to <archive@ocha.unon.org> - mailing list: irin-wa-updates]
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1998 17:37:20 +0000 (GMT) From: UN IRIN - West Africa <irin-wa@wa.dha.unon.org> Subject: IRIN-West Africa Update 309, 98.10.05 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.981005173609.16331B-100000@wa.dha.unon.org>
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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