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WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 568 for West Africa (Friday 8 October 1999)
CONTENTS:
LIBERIA: UNHCR suspends refugee relocation LIBERIA: MSF office looted SIERRA LEONE: WHO opens office in Bo SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels join disarmament committee GUINEA-BISSAU: State to act on rights abuse complaint CAMEROON: Amnesty criticises trial of alleged secessionists
LIBERIA: UNHCR suspends refugee relocation
The relocation of Sierra Leonean refugees from Lofa county, scene of fighting in August-September, to neighbouring Grand Cape Mount has been suspended due to difficult road conditions and dangerous bridges, UNHCR reported on Friday.
The move, from Tarvey in lower Lofa to Sinje refugee camp in Grand Cape Mount, some 80 km north-west of Monrovia, was suspended on Tuesday, UNHCR said.
Some 10,000 Sierra Leonean refugees had made the five-day walk southward to Tarvey from camps near Kolahun in upper Lofa, after the fighting between government troops and armed dissidents broke out there in August.
On 23 September, Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), which has a medical team in the area, reported that the transit camp in Tarvey was overcrowded, with all the associated health risks. Sinje is easier to reach from Monrovia.
Between 11 September and 4 October, 2,563 Sierra Leonean refugees were transported in 71 trucks from Tarvey to Sinje, UNHCR reported. Ten of the trucks were supplied by WFP.
A team provided by GTZ, the German technical cooperation agency, has started to fix the three or four parts of the road in most urgent need of repair. WFP trucks loaded with food will go to Tarvey as soon as the work has been completed, UNHCR said.
LIBERIA: MSF office looted
Five armed men on Sunday broke into the Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) compound in Harper, near Liberia's border with Cote d'Ivoire, and stole about US $ 8,000, Claudette Picard, head of MSF's office in Harper, told IRIN.
"Three of the men went into the office and our guards reported that two remained outside," Picard said on Friday. "Both our guards were beaten and tied up and our expatriate logistician lightly injured across his back with a knife."
"I do not think that they intended to harm us but wanted to loot," she said.
MSF has been assisting the hospital in Harper, located in the south-eastern county of Maryland, for the past 18 months. Its assistance has included providing surgical support and drugs, and rehabilitating ward infrastructure.
"MSF is currently reviewing its future long-term involvement in Maryland County," Picard said.
SIERRA LEONE: WHO opens office in Bo
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday opened an office in Bo, some 150 km east of Freetown, to improve its capacity to monitor health conditions in rural areas.
"The Bo office will facilitate more systematic collection of health data," Dr William Aldis, WHO's representative in Sierra Leone, told IRIN. "It will also enable us to work more closely with our local partners and facilitate the provision of technical health assistance."
WHO's office in Bo will comprise one doctor and five support staff, Aldis said, and could also serve as a base for technical staff from other UN agencies.
Aldis said the monitoring of maternal mortality, HIV/AIDS, malaria and polio eradication were areas of high priority for WHO in Sierra Leone.
He added that WHO was planning to open an office in Makeni in the Northern province when the security situation improved.
SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels join disarmament committee
Foday Sankoh, leader of the RUF, and Johnny Paul Koroma, head of Sierra Leone's former military junta, have officially joined the National Committee for Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (NCDDR), state radio said on Thursday.
Chaired by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, the NCDDR is responsible for implementing, in collaboration with ECOMOG, UNOMSIL, UN agencies and NGOs, a plan for the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration of an estimated 45,000 ex-fighters in Sierra Leone.
Sankoh, Koroma and Deputy Defence Minister, Sam Hinga Norman, who also heads the pro-government Civil Defence Force (CDF), will travel to rebel and CDF strongholds to brief their respective supporters on the provisions of the Lome peace accord, state radio reported.
According to the BBC, local officials in Bo, impatient at the delays in the national disarmament plan, have launched their own programme: local officials and church leaders have appealed for donations to a Citizen's Fund for Disarmament and collected the equivalent of US $ 20,000.
A source close to the disarmament process told IRIN that he was unable to confirm the BBC report but that he had heard reports that the CDF was collecting arms and registering its own people in Bo.
GUINEA-BISSAU: State to act on rights abuse complaint
Attorney-General Amin Saad said on Friday on radio that
he would take action against the police chief of Bafata
for the treatment meted out to prisoners of war in
the town, located around 80 km east of Bissau, a humanitarian
source told IRIN.
His statement came on the heels of a complaint by the Guinea-Bissau Human Rights League, which said on Wednesday that the prisoners had been paraded in Bafata's streets "barefoot and with their hands tied behind their backs".
Such "barbarous" treatment is an open violation
of the Guinea-Bissau constitution," Lusa quoted
the League as saying.
Most of the 385 prisoners of war in Guinea Bissau are
soldiers who backed Nino Vieira, the former president
ousted in May. Eighty-eight of them were scheduled
to be released on Friday, the humanitarian source said.
The source told IRIN that the incident in Bafata reportedly involved three prisoners, although a radio report spoke of seven. The men were being kept in Bissau because there are no detention facilities in Bafata, where they allegedly committed their crimes. They had been taken to the town to demonstrate to the civilian population that there was no impunity.
"This is not a systematic practice," the source said.
CAMEROON: Amnesty criticises trial of alleged secessionists
The trial before a military court in Cameroon of around 65 people, more than half of whom were convicted on Wednesday, was fundamentally flawed, Amnesty International said in a statement.
"The military tribunal which convicted these prisoners was neither independent nor impartial," Amnesty said on Thursday. "The trial was also flawed from the outset since many of the defendants were tortured during interrogation and some died as a result."
Those convicted are from Cameroon's English-speaking minority. They were charged with various offences, including murder, illegal possession of firearms, arson and robbery, in connection with armed attacks in North-West Province in March 1997 during which 10 people, three of them gendarmes, were killed.
The authorities blamed the attacks on the Southern Cameroons National Council (SCNC) - which supports independence for Cameroon's two English-speaking provinces, North-West and South-West - and the affiliated Southern Cameroons Youth League (SCYL).
Amnesty said the convicted persons "should be allowed a retrial before a civilian court and in accordance with international standards of fair trial".
Most of the defendants were held for more than two years before being brought before the military tribunal in YaoundÈ to be charged on 14 April 1999. The trial began on 25 May.
Three of the convicted persons received life sentences, six were sentenced to 20 years in prison and 27 were given prison terms ranging from one to 15 years, according to news reports. About 30 were acquitted.
Abidjan, 8 October 1999; 17:56 GMT
[ENDS]
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Item: irin-english-1766
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Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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