| UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA - AFRICAN STUDIES CENTER |
Tel: +225 21 73 54 Fax: +225 21 63 35 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org
WEST AFRICA: IRIN-WA Update 572 for West Africa (Thursday 14 October 1999)
CONTENTS:
SIERRA LEONE: Port Loko demobilisation centre ready to open SIERRA LEONE: Sankoh, Koroma brief their followers on DDR SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels detain polio vaccinators LIBERIA: Suspected dissidents say they were tortured NIGERIA: Abacha's son, three others arraigned WEST AFRICA: US Urged to back justice in Sierra Leone, Nigeria
SIERRA LEONE: Port Loko demobilisation centre ready
to open
One of two demobilisation centes in the northern town
of Port Loko is now "ready and due to open imminently,"
a UNOMSIL official in Freetown told IRIN.
Under Sierra Leone's disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programme, combatants will surrender their weapons and ammunition and be taken to demobilisation centres after being registered and issued with identification documents.
In the initial stages of the demobilisation process, the disarmed fighters will receive basic necessities and "pre-discharge orientation sessions" to prepare them to re-enter civilian life, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report on 23 September.
They are also to receive the first installment of a "transitional safety net allowance" before being returned to their home communities.
As at 24 September, there were 869 ex-combatants at the only fully operational demobilisation centre, located in Lungi, near the international airport.
Centres in Kenema and Daru in the east are scheduled
to open in mid-October, according to the UN Humanitarian
Assistance Coordination Unit (HACU). However, in the
northern town of Makeni rebels have not allowed the
inspection of DDR campsites, HACU reported.
SIERRA LEONE: Sankoh, Koroma brief their followers on
DDR
Former rebel leaders travelled on Wednesday to the northern town of Port Loko to brief their followers on Sierra Leone's disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration programme, Presidential Adviser Septimus Kaikai told IRIN on Thursday.
Revolutionary United Front (RUF) leader Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma, head of the former Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) were accompanied by staff of the UN Observer Mission in Sierra Leone and troops from ECOMOG, the West African peacekeeping force that fought the RUF/AFRC during the rebel war.
Sankoh and Koroma conducted a similar exercise last week, when they spoke to ex-combatants at the demobilisation centre at Lungi, Kaikai added.
Humanitarian personnel working in Port Loko district,
some 80 km from Freetown, reported that groups of AFRC
were harassing civilians last week along the road connecting
Port Loko town to Lungi, site of Sierra Leone's international
airport.
Efforts are underway to enable Sankoh and Koroma to
inform their followers in other parts of the country
on the DDR process, sources said. "They will be
travelling to the Eastern Province tomorrow by helicopter,"
Kaikai told IRIN.
An interagency humanitarian assessment mission to the eastern district of Kailahun from 29 September to 1 October said in its final report that "the combatants are also quite prepared for DDR and are anxiously waiting for it to commence." Much of Kailahun was controlled by the RUF during Sierra Leone's eight-year war.
The report added that RUF leaders needed to work harder to explain to their men what package they would receive and that the rest of the population needed to understand its role in the "general reintegration process".
SIERRA LEONE: Ex-rebels detain polio vaccinators
Three polio vaccinators have been detained by former rebels in Segebwema, eastern Sierra Leone, a World Health Organisation (WHO) official in Freetown told IRIN on Thursday.
They had gone to Segebwema, located in Kailahun district, to implement a five-day polio vaccination campaign launched on Saturday by President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, and aimed at vaccinating 800,000 children under five years throughout the country.
"They took their security for granted as Foday Sankoh and Johnny Paul Koroma were at the launch in Freetown," the WHO official said. "We hope that they will be released soon now that Johnny Paul Koroma and Foday Sankoh are starting to sensitise their men in the bush."
An interagency humanitarian assessment mission visited Kailahun district from 29 September to 1 October. The team, which went to Segebwema, said in its report that it "has been able to reconfirm that relief agencies can now move into these areas (towns assessed by the team in the district) provided that prior information on their itineraries is made available to the Organisation for the Survival of Mankind (OSM) leadership".
The leadership of the OSM, the humanitarian wing of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), is based in Buedu, eastern Kailahun. Buedu, which is close to the Liberian border, has been an RUF stronghold since the start of the Sierra Leone war.
LIBERIA: Suspected dissidents say they were tortured
Nine suspected dissidents recently released by the security authorities in Bong County, north-central Liberia, have complained that they were tortured.
Independent Star Radio quotes James Saybay, spokesman of the Forum for Restoration of Democracy, which negotiated the release of the suspects, as saying that many of them had lacerations and cuts on their bodies.
The men had been detained at the training base of the
Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU) in Gbartala, Bong County.
Bong is just southeast of Lofa County, the scene of
fighting in August and September between the security
forces and armed dissidents.
NIGERIA: Abacha's son, three others arraigned
The eldest surviving son of the late Nigerian military ruler, Sani Abacha, and three of Abacha's former aides, were arraigned before the Lagos High Court on Thursday in a trial linked to their involvement in death squads, a media source in Nigeria told IRIN.
Mohamed Sani Abacha, former major Hamza al-Mustapha, former army sergeant Barnabas Mshelia and Latif Sofala have been charged with murder, the source said. Their pleas were not taken and they were remanded in custody until 19 November.
News reports said al-Mustapha was General Abacha's senior enforcer in his security operations and that Mshelia confessed earlier this year to being a hit man for Abacha's death squads.
WEST AFRICA: US urged to back justice in Sierra Leone, Nigeria
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright should show the same commitment to justice in Sierra Leone that she has shown for victims of crimes against humanity in Kosovo and East Timor, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Thursday.
HRW urged Albright, who visits Nigeria and Sierra Leone
this month, to express strong support for a truth and
reconciliation commission, a body envisaged in the
Sierra Leone peace agreement but not yet established.
The United States should also back the formation of
a UN commission of inquiry into human rights violations
in the eight-year civil war, it said.
HRW said that with regard to Nigeria, Secretary Albright
should welcome the steps the new government has taken
to improve human rights and the rule of law.
The United States, it said, should recognize President Olusegun Obasanjo's efforts to defuse the crisis in the Niger Delta, but urge him not to allow Nigerian security forces to respond violently to expressions of discontent in the region.
In particular, the United States should press for an independent judicial enquiry into past and current human rights violations in the Niger Delta, and for those responsible to be disciplined or prosecuted, according to HRW, which said it recently received disturbing reports of fresh disturbances and arrests in Ogoniland.
Obasanjo has released many political prisoners and vowed to respect the rule of law, but several pernicious laws that are not in accordance with constitutional guarantees for human rights remain on the books, HRW said.
"President Obasanjo has made a good start toward improving Nigeria's human rights record," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of the Africa division. "But the country needs a complete legal overhaul, starting with the constitution.
ABIDJAN, 14 October 1999; 19:02 GMT
[ENDS]
[IRIN-WA: Tel: +225 217366 Fax: +225 216335 e-mail: irin-wa@ocha.unon.org ]
Item: irin-english-1793
[This item is delivered in the "irin-english" service of the UN's IRIN humanitarian information unit, but may not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations. For further information, free subscriptions, or to change your keywords, contact e-mail: irin@ocha.unon.org or Web: http://www.reliefweb.int/IRIN . If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer.]
Copyright (c) UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 1999
Subscriber: afriweb@sas.upenn.edu Keyword: IRIN
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
| Previous Menu | Home Page | What's New | Search | Country Specific |