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IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 35 of Main Events in West Africa covering the period (Friday-Thursday) 6-12 February 1998
SIERRA LEONE: ECOMOG troops enter Freetown
Troops from the Nigerian-led West African intervention force, ECOMOG, won control of a large area of the capital, Freetown, on Thursday at the end of a week of heavy fighting. ECOMOG troops took control of State House, the headquarters of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), the parliament buildings and other strategic locations at the end of their week-long offensive to oust the AFRC and restore Sierra Leone's civilian president Alhaji Ahmad Tejan Kabbah.
There was intense fighting for control of Freetown thoughout the week. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), more than 3,000 people had converged on its offices in Freetown looking for shelter. Media reports said other people had gathered at a primary school and the national stadium as ECOMOG and the AFRC exchanged artillery fire.
The city's main hospital was still functioning but had been overwhelmed by casualties, mainly suffering from shrapnel wounds. Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) on Thursday called for a ceasefire to allow more wounded to be brought to the hospital. No reliable casualty figures were available but at least 100 people were known to have been killed, including 50 who drowned while trying to flee, AFP reported.
Earlier in the week, thousands of people fled the capital as fighting between ECOMOG and the AFRC intensifed. UNHCR confirmed the presence of 1,400 more refugees in Guinea. As many as 7,000 were expected to follow. Unconfirmed numbers of Sierra Leoneans had also arrived in northwest Liberia, it said.
Meanwhile, WFP warned that fighting in Sierra Leone would have a disastrous effect on hundreds of thousands of people already facing a serious food situation.
International reaction
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, on Wednesday, called for an end to the fighting. In a statement released in New York, Annan said he was concerned at heavy shelling posing serious risks for the safety of civilians. "It is of paramount importance that all parties facilitate the free access of humanitarian agencies," Annan said. Security Council President Denis Dangue Rewaka also told reporters on Tuesday that the Council was concerned at ECOMOG's military action. One ambassador to the UN reportedly told Reuters ECOMOG had no authority from the Security Council to attack Freetown.
Human rights abuses
Earlier in the week, the London-based human rights group Amnesty International (AI) said civilians in Freetown had been deliberately killed during fighting. An AI news release said it had received reports that AFRC forces, joined by Liberian fighters, had been going on a house-to-house search for suspected Kabbah supporters. AI said civilians in south and east Sierra Leone also faced ill-treatment by AFRC forces as well as pro-Kabbah Kamajor militia. According to AI, unarmed civilians were being tortured and killed by both sides.
Liberian fighters cross into Sierra Leone
Meanwhile, there were media reports that as many as 2,000 fighters from Liberian President Charles Taylor's former faction, the National Patriotic Front for Liberia (NPFL), had crossed into Sierra Leone last weekend. The troops were reportedly sent in to support AFRC forces near Kenema in east Sierra Leone. Nigerian army spokesman Colonel Godwin Ugbo said in Lagos the NPFL was helping the AFRC. However, Liberia's Secretary of State for Defence, Daniel Chea, told the BBC the reports were "pure propaganda".
AFRC official arrested in Guinea
In a separate development, the secretary of state for transport in the AFRC government, Moshood Williams, was arrested on Wednesday in the Guinean capital, Conakry. Two more AFRC "sympathisers" were also detained.
LIBERIA: UN launches Liberia appeal
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) launched a US$ 70 million appeal on Wednesday to meet humanitarian needs in Liberia following the end of the country's seven-year civil war. An OCHA statement said more than 1.4 million people were still affected by the recent fighting, despite considerable progress in normalising the political and security situation in the country.
Minister denies insecurity in southeast
Liberian Defence Minister Daniel Chea denied claims that parts of south-eastern Liberia were insecure. Chea said such claims were intended to create fear among people living in the south-east of the country. Chea was reportedly reacting to a US State Department travel advisory which warned of rebel activity in rural Liberia. The minister said the Liberian security forces were in full control.
NIGERIA: Ex-ECOMOG chief to head coup plot tribunal
Former ECOMOG force commander Major General Victor Malu was appointed president of a seven-member military tribunal to try those charged with plotting a coup in December against the Nigerian leader, General Sani Abacha.
The tribunal whose members have been drawn from the army, navy and air force will sit in Jos, 850 kms north of Lagos. General Oladipo Diya, the former deputy to Abacha, and Generals Abdulkarim Adisa and Tajudeen Olanrewaju, former ministers in the Abacha cabinet, are to appear before the tribunal.
A further 23 military and civilian defendants also to be tried were not identified. "We want to finish with this ugly incident," PANA quoted the Nigerian chief of defence administration, Rear Admiral Festus Porbeni, said the suspects could choose their lawyers from within the military.
Meanwhile, 'The Guardian', a Lagos-based daily, on Tuesday reported that the National Association of Democratic Lawyers (NADL) and the Human Rights Laws Service (HURI-LAWS) had urged the Nigerian government "to charge the officers for treasonable felony, an offence punishable by life imprisonment rather than treason, which attracts the death sentence".
Rights groups condemn consensus candidate proposal
Nigerian human rights groups on Wednesday condemned proposals that Nigeria's Head of State General Sani Abacha stand as a cross-party consensus candidate in August's presidential elections. Earlier in the week, politicians from four of the five registered parties proposed that Abacha continue in office as a civilian president after the promised return to democracy in October. Tunji Abayomi, spokesperson for a coalition of 18 human rights and pro-democracy groups, told a news conference in Lagos the plan amounted to a continuation of military rule. The purpose of political parties is to compete fairly and not "foist any consensus candidate on Nigerians", he said.
Abacha has not yet said whether he will take part in the elections, but is widely believed to want to stay in office.
Police break up anti-government demonstration
Nigerian police broke up an anti-government demonstration on Wednesday by hundreds of Shia Muslims in Kaduna, 150 km north of the capital Abuja. According to the BBC, eyewitnesses said one man was shot in the arm and several others injured when police fired into the air to disperse the crowd. Demonstrators from the Muslim Brotherhood were protesting against the continued detention of their leader, Sheikh Ibrahim al-Zak-Zaky. The sheikh has been in detention since 1996 for inciting the public against Abacha and was charged on Tuesday with publishing anti-government propaganda.
Civil service faces 30 percent cut
The Nigerian government on Tuesday announced its intention to slash 30 percent of the civil service. The public service is estimated at up to 800,000 workers. The cuts were in line with the recommendations of a government reform panel.
MALI: UNHCR appeals for aid for Mali and Niger refugees
UNHCR appealed last week for over US$ 10 million in aid to help repatriate refugees from Mali and Niger now living in several countries in the region. According to UNHCR, over 120,000 Malian refugees have returned home since 1995. Some 90,000 had received UNHCR repatriation assistance.
MALI: Thirteen political parties boycott local elections
Thirteen Malian opposition parties said they would not participate in the municipal elections slated for April 1998. The Malian government last week announced the delayed elections would go ahead in April. The elections had been postponed twice as a result of continuing political tension over presidential and legislative elections last year, which the opposition claimed were fraudulent.
CHAD: Eleven killed in hostage release
Security forces killed 11 people and captured 19 when they freed four French nationals taken hostage last week in southern Chad. The four hostages held by the anti-government Forces Democratiques de l'Union (FDU) were freed last Sunday after an intervention by security forces. The former hostages have since returned to France.
The US State Department, meanwhile, warned US citizens in Chad to exercise "caution".
MAURITANIA: Anti-slavery activists jailed
Anti-slavery activists on trial in the Mauritanian capital, Nouakchott, on charges of spreading false allegations of slavery were jailed for 13 months and fined, AFP reported. Sheikh Saad Bouh, president of the Mauritanian Human Rights Association, Boubacar Messaoud, head of SOS Slavery, and lawyers Brahim Ould Ebetti and Fatimata M'baye were arrested last month after taking part in a French television documentary on slavery in Mauritania. A fifth defendant, Abdel Nasser Ould Yessa, who lives in Paris, was sentenced in absentia.
A Mauritanian opposition party said last week that police had arrested eight people and injured 20 others before a planned anti-slavery demonstration to protest the arrests of the activists.
SENEGAL: Army kills 13 separatists
The Senegalese army has killed some 13 members of the Mouvement des Forces Democratiques de Casamance (MFDC) in an operation this week against the separatist group in Casamance, AFP reported. According to AFP sources, the army caught and killed the separatists when an MFDC attempt to ambush a bus failed. Casamance separatists claim the region in southern Senegal is marginalised by the Dakar government.
EQUATORIAL GUINEA: Government denies Nigerian killings allegations
The government of Equatorial Guinea on Wednesday described reports by the official Nigerian press agency that hundreds of Nigerian workers had been killed in Guinea as "tendentious", news organisations reported. A Foreign Ministry statement quoted by AFP said the reports were "baseless" and aimed at disrupting the "excellent" relations between Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) claimed earlier in the week that security forces had killed hundreds of Nigerians following violent clashes last month between the Bubis from Bioko island and the mainland Fangs last month.
WEST AFRICA: Clinton to visit Ghana and Senegal
US President Bill Clinton will begin a sixteen-day African tour on 22 March covering Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Botswana and Senegal. Clinton is the first US President to visit sub-Saharan Africa for 20 years.
ECOWAS to meet in Abuja
Heads of state from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) will meet in Abuja on Tuesday. The meeting will discuss economic issues, notably a proposal to create a single currency for the 16 member states, AFP reported. Nigeria currently holds the rotating ECOWAS chairmanship.
Abidjan, 13 February 1998, 19:00 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-weekly]
-- Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 18:59:14 +0000 (GMT) Subject: IRIN-WA Weekly Roundup 35, 98.2.13 Message-Id: <Pine.LNX.3.95.980213185654.1446B-p://www.reliefweb.int/emergenc
Editor: Ali B. Ali-Dinar
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