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March 31, 2000Volume 28, Number 26



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Sierra Leone minister calls for U.S. assistance

The United States "can and should do more" to help the war-weary people of Sierra Leone rebuild their lives and establish a democratic civil society, said Shirley Yema Gbujama, the country's former foreign affairs minister, during a talk at Yale on March 23.

Gbujama, who is now minister of social welfare, gender and children's rights in the west African nation, was in Connecticut to celebrate the March 25 launching of the schooner "Amistad" at Mystic Seaport. The schooner, built over the past two years at Mystic, is a replica of the Spanish ship on which a group of Sierra Leonean captives revolted in 1839, ultimately winning freedom from slavery after a trial in the United States. Gbujama stopped by the Yale campus to discuss her country's attempts to recover from a war so "brutal" that over the past few years hundreds of thousands of Sierra Leoneans have sought refuge beyond the country's borders.

Speaking at the Yale Center for International and Area Studies, Gbujama outlined her country's political history, noting that several military coups have taken place in Sierra Leone since the African nation, "with high hopes for its future," first achieved independence from the United Kingdom in 1961. Though rich in resources, including diamonds, the country has for several decades been on a downhill economic course as a result of political instability, Gbujama said.

In 1992, she noted, a military coup resulted in a government regime "more corrupt than the one before it," and many multinational businesses, some of which had been in the country for a century, began to leave. Fed up with their country's continuing decline, said the government minister, Sierra Leoneans -- particularly women activists -- demanded democratic elections. In 1996, Ahmad Tejan Kabbah became the country's democratically-elected president.

Only one year after his election, however, Kabbah's government was overthrown by a coalition of military officers from the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF). These rebel soldiers, backed by the government of Liberia, immediately began a campaign of lawlessness and abuse in which "everyone and everything was a target," according to Gbujama.

"The war in Sierra Leone is not a civil war," as some have called it, Gbujama told her audience in Luce Hall. "It is a rebel war. ... It cannot be a civil war when no one -- not women, men, babies, the old, the infirm -- was exempt from RUF terror."

Instead, she said, "the war in Sierra Leone is about power and greed; it's about wealth and controlling wealth ... it's about terrorism, about making people afraid and terrorizing them so that others can come in and take control."

Noting that a U.S. war crimes official described Sierra Leone as "the largest crime scene in the world today," Gbujama described some of the atrocities committed by the RUF rebels during their "reign of terror" in early 1999. These included maiming people, including infants and children, by amputating their limbs (the youngest victim was a six-week old baby, said Gbujama); gang raping teenage girls; kidnapping; looting and destroying homes; and vandalizing historical buildings.

"Sierra Leone civilians have nothing left," she said. "They have all had something stolen from them, or destroyed or degraded."

A Nigerian-led contingent of African nations called the Economic Community of West African States Cease-Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) came to Sierra Leone's aid during the war and helped restore Kabbah to power 10 months after he was overthrown. However, Gbujama said, the United States offered little in the way of substantial support either at the height of the terror or since the RUF signed a U.N.-backed peace accord with the government in the summer of 1999. She denounced the accord, asking, "Why should we have been forced to negotiate with these rebels and forced to share our government with them?" She added that despite the accord, lawlessness continues in her country.

Furthermore, she said, although the RUF has committed massive human rights abuses, the United States has not given the African country the same attention it has given other places in the world where there has been large-scale human suffering, such as Kosovo.

Now, Gbujama said, the United States should "stand firmly, firmly" behind the Sierra Leone people and "the agreement [accord] it forced us to sign" by helping the country maintain internal security, including assistance in stopping the flow of arms in the country to rebels; reducing the flow of refugees and helping with their resettlement; "boosting" of the country's civil society; and providing technical expertise. In addition, she said, the United States could lend support by helping the country provide clean drinking water and electricity in rural areas.

While noting that the United States has given humanitarian aid to Sierra Leone, for which she is grateful, Gbujama said that "without internal security, humanitarian aid would not do us good." She emphasized that her country's future also depends upon foreign investment, including investment from U.S. businesses.

A show of U.S. support for her country's efforts, and an American presence there, she said, would also help give Sierra Leoneans "confidence" in a democratic and prosperous future.

"On Saturday, we are going to launch the Amistad," Gbujama stated. "What does the reconstruction [of that ship] stand for? It stands for making sure that we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. It shows that the United States has been the champion of freedom, not just for its own people but for people all over the world. The United States has shown this in other areas; it can do it in Sierra Leone also."

-- By Susan Gonzalez


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