By Lansana Fofana
FREETOWN, May 15 1996 (IPS)

The emaciated returnees were so weak they could barely hug their waiting relatives after disembarking from the ‘Victory Reefer’, the freighter that had carried them from war- torn Liberia.

Some had to be helped into waiting Red Cross vans after they had been screened by the military and security services, which then sped off to Freetown’s Connaught hospital.

Volunteers from Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) who had been ferried on to the ship over the weekend as the government pondered for five-days whether to allow the refugees to land, said they had found appalling health conditions onboard and some of the 1,000 passengers close to death.

“We had to apply emergency treatment in many cases,” an MSF official told IPS. “Our immediate concern was the children, most were at the point of starvation. Cholera would have set in if they were not allowed to disembark soon.”

The Sierra Leonean government, fearful that among the passengers were Liberian militia or Sierra Leonean rebels, dithered over a decision to allow the ‘Victory Reefer’ to dock.

The ship carried 600 Sierra Leoneans, the rest were Liberians, Ghanaians, Guineans and even a sprinkling of Tanzanians from East Africa. After the final screening Tuesday, three soldiers of warlord Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia were identified — and two of them were Sierra Leoneans.

One of the two, before being detained, told IPS that they had been living in Liberia for 10-years but, “we are tired of war. We want to return home and live in peace.” As they were hustled off by the police they protested, “we are peaceful citizens.”

Before Liberia’s civil war began in 1989, the country was a magnet for Sierra Leonean professionals and traders. It was a better life there than impoverished Sierra Leone.

The link between the two neighbours continued during the war. Sierra Leoneans fed-up with the corruption of the government of former President Joseph Momoh joined Taylor’s rebellion and later formed the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), under a cashiered corporal Foday Sankoh, and returned to Sierra Leone in 1991 to fight their way to power.

Despite elections earlier this year and the hand-over by the military regime after four-years in power to the government of President Tejan Kabba, the war is not yet over. Peace talks are underway but the RUF still poses a threat and the authorities are concerned that among the returnees fleeing Liberia are rebel sympathisers.

The collapse of Liberia’s eight-month-old peace agreement and the vicious fighting between factions for control of Monrovia since Apr. 6 forced those who could afford the passage to escape the ravaged city by sea. The ‘Victory Reefer’ joined the Nigerian- registered ‘Bulk Challenger’ plying the West African coast looking for a friendly port to enter.

Stephen Musa is one of the returnees. He graduated in 1994 with a science degree but left Sierra Leone for Liberia because “this country has no respect for educated people.” He managed to find a job in Monrovia, held by the West African peace-keeping force (ECOMOG) “and was paid the equivalent of (100 dollars) a month, over two-times more than is paid to the best graduate here.”

But, clad in dirty jeans and sandals and with only a pair of shoes in a plastic bag, he lamented: “All that I worked for has been stolen. I am sunk.”

It may not be the end of Musa’s problems. The security forces remain suspicious of the returnees, and a senior police source said they will be watched. “We have taken their addresses and those of their relatives. We take no risks.”

The new arrivals add an extra burden to Sierra Leone’s scarce resources. Its own civil war has displaced more than a third of the country’s 4.5 million people.

A new ministry of rehabilitation and reconstruction has been struggling to cope. However, international donors have recently announced they will provide assistance and India donated just under a million dollars Tuesday.

“We thought this was going to be an impossible mission since this ministry was set up with the government treasury thoroughly looted by the out gone military regime,” a senior State House official explained. “Now we think we can make it. Help is coming from some unexpected quarters.”

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