POPULATION-SIERRA LEONE: Refugees Go Home

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Aug 31 1998 (IPS) - The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has embarked on a programme to repatriate more than 300,000 Sierra Leonean refugees from neighbouring countries.

“An airlifting programme targeting some 6,000 refugees from Kissidougou and Gueckedou in Guinean refugee camps to Sierra Leone, is on course and proving quite successful,” the acting high commissioner for refugees, Eusebe Hounsoleou, said here on Monday.

He said a specially chartered UNHCR aircraft had been shuttling between Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, to airlift the refugees.

Last week, the UNHCR brought home 6,000 refugees from Guinea and thousands more have been trooping in this week, from the same camp and from camps in Liberia.

Linda Thomas, who is the UNHCR coordinator here, said “the refugees are being repatriated in order of their vulnerability, starting with the disabled or physically handicapped. Then comes in women and children, and then elderly people”.

Guinean camps alone hold a total of 339,049, while in Liberia, the refugees number 55,000, according to current data on Sierra Leonean refugees.

The refugees have as their first port of call, Lungi International airport, just outside the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown.

Upon arrival, a group of non-governmental organisations are at hand to provide medical treatment and distribute food, water, blankets and mats to the returnees.

Most of the returnees narrate horrific tales of looting, torture and mutilations perpetrated on them by retreating junta troops, in their bid to escape violence in Sierra Leone’s countryside.

“Two of my daughters had their throats slit with machetes right in my presence, while my house was set ablaze by troops loyal to the deposed military junta”, said Sahr Mondeh, a peasant from the eastern diamond-rich district of Kono.

Mondeh said the junta troops, who were overthrown by the Nigerian-led West African peacekeeping force ‘ECOMOG’ in February, assailed them in the refugee camps.

“They attacked the camp at Gueckedou and killed a few civilians, while abducting some more,” Mondeh said. The junta troops crossed the border into the Guinean border district of Faranah where they burnt down 90 houses, in the villages of Balaya and Forecariah, in July.

Another returnee Komba Kassegbama, a former civil servant, told IPS on Monday that he witnessed the burning of his entire village by the marauding rebel soldiers, in Kono.

“Not even children were spared in the rebel orgy of violence as they amputated the limbs of adults and children alike, without compunction,” he claimed.

The returnees expressed delight at their being repatriated home, having endured for several months the discomfort of living in the refugee camps.

At the Gueckedou camps, for example, children were reported to be dying daily for lack of proper medical attention. In May, the figure was estimated at five deaths a day and an undisclosed number of adults also died because of malnutrition.

“I was forced to go to the bush and fell fuelwood which I sold in the market to supplement my means of feeding”, recalled Aiah Ngekia, who was at the camp.

As for women, many worked as domestic to relatively affluent Guinean families on farms, in the home, fetching water and doing a host of other menial jobs, just to eke out a living.

To speed up the repatriation process, A UNHCR statement released here last week appealed for more funding for Sierra Leonean refugees.

“In the frame of the UN appeal for Sierra Leone from March to Dec. 1998, 7,263,260 million US Dollars was requested by UNHCR. Some 3,906,848 million US Dollars has so far been secured. More contributions are urgently needed so as to expedite the process,” said the statement.

More than 1.6 million people were internally displaced, while some 400,000 found refuge in Guinea, Liberia and the Gambia, since the outbreak of Sierra Leone’s civil war in 1991, according to the UNHCR.