RIGHTS-SIERRA LEONE: More Than 100 Refugees Detained In Guinea

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana.

CONAKRY, Apr 7 1999 (IPS) - More than 100 refugees from Sierra Leone have been detained by Guinean police and gendarme, on allegations that they are either rebels or their sympathisers.

The move to round up the refugees, which began this week, was prompted by recent cross-border raids, by Sierra Leonean rebels, who have launched attacks on Guinean border towns and villages on a number of occasions.

“We have to be vigilant in our drive to maintain security,” explains a senior gendarme in the commune of Ratoma, east of the capital Conakry.

“Rebels from Sierra Leone have been bold to attack, loot and kill innocent Guineans on a number of occasions,” he says, adding that, “Guinea is now taking precautionary measures” to stop the rebels from attacking again in the future.

But, human rights watchers and the Sierra Leonean refugee community in Guinea have expressed dismay at the high-handedness of the Guinean security forces.

According to some of the refugees, armed security personnel often storm neighbourhood suspected of sheltering Sierra Leonean refugees in Conakry and beat them up before dragging them to detention centres.

“I wept bitterly at the sight of a 60-year old man being molested by irate security men before being taken away,” recalls Fatoumata Soumah, a housewife in Conakry.

She says the old man had lost most of his relatives in the Sierra Leonean war and that the recent upsurge of violence in that country forced the man to flee across the border into Guinea.

“He does not pay me a cent for accommodating him. And, infact, I just had sympathy for him,” says Soumah, his landlady.

More than 250,000 Sierra Leoneans have fled to Guinea since the conflict in their country began in 1991, according to aid agencies operating in the West African country.

Conditions at the overcrowded camps are bad enough. Food and medical aid are few and far between, prompting refugees to flee the camps for the metropolitan cities, especially Conakry.

But, it seems their choice is no better. In Conakry, security personnel extort money from refugees and confiscate their valuables indiscriminately.

“It’s like jumping from the frying pan right into the fire. I wish I’d never made such a choice. Infact, I am trying to get transport fare to return home, even if it means dying in my native land,” says businessman, Osman Kamara, whose house was burnt down when the rebels invaded the eastern sector of the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown in January.

With threats from Guinean dissidents to attack the former French colony, the authorities here have left hundreds of refugees stranded on the Sierra Leonean side of the border, especially in the northwestern district of Kambia.

The claims that the Sierra Leonean embassy in Conakry has done little to reduce the plight of the refugees have been rejected by the embassy officials. “We have warned the refugees to go to the camps and not loiter in Conakry. I think the Guinean authorities are right in taking preventive measures,” says an embassy official, contacted by IPS.

A peaceful solution to the conflict in Sierra Leone also appears elusive, although President Ahmed Tejan Kabbah says the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) are consulting each other, in preparation for talks with government to end the war.