RIGHTS: Amputees Threaten to Boycott Sierra Leone’s Truth Commission

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Sep 12 2002 (IPS) - Sierra Leone’s amputees have renewed their threat to boycott the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which is expected to commence operations in November.

‘‘We took this decision because we cannot keep living on promises made by politicians,” the chairperson of the Amputee Association, Lamin Jusu-Jaka, told IPS Thursday.

Last week, President Tejan Ahmed Kabbah persuaded the amputees to drop their threat and co-operate with the commission.

The amputees have demanded a bag of rice each, plus Le 200,000 (around 100 U.S. dollars), to be given them every month for the rest of their lives.

They also have demanded that the government educate their children. ‘‘We have been incapacitated for life and cannot be productive anymore,” the association said in a statement, made available to IPS, on Thursday.

The amputees went up in arms over what they describe as the government’s preferences for ex-combatants, who have been blamed for much of the atrocities committed during the country’s 1991-2001 civil war.

In areas of skills training reintegration and disbursement of cash allowances, the ex-combatants benefit a lot. ‘’This is unfair and insulting, ” rants Issa Jalloh, a 47-year-old man whose hands were chopped off allegedly by rebel forces.

Jalloh adds: ‘’We thought the government and international donors could pay us the desired attention, as was provided for in the accord that brought peace to this country”.

The 1999 peace accord, signed in the Togolese capital Lome, provided for the setting up of a special trust fund, which has yet to be created. As a result, the West Freetown camp, where the amputees live, depends principally on the largesse of foreign donors.

The government says it cannot create the fund because of financial difficulties. And, in a statement, it says ‘‘we consider the conclusion of the war the price we all pay for peace”.

The government says it directs donors to the amputee camp and that this is an indication of its concern for the war victims. During Sierra Leone’s decade-long war, which ended in 2001, hundreds of civilians had their hands, legs and other body parts crudely mutilated by the fighting forces, mostly through the use of machetes. These amputees were later encamped along Aberdeen Road, west of the capital Freetown.

‘‘They’d been made a sort of museum where visiting dignitaries are taken by the authorities to attract donors support, but at the end of the day they, themselves, hardly benefit from the assistance given,” says Peter Dumbuya, a social worker in Freetown.

Recently, the Norwegian Refugee Council, a non-governmental organisation, embarked on the construction of shelters for amputee families, which seems to have eased their accommodation problems.

‘’This is commendable coming from foreign donors,” remarks Jusu-Jaka, who asks, ‘’but what is our own government doing?”

The amputees also want the government to guarantee them, and their families, free medical service. They also want shelter for their colleagues who did not benefit from the Norwegian assistance.

Although the government did not make any clear undertaking regarding the demands of the amputees, the president promises to take their case to the UN General Assembly, which he hopes to address next month.

But the amputees are not impressed. They argue that politicians often promise them but never deliver. One visibly angry amputee says ‘’we will certainly boycott the TRC”.

The amputees are a crucial part of the Truth Commission, which aims at documenting an impartial historical record of the atrocities committed during the course of the war. Without their co-operation, the whole purpose of the TRC would be defeated, acknowledges Bishop Joseph Humper, who chairs the Commission.

TRC commissioners recently visited the camp to persuade the amputees, but were rebuffed.

The stand-off comes at a bad time for the Truth Commission which is struggling to meet its fund-raising target of six million U.S. dollars.

‘‘It is indeed a fluid situation which leaves Sierra Leone’s reconstruction drive at a crossroads,” says Thomas Johnson, a political analyst in Freetown.

Several thousand Sierra Leoneans had their limbs amputated during the war between government soldiers and rebels of the Revolutionary United Front. The rebels are believed to have committed most of the atrocities, according to the UN news agency, IRIN.

The international humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF, or ‘Doctors Without Borders’) reported that the amputees – whose limbs were brutally chopped off for the most part – had lived with pains for up to four years after being amputated. Many of them suffered “stump and phantom pains”, it said.

At least 1,000 amputees are estimated to be alive in Sierra Leone; many others of those whose limbs were amputated died from infection or associated injuries, said IRIN.