The Sierra Leone Human Rights Investigation

On Wednesday August 10, 2022 protesters stormed the streets of Freetown and other town in the northern parts of Sierra Leone demanding relief from four years of oppressive governance and worsening economic hardship. Armed police confronted the protesting crowds resulting in violence and fatal deaths that included both civilians and security officers. Following the protests, the government of Sierra Leone led by President Maada Bio described the protests as an insurgency designed to overthrow the regime. Referring to protesters as terrorists and insurgents, the government declared an emergency curfew. Since the protests of August 10, 2022 there have been ongoing reports of massive arrests and arbitrary detentions of citizens by police and other security service personnel in Sierra Leone. Along with these reported random arrests, there are also reports of alleged reprisal killings that are reportedly ongoing in Freetown and other places across the country. Hundreds of Sierra Leonean citizens have been reportedly held in detention centers without access to family and legal services. This Sierra Leone investigation is designed as an independent citizen program geared towards gathering information on missing persons since the August 10 protests with the aim of fact checking reported incidents of human rights violation and appropriately document evidence of extra judicial killings, arbitrary arrests and unlawful detentions resulting from the August 10 protests.

The investigation hopes to gather information and evidence from community members, victims families, security personnel and relevant state actors as part of an ongoing process to determine the extent of human rights violations and abuses during and after the August 10 protests. We aim to investigate allegation of police brutality and the nature and extent of state orchestrated violence in Sierra Leone as the country prepares for the 2023 elections.

This investigation is initiated bearing in mind the constraints and confrontations experienced by both citizens and state actors in the face of rising economic instability, emerging forms of dictatorship, and the growing desire among a vast majority of the world’s population to hold leaders accountable to minimum standards of good governance. Certainly, the global economic downturn resulting from the Ukraine-Russian crisis and the outbreak of Covid-19 have plunged African communities into a myriad of difficulties. African countries are experiencing rising economic challenges with huge debt overhangs and dependent economies. African governments have entered a new phase of dictatorship and repression as they respond and react to a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape made worse by global diseases and wars. Lack of sustainable policies in response to rising levels of unemployment and urban poverty have heightened African citizens’ ever-growing demands for concessionary policies to address social and economic needs of a rising youthful population. Renewed levels of state violence and political repression have contracted the human rights landscape of African communities. Since the outbreak of COVID, African communities have experienced multiple repression of peaceful dissent and other rights, which continued unabated across the continent.

The first instinct of many governments has been to ban peaceful protests, and to criminalize dissent. Peaceful protesters also faced arbitrary arrest and prosecution. In 2021, for example, Amnesty International reported that 700 people protesting against the electoral process and later against the establishment of the transitional government in Chad were arrested and unlawfully detained. In DRC, three activists arrested in North Kivu for organizing a peaceful sit-in to protest mismanagement in a local healthcare administration remained in detention. At least 1,000 pro-democracy protesters, including 38 children, were also arbitrarily arrested in Eswatini. Two whistleblowers in the DRC were also sentenced to death in their absence after they revealed financial transactions made for the benefit of individuals and entities under international sanctions.

These examples illustrate the rising spate of violations, including mass killings, arbitrary arrests, and unlawful detentions that are ongoing in Africa. Since the tragic protests of August 10, the government of Sierra Leone tends to justify incidents of summary killings and organized state violence as an act of self defense by the state. The use of protest responses by rogue regimes to clampdown on civil liberties and democracy is a known trajectory of new style dictatorship. The role of human rights groups to expose state organized violence can not be overemphasized. It is within this context that our Sierra Leone investigation has been launched. We aim to collect evidence and testimonies from all parties involved in the August 10 tragic protests; this includes both victims and alleged perpetrators of violence and abuse. We therefore invite and encourage everyone to help us gather the relevant evidence and information to help us arrive at a reasonable understanding of the tragedy, its causes and the consequences.