Country Referees Excel in Bissau

Though they are facing all sorts of criticism from fans, players and stakeholders back at home, the two referees that represented Sierra Leone in the just concluded Zone II tournament in Bissau were named to be two of the best in the competition.

Central referee, Sanusi Rashid and his assistant, Charles Bangali were ticked as one of the best referees during the competition by the organiser after the duo officiated one of the fastest match in the competition -between Cape Verde and Guinea- impressively.

They were given the opportunity to officiate the Cape Verde-Gambia match two days later, which ended goalless.

It was also gathered that the duo could have officiated the final or one of the semi-final matches but were unable to do so as they had to return home with Leone Stars' chartered flight.

Sanusi Rashid told Concord Sports that he is using the criticism at home to control any international match to the best of his ability. "I hope to lift the name of Sierra Leone referees to the highest peak and I believe that I can make it with determination." The name of Administrative Secretary of the Sierra Leone Football Association (SLFA) Abu Bakar Kabba also entered the record book as one of the best match commissioners.

allAfrica.com: Sierra Leone: Country Referees Excel in Bissau (Page 1 of 1)

Sierra Leone sets up forest park

Sierra Leone's president is launching a scheme to save part of an endangered rainforest, which campaigners say will help fight climate change.

People living near the Gola Forest, near the border with Liberia, are to be paid annually, to compensate for the loss of royalties from logging firms.

The 75,000 hectare park is home to 50 species of mammals, including leopards, chimpanzees and forest buffalos.

President Ernest Bai Koroma hopes the new national park will boost tourism.

Sierra Leone is recovering from a brutal decade-long civil war, which ended in 2002.

Campaigners say that without official protection, the Gola Forest would have been destroyed within 10 years, as Sierra Leone tried to raise living standards.

Aid agencies, the European Commission and France are setting up a $12m (£6m) trust fund to pay for the park's running costs and to make annual payments to some 100,000 people.

It is to become Sierra Leone's second national park.

The Gola Forest is also home to 274 bird species, 14 of which are close to extinction, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is helping to fund the scheme.

"We are helping the government turn a logging forest into a protected forest," said the RSPB's Alistair Gammell.

"Huge amounts of carbon will be saved and the site is an excellent example to those now involved in climate talks in Bali."

BBC NEWS | World | Africa | Sierra Leone sets up forest park

4–Day art exhibition launched

A four-day art exhibition was launched at Lumley Beach Roundabout in Freetown. The colourful exhibition showcased the talents of over thirty Sierra Leone artists. Organised by the National Tourist Board, the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the exhibition is a first of its kind for Sierra Leone.

An extensive range of paintings and sculptures from over thirty talented youths will be displayed and sold during the four days. Allusine Bangura, one of the country’s leading artists, sees this initiative as a real opportunity to display the artistic talents of Sierra Leoneans; “we don’t see this exhibition as a one-off event, but rather the beginning of the creation of an arts market where we can live on our art.” It is planned that every Sunday afternoon artists will display and sell their works at the roundabout at Lumley Beach.

According to the Executive Representative of the Secretary General, Victor Angelo, ‘UNDP is committed to the development of youths in Sierra Leone, and this exhibition is an opportunity to tap into the creative talent of the young people of the country and expose their work to the international market.”

Present at the opening ceremony was the Minister of State and the Minister of Tourism and Culture. Also in attendance were senior UN officials, members of the diplomatic community and international visitors.

Amistad sails into Freetown Harbor

Amistad arrives in Freetown

FREETOWN, Dec 9 (Reuters) - A replica of a 19th century slave ship, which became a symbol of the anti-slavery movement after kidnapped Africans rose up on board against their captors, arrived on Sunday in Sierra Leone.

Cheering Sierra Leoneans lined the docks to see the 129-foot (39-metre) schooner, topped with three billowing sails and the Sierra Leonean, U.S. and Canadian flags, make its first stop in Africa since it set sail in June from New Haven, Connecticut.

The Amistad's voyage commemorates Britain's abolition of the transatlantic slave trade 200 years ago this year.

The ship has already stopped in Britain and Portugal on a voyage expected to last 14 months, retracing the routes of the slave trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas.

"Our people were torn from their culture to become slaves. It's the first time a schooner has come in instead of going out," said Mohamed Bangura, a British-based Sierra Leonean on the dock in the capital Freetown.

The original La Amistad, was seized at sea by 53 kidnapped Africans led by Sengbe Pieh, who became a national hero, who rose up against their captors.

They eventually won a long court case in the United States, which ruled that free men, if captured, must be returned to their homelands. The 35 who survived returned to Africa in 1841.

John Kamara, the only Sierra Leonean to make the journey on board the replica craft, heard the story of the Amistad from his grandmother as a small boy.

"This means a lot to me and my people. I'm so proud," said Kamara, 34, wearing a bandana in the green, white and blue of Sierra Leone's flag.

"WE ARE ALL HEROES"

The former British colony's hilly ocean-side capital is named after freed slaves who resettled there in 1787, but it has suffered a brutal 1991-2002 civil war and elections this year revealed deep frustrations over grinding poverty. Many assembled at the wharf grumbled that African American descendants of slaves are better off than Sierra Leoneans.

Bystanders hoped the ship's voyage could symbolise a happier future for the country, which elected President Ernest Bai Koroma to power in September on a ticket to deliver development and clamp down on widespread corruption.

The ship is due to sail on Dec. 18 for Senegal and Cape Verde, before crossing the Atlantic again for the West Indies.

The voyage retraces the triangular Atlantic trade which shipped European goods to Africa to pay for slaves, who were taken to plantations and mines of the Caribbean and South America to produce commodities for export back to Europe.

Sierra Leone | Africa - Reuters.com

S.Leone wants more give, less take from mining firms

FREETOWN (Reuters) - Foreign mining companies must build new roads, railways and ports in Sierra Leone which will benefit the country's poor if they want to extract its precious minerals, the mining minister said.

After largely peaceful elections this year in the former British colony, torn apart by a brutal 1991-2002 civil war, foreign firms are once again starting to consider mineral-rich Sierra Leone as a possible investment destination.

"We are trying to create a situation in which mines can be the basis for our infrastructure development," Mines Minister Alhaji Abubakarr Jalloh told reporters late on Thursday.

"We are saying if you want to mine bauxite, iron ore, rutile, we want all these companies to come together and create a plan for a massive harbour that will have the capacity to take big ships and to have a railway system and a future network."

Many mining companies are waiting for details of the new government's mining strategy, expected to be unveiled early next year, following presidential elections in September.

Several mining companies are wary of potential moves to impose more strenuous conditions, including higher tax.

"We are going to look at all the things and modify them for the good of the country," said Jalloh, who has promised to review all mining contracts in an effort to extract more wealth for the country.

The West African state's diamond fields helped finance the conflict both at home and in neighbouring Liberia, wars which together killed a quarter of a million people and destroyed once-thriving economies.

Jalloh said he wanted dilapidated roads and railways to be rebuilt along routes leading, for example, from the capital Freetown to bauxite mines in Port Loko and Kambia districts or to iron ore deposits in the north.

Demand for African natural resources is booming, not least from rapidly industrialising China and India who need the raw materials to develop their economies.

NEW PRESIDENT, NEW CHAPTER

Sierra Leoneans hope their new president, Ernest Bai Koroma, elected on a promise of greater prosperity for the country, will help turn around their fortunes.

Five years after the end of the war, Sierra Leone ranks as the least developed country in the world, according to the United Nations. More than 70 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

Voters complained bitterly of appalling roads pitted with potholes during the election campaign. The railway line has long been defunct. Many hope a well-managed mining policy could revitalise that infrastructure.

Jalloh said previous such efforts had served only the needs of mining companies and the country was in danger of falling prey to the same kind of exploitation from new mining companies.

"All sorts of companies are coming in; they want to take the remnants (of old mines) and just load the barges. We will be left with the same problem we have now," he said.

"They built these railways and the harbour purely to convey the iron ore. There are still trucks that are loaded with iron ore on the railways from when they stopped."

Sierra Leone | Africa - Reuters.com

S.Leone refugees to return from Guinea after polls

CONAKRY (Reuters) - Thousands of Sierra Leoneans who fled to neighbouring Guinea during a civil war are due to return home after elections in the former British colony raised hopes of long-term stability, the United Nations said on Saturday.

The office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said it was organising convoys to voluntarily repatriate some 4,000 Sierra Leoneans from Guinea's capital Conakry and 1,200 others living in camps around the southern Guinean town of Kissidougou.

"The first convoy, which has left, was carrying 140 people ... We'll have to go via Liberia because of the poor state of some of the roads," Faya Millimono, UNHCR spokesman in Guinea, told Reuters.

Close to 100,000 Sierra Leoneans returned home from Guinea with the help of the United Nations between 2000 and 2004 in the closing stages of more than a decade of war in Sierra Leone.

But thousands more refused to go back, hoping to win political asylum in Europe, the United States or Australia. Some of those living in Kissidougou have spent more than 10 years lobbying the UNHCR to help resettle them elsewhere.

In September, Sierra Leone held its first elections since the departure of U.N. peacekeepers, polls won by former insurance executive Ernest Bai Koroma, who pledged greater prosperity and stability for the country.

But not all Sierra Leonean refugees want to return from Guinea, itself an impoverished country where even those living in the capital lack running water or electricity.

"I lost my father, my mother and my three children in the war. I don't want to go back, I still don't feel safe," said Titus Roberts, 43, who has lived in Conakry for 10 years.

Others cling to the hope of being resettled in a third country.

"Here, like in Sierra Leone, I don't feel safe. We are constantly harassed and we have nothing to survive," said Hawa Kamara, 35, who lost her husband during the conflict.

Sierra Leone's war was one of the most brutal in modern African history. Children were kidnapped, drugged and forced to fight while rebels hacked the limbs off civilians and sometimes carved their initials into their victims' backs.

Five years after the war, Sierra Leone ranks as the least developed country in the world, according to U.N. statistics. More than 70 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

"I have to stay here because I have nothing left in my country," said Burder Wandi, 19, who has searched in vain for his parents since the end of the war and earns a living working in a Kissidougou hotel.

Sierra Leone | Africa - Reuters.com

Overcrowded Jails Filled With Prisoners Awaiting Trial

Fatmata Jalloh is raising her one-year old boy in an unconventional setting - from within the confines of the Makeni prison.

Jalloh, a young mother awaiting trial, has been behind bars since she was seven months pregnant. At the time she was arrested for theft.

Local police arrested her instead of her boyfriend, who managed to escape with his friend, who had stolen computers from Freetown. The computers were found in her home and Jalloh was the only person there - she was arrested for the crime and has been languishing in prison ever since.

"There are no witnesses, nobody has come forward to say I committed the crime," she said last week from her cell. "I wish to get out of here." Jalloh stays with her son and three other women in the female quarters of the prison. The women share one grey, open room and a courtyard, where they prepare food, braid each other's hair and play with Jalloh's son, Junior.

They have mosquito nets above their mattresses, which sit on the cement floor, and Jalloh said they are well looked after by prison officials.

Despite this, Jalloh said she would prefer to be raising her son in the free world.

Makeni prison, like most jails in the country, is overcrowded and small - unable to accommodate all the prisoners awaiting trial, especially male prisoners.

"I have 137 prisoners," said S.S. Koroma, prison-officer in charge of Makeni prison. "I'm supposed to have 80." He said in Makeni there are 40 prisoners awaiting trial, many of whom have been there for years, and only 72 prisoners have been convicted.

Koroma said many prisoners sleep on the floor because there are no mattresses. As well, there is not enough medicine or supplies for the extra men and his monthly supply of food and rice from the government always arrives late.

"The past government, they didn't pay us anything," he said. "The contractor was paid only Le 1,630 per person to feed them, which was meant to provide three meals a day." The government recommended 20 ounces of food per day, not nearly enough, said Koroma.

But Koroma said prisoners are mostly frustrated because they have not been indicted or charged.

Betty Alimamy Sesay, a Makeni radio journalist and activist, said the state of prisons and the justice system in the country is unacceptable.

"Many of them are in there and they shouldn't be," said Sesay, who is also a member of the Sierra Leone Court Monitoring Programme. "They are languishing in the prisons with no witnesses and their cases are not being heard." Sesay said there is one foreign judge in Makeni attempting to get innocent people out from behind bars, but she said the justice system in Makeni and the rest of the country is corrupt, slow and in need of restructuring.

She has been monitoring and attempting to expedite many of the Makeni cases, including Jalloh's. "I've been watching her case for awhile, ever since she came in here pregnant," said Sesay.

Another case Sesay has taken interest in is Abu Marrah's, a lance corporal from the military who has been behind bars in Makeni since 2002.

Marrah was arrested for an alleged murder in Kono, taken into Freetown where he appeared at the high court for six months and, because of lack of witnesses, eventually transferred to Makeni, where he still waits.

"I've appeared three times in court in Makeni," said Sesay, from the men's prison yard in Makeni. "The judge said the police aren't allowed to take me to court until they have a witness, but in the meantime I am stuck here." Several men gathered around Sesay, nodding in agreement. Some washed their clothes and hung them on a clothesline; others crouched in corners of the small prison yard, away from the sun. Many of their cases are similar - many of them have sat in prison for months or years because the police or justice systems do not have adequate resources or training.

Dauda Kamara, the new Minister of Internal Affairs, agreed with Sesay and said although he has not yet had time to visit the prisons, he knows they are in a sorry state.

"I am told that Pademba Road Prison in Freetown has 1084 prisoners, but there is only room for 300," said Kamara. "There is serious overcrowding and it is not tolerable conditions." Kamara blamed the overcrowding on the judiciary, who he said are slow and often not available to try cases - resulting in hundreds of prisoners awaiting trial throughout the country.

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"Everybody wants reform, reform, reform," he said, "I agree, but let us use effectively what we have now.

It is a problem of getting them to do their work at all." On Tuesday, Sierra Leonean Justice George Gelaga King delivered a scathing address to the Sierra Leone Bar Association in which he labeled the judiciary 'corrupt' and 'disrupting'.

Kamara said the prisons will not improve until the judges do. "It is a terrible situation," he said. .

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UN chief proposes reducing UN presence in Sierra Leone

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) — UN chief Ban Ki-moon is proposing gradually scaling down the UN presence in Sierra Leone, according to a report released here Friday.

In his latest report on the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone (UNIOSIL), Ban recommended that the current operation be extended for a final period of nine months so that it can continue to assist Freetown in holding the local elections scheduled for next year and in bolstering state institutions.

"During this period, UNIOSIL would take steps to progressively reduce its strength with a view to completing its mandate by September 2008," the UN chief said in his report.

Ban said he planned to submit proposals on the drawdown of the mission, as well as the mandate, structure and strength of the successor office, to the Security Council next April.

The UN peace consolidation office in Sierra Leone is a successor to what was once the world's largest peacekeeping force with 17,500 personnel.

The West African country of 5.5 million people endured a decade-long civil war from 1991-2001 in which some 120,000 people were killed and thousands were mutilated.

The UN Security Council in 2005 judged conditions in Sierra Leone to have improved sufficiently to end the UN peacekeeping mission mandate there.

Three months ago the country held democratic elections, the first since UN troops withdrew, and a new leadership was ushered into office.

Ban noted that this summer's elections highlighted "deep-seated political tensions and cleavages" among the population along ethnic and geographical lines.

He warned that these have the potential to escalate in the run-up to next year's local elections.

AFP: UN chief proposes reducing UN presence in Sierra Leone

Reading And Writing On the Decrease?

A local writers organization has said Sierra Leoneans are losing the culture of reading and writing.

Essie James, a senior member of the executive of Pen Sierra Leone, an organization of Sierra Leonean writers and professors, has said fewer people spend time with a book or a pen than ever before.

Speaking at a Pen workshop Monday, James said her group is trying to resuscitate and retain the culture of reading and writing among Sierra Leoneans. "We are worried that we are losing this culture gradually and Pen wants to rekindle it," she said, adding that Sierra Leoneans should be able to use the skills and talents God has blessed the country with.

She said Sierra Leonean writers have so much talent in their midst to bring social change and develop community groups.

James said her organization aims to revitalize the spirit of writing among school children by setting up Pen clubs at secondary schools.

She said the country has great writers, but it still needs to do more to foster the literary arts. "We are rich in writers but it is unfortunate that we are not seeing much of it," she said, adding that the aim of the workshop is to identify members in Pen Sierra Leone that will engage in different Pen committees.

Iranian Cultural Consul Mohamed Ghezel Sofla said intellectuals have a greater role to play for the development of Sierra Leone.

"Your writings should have messages that will enhance change," he said, noting that he has observed some developmental changes in the country over the years.

Aiah Senesie, a writer and participant, said the country has failed to succeed because its people have failed to plan for the future. "I believe if we work hard we will make it in the future," he said..

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