European contacts with Sierra Leone were among the first in West
Africa. In 1652, the first slaves in North America were brought from
Sierra Leone to the Sea Islands off the coast of the southern United
States. During the 1700s there was a thriving trade bringing slaves
from Sierra Leone to the plantations of South Carolina and Georgia
where their rice-farming skills made them particularly valuable.
In 1787 the British helped 400 freed slaves from the United States,
Nova Scotia, and Great Britain return to Sierra Leone to settle in
what they called the "Province of Freedom." Disease and hostility
from the indigenous people nearly eliminated the first group of
returnees. This settlement was joined by other groups of freed
slaves and soon became known as Freetown. In 1792, Freetown became
one of Britain's first colonies in West Africa.
Thousands of slaves were returned to or liberated in Freetown. Most
chose to remain in Sierra Leone. These returned Africans--or Krio as
they came to be called--were from all areas of Africa. Cut off from
their homes and traditions by the experience of slavery, they
assimilated some aspects of British styles of life and built a
flourishing trade on the West African coast.
In the early 19th century, Freetown served as the residence of the
British governor who also ruled the Gold Coast (now Ghana) and The
Gambia settlements. Sierra Leone served as the educational center of
British West Africa as well. Fourah Bay College, established in
1827, rapidly became a magnet for English-speaking Africans on the
West Coast. For more than a century, it was the only European-style
university in western Sub-Saharan Africa.
The colonial history of Sierra Leone was not placid. The indigenous
people mounted several unsuccessful revolts against British rule and
Krio domination. Most of the 20th century history of the colony was
peaceful, however, and independence was achieved without violence.
The 1951 constitution provided a framework for decolonization. Local
ministerial responsibility was introduced in 1953, when Sir Milton
Margai was appointed Chief Minister. He became Prime Minister after
successful completion of constitutional talks in London in 1960.
Independence came in April 1961, and Sierra Leone opted for a
parliamentary system within the British Commonwealth. Sir Milton's
Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) led the country to independence
and the first general election under universal adult franchise in
May 1962. Upon Sir Milton's death in 1964, his half-brother, Sir
Albert Margai, succeeded him as Prime Minister.
In closely contested elections in March 1967, the All Peoples
Congress (APC) won a plurality of the parliamentary seats.
Accordingly, the Governor General (representing the British Monarch)
declared Siaka Stevens--APC leader and Mayor of Freetown--as the new
Prime Minister. Within a few hours, Stevens and Margai were placed
under house arrest by Brigadier David Lansana, the Commander of the
Republic of Sierra Leone Military Forces (RSLMF), on grounds that
the determination of office should await the election of the tribal
representatives to the house. Another group of officers soon staged
another coup, only to be later ousted in a third coup, the
"sergeants’ revolt," and Stevens at last, in April 1968, assumed the
office of Prime Minister under the restored constitution. Siaka
Stevens remained as head of state until 1985. Under his rule, in
1978, the constitution was amended and all political parties, other
than the ruling APC, were banned.
In August 1985, the APC named military commander Maj. Gen. Joseph
Saidu Momoh, Steven's own choice, as the party candidate. Momoh was
elected President in a one-party referendum on October 1, 1985. In
October 1991 Momoh had the constitution amended once again,
re-establishing a multi-party system. Under Momoh, APC rule was
increasingly marked by abuses of power. Earlier in 1991, in March, a
small band of men who called themselves the Revolutionary United
Front (RUF) under the leadership of a former-corporal, Foday Sankoh,
began to attack villages in eastern Sierra Leone on the Liberian
border. Fighting continued in the ensuing months, with the RUF
gaining control of the diamond mines in the Kono district and
pushing the Sierra Leone army back towards Freetown. On April 29,
1992, a group of young military officers, led by Capt. Valentine
Strasser, launched a military coup, which sent Momoh into exile in
Guinea and established the National Provisional Ruling Council
(NPRC) as the ruling authority in Sierra Leone.
The NPRC proved to be nearly as ineffectual as the Momoh government
in repelling the RUF. More and more of the country fell to RUF
fighters, so that by 1995 they held much of the countryside and were
on the doorsteps of Freetown. To retrieve the situation, the NPRC
hired several hundred mercenaries from the private firm Executive
Outcomes. Within a month they had driven RUF fighters back to
enclaves along Sierra Leone’s borders.
As a result of popular demand and mounting international pressure,
the NPRC agreed to hand over power to a civilian government via
presidential and parliamentary elections, which were held in April
1996. Ahmad Tejan Kabbah, a diplomat who had worked at the UN for
more than 20 years, won the presidential election. Because of the
prevailing war conditions, parliamentary elections were conducted,
for the first time, under the system of proportional representation.
However, on May 25, 1997 the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council
(AFRC), led by Maj. Johnny Paul Koroma, overthrew President Kabbah
and later invited the RUF to join the government. In March 1998 the
Nigerian-led ECOMOG forces ousted the AFRC junta after 10 months in
office, and reinstated the democratically elected government of
President Kabbah. The RUF’s renewed attempts to overthrow the
government in January 1999 brought the fighting to parts of
Freetown, leaving thousands dead and wounded. ECOMOG forces drove
back the RUF attack several weeks later.
With the assistance of the international community, President Kabbah
and RUF leader Sankoh on July 7, 1999, signed the Lomé Peace
Agreement, which made Sankoh Vice President and gave other RUF
members positions in the government. The accord called for an
international peacekeeping force run initially by both ECOMOG and
the United Nations. The UN Security Council established the United
Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) in 1999, with an initial
force of 6,000. ECOMOG forces departed in April 2000. Almost
immediately, however, the RUF began to violate the agreement, most
notably by holding hundreds of UNAMSIL personnel hostage and
capturing their arms and ammunition in the first half of 2000. On
May 8, 2000, members of the RUF shot and killed as many as 20 people
demonstrating against the RUF violations outside Sankoh's house in
Freetown. As a result, Sankoh and other senior members of the RUF
were arrested and the group was stripped of its positions in
government.
After the events of May 2000, a new cease-fire was necessary to
reinvigorate the peace process. This agreement was signed in Abuja
in November of that year. However, Demobilization, Disarmament,
Reintegration (DDR) did not resume, and fighting continued. In late
2000, Guinean forces entered Sierra Leone to attack RUF bases from
which attacks had been launched against Liberian dissidents in
Guinea. A second Abuja Agreement, in May 2001, set the stage for a
resumption of DDR on a wide scale and a significant reduction in
hostilities. As disarmament progressed, the government began to
reassert its authority in formerly rebel-held areas. By early 2002,
some 72,000 ex-combatants had been disarmed and demobilized,
although many still awaited re-integration assistance. On January
18, 2002 President Kabbah declared the civil war officially over.
In May 2002 President Kabbah was re-elected to a five-year term
along with the SLPP, which also won a landslide victory. The RUF
political wing, the RUFP, failed to win a single seat in parliament.
The elections were marked by irregularities and allegations of
fraud, but not to a degree to significantly affect the outcome. On
July 28, 2002 the British withdrew a 200-man military contingent
that had been in country since the summer of 2000, leaving behind a
105-strong military training team to work to professionalize the
Sierra Leonean army. In November 2002, UNAMSIL gradually began
drawing down personnel until the end of its formal peacekeeping
mission in December 2005. Following the end of the UNAMSIL mandate,
the UN established the UN Integrated Office in Sierra Leone
(UNIOSIL), which assumed a peacebuilding mandate.
In the summer of 2002, Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation
Commission (TRC) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL) began
operations. The Lomé Accord had called for the establishment of a
TRC to provide a forum for both victims and perpetrators of human
rights violations during the conflict to tell their stories and to
facilitate genuine reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation
Commission released its Final Report to the government in October
2004. In June 2005, the Government of Sierra Leone issued a White
Paper on the Commission’s final report which accepted some but not
all of the Commission's recommendations. Members of civil society
groups dismissed the government’s response as too vague and
continued to criticize the government for its failure to follow up
on the report’s recommendations.
The Special Court was established by an agreement between the United
Nations and the Government of Sierra Leone pursuant to Security
Council resolution 1315 (2000) of 14 August 2000. The Court’s
mandate is to try those who "bear the greatest responsibility for
the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and serious
violations of international humanitarian law, as well as crimes
under relevant Sierra Leonean law within the territory of Sierra
Leone since November 30, 1996." The Special Court has issued
indictments against individuals representing all three warring
factions of Sierra Leone’s civil conflict in addition to the case
against former Liberian President Charles Ghankay Taylor. On June
20, 2007, the Court issued its first verdicts in the trial of the
AFRC accused Alex Tamba Brima, Brima Bazzy Kamara and Santigie
Borbor Kanu all of whom were found guilty on 11 of 14 counts of war
crimes and crimes against humanity. The Court issued an indictment
against a fourth AFRC defendant, former junta leader Johnny Paul
Koroma, who is rumored to have been killed, though his death remains
unconfirmed. In the trial against the leaders of the Civil Defense
Forces (CDF) accused, on August 2, 2007, the court found Moinana
Fofana and Allieu Kondewa guilty of war crimes and crimes against
humanity. A third defendant in the CDF trial, Sam Hinga Norman, the
former Minister of Interior and head of the CDF died in Dakar prior
to the announcement of a judgment. Five alleged leaders of the RUF,
Foday Saybana Sankoh, Sam Bockarie, Issa Hassan Sesay, Morris
Kallon, and Augustine Gbao, were indicted on 18 counts of war
crimes, crimes against humanity, and other serious violations of
international humanitarian law. The indictments against Sankoh and
Bockarie were withdrawn on December 8, 2003 due to the deaths of the
two accused. On March 25, 2006, with the election of Liberian
President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Nigerian President Olusegun
Obasanjo permitted transfer of Charles Taylor, who had been living
in exile in the Nigerian coastal town of Calobar, to Sierra Leone
for prosecution. Two days later, Taylor attempted to flee Nigeria,
but he was apprehended by Nigerian authorities and transferred to
Freetown under UN guard. Taylor is being tried before the Special
Court on 11 indictments of war crimes and crimes against humanity. |
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