Sierra Leone: Most Serious Attacks in Months

(New York, July 24, 2001)
According to extensive interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch, both the government-allied civil defense force militias (CDF and rebels from the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) have been
attacking and killing civilians in the northern Kono and Koinadugu
districts of Sierra Leone.

Human Rights Watch called on the United Nations to deploy
peacekeepers to the region as quickly as
possible.

"Civilians are being targeted in deadly battles of retaliation," said
Peter Takirambudde, Executive
Director for Africa at Human Rights Watch. "Neither the
RUF nor the CDF make much effort to distinguish between
military and civilian targets. The U.N. has to act immediately to stop
these atrocities."

Human Rights Watch has interviewed numerous victims and witnesses who
described attacks by the CDF militias in June and July against the
RUF-controlled towns of Worodu, Yiraia, Sukudu and Mansofinia. In the
four attacks documented by Human Rights Watch, at least
twenty-four civilians, including nine women and nine children were
killed, and some nineteen more civilians, including eleven children,
were wounded.

In the most serious recent incident, on June 17, CDF militias, commonly
known as the Kamajors or Donzos, killed at least twenty-one civilians in
the town of Yiraia. In apparent retaliatory attacks in late June and
early July, the RUF launched raids against surrounding villagers whom
they accuse of supporting the CDF militias. The RUF killed at least
three civilians, wounded several, and abducted sixteen people.

Eleven witnesses and wounded survivors from Yiraia described how in the
early morning of June 17, scores of CDF militiamen armed with automatic
rifles and machetes attacked the village located some thirty-five miles
north of the diamond-rich town of Koidu. Several people, including one
elderly man and at least two children, were burned after the attackers
set fire to numerous houses in the village. One twelve-year-old survivor
with at least five deep gashes around her neck, was left for dead after
a militiaman attempted to cut her throat. Another man, shot three times
by the attackers, described how his mother, father, sister and son were
all killed during the attack. Yet another woman described how her
five-year-old daughter's head was shattered by shrapnel after their
house was hit by an apparent rocket-propelled grenade. One man, who had
recently returned to Sukudu village from a refugee camp
in Guinea, was shot by the CDF in another attack on July 11.

A local CDF commander in Kono District, interviewed by Human Rights
Watch on July 17, admitted to attacking Yiraia, the home and base of a
prominent RUF member, in retaliation for previous attacks by the RUF
against their positions. However, CDF leaders in Freetown denied having
ordered the attack and said that at the time of the June attack, the CDF
militiamen were not acting under orders from the Ministry of Defense.

In apparent retaliatory raids, which began in late June, RUF rebels
attacked several towns including Porpon, Hermakono, Bumbanja, Dombadu
and Samadu. During these attacks, the rebels killed at least three
children, hacked off the ear of one man, wounded several more with
machetes, and abducted at least sixteen people, including five children.

According to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch, many villages
have been burned and looted by both sides, and hundreds of civilians
have been displaced as a result of the attacks, which took place from
mid-June through the second week in July.

Witnesses claim many of the CDF militiamen currently moving into and
launching attacks against RUF territory in Kono and Koinadugu Districts
were, until April 2001, based in refugee camps in Guinea or around the
Guinean border with Sierra Leone. While in late May 2001 the United
Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) was able to facilitate the
disarmament of 171 of these militiamen, hundreds more are currently
operating in what has been an RUF stronghold since 1998.

Human Rights Watch is concerned that hundreds of refugees who have been
returning to their villages in Kono and Koinadugu Districts from refugee
camps in Guinea are at particular risk for retaliatory attacks by the
RUF who may accuse them of supporting the CDF militiamen.

Since a ceasefire between the RUF and Government of Sierra Leone was
declared in November 2000, UNAMSIL has been able to deploy and/or patrol
in all RUF-controlled areas, and since May 2001, some 7,000 combatants
from all sides have disarmed. While thousands of combatants in the RUF
strongholds of Kambia and Lunsar have disarmed and some degree of
governmental authority has been restored, those combatants in the
diamond rich area of Kono have been reluctant to disarm, frustrating
United Nations and government officials.

Human Rights Watch called on UNAMSIL to hasten its planned deployment
into the Kono and Koinadugu Districts so as to enhance protection of the
civilian population. Human Rights Watch also called on the
UNAMSIL human rights unit to make public its investigation into the
attack on Yiraia, and to conduct further investigations into subsequent
attacks by both the CDF and RUF against civilians in Kono and Koinadugu
districts.

A copy of the testimonies can be found at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/07/Salone0724Test.htm.

For more information on Sierra Leone, please see:

Funds Urged for Sierra Leone Court (HRW Press Release, July 24, 2001) at
http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/07/un_courts0724.htm.

No "Safe Passage" Through Rebel-Held Sierra Leone (HRW Press Release,
April 3, 2001) at http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/04/refugee-0403.htm.

Guinean Forces Kill, Wound Civilians in Sierra Leone (HRW Press Release,
February 28, 2001) at http://www.hrw.org/press/2001/02/guinea0227.htm.