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Sierra
Leone Freedom Fighter on U.S. Tour, March-April, 2006 |
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A
Brief History of Sierra Leone
Like
most of Africa, Sierra Leone on the Western Atlantic coast
has been ravaged for the past 500 years by slavery and
colonialism. The Portuguese instigated the trade in African
human beings in Sierra Leone in 1479. Despite African
resistance against the invaders, Sierra Leone was taken
as one of the first West African sites of British imperialism
with colonial settlers arriving from England in 1792.
Today
African people in Sierra Leone carry the legacy of this
colonial history. The plunder of the immense natural wealth
of Sierra Leone continues to enrich Europe and North America
at the expense of the terrible suffering of African people. |
Considered
among the best in the world, the diamonds of Sierra Leone—the
birthright of African people—are expropriated and taken
out of the country along with coffee, cocoa, bauxite and other
minerals. Massive wealth is gained through these resources at
the expense of Africans.
The
worldwide sales of rough diamonds is worth more than $7.5 billion
a year. After those diamonds are made into jewelry they are
worth $58 billion annually. Ninety-three percent of all rough
diamonds go to Belgium, which profits more than 7 times the
value paid on every diamond. Workers in Sierra Leone make an
average of “$2 a day and a cup of rice” for their
labor in the diamond mines, the largest employer
in the country next to subsistence farming.
The
average life expectancy in Sierra Leone is 39 years and there
is an infant mortality rate of 160 per thousand live births.
More than 200,000 people are living with the AIDS virus and
tens of thousands die of curable diseases every year.
In
the 1990s imperialist forces such as Belgium, the U.S. and China
backed and/or benefited from a very brutal civil war in Sierra
Leone. This war fostered an orgy of underground trafficking
in diamonds, arms and other resources.
Begun
in 1991 with the assault by the Revolutionary United Front (RUF)
the war killed 50,000 people and subjected tens of thousands
to atrocities, rape, torture and dismemberment. The hands of
thousands of people were chopped off, a trademark of Belgian
colonial genocide in the Congo a century ago.
During
the war more than 15,000 children were inducted into the army
and forced to carry out atrocities against the people. Chernoh
Alpha M. Bah has written about his experiences as a child soldier:
“We
lived through violence, grew in it and tasted its painful fruits.
We are witnesses and victims of the diabolic activities of insincere
individuals who have manipulated our appalling conditions to
fulfill their opportunistic desires whilst at the same time
satisfying the needs of the imperialist countries who commissioned
them.”
Chernoh
leads the Africanist Movement with a large membership based
in eight countries of West Africa. The Africanist Movement has
recently become part of the African Socialist International
(ASI), the growing organization of African people around the
world working for the liberation of the African homeland under
the leadership of African workers and poor peasants. The African
Socialist International is led by Omali Yeshitela, Chairman
of the African People’s Socialist Party and leader of
the Uhuru Movement.
The
unity of all African people everywhere working to liberate Africa
is the only solution for African people from Sierra Leone to
New Orleans, from Haiti to Harlem.
Chernoh has written that “Africa should be free; we must
take control of our lands and decide for ourselves how our resources
are to be used. No amount of pressure should force us to cease
our struggle to unite and free ourselves from the death-threatening
conditions that have been forced upon us by the class contradictions
of neo-colonialism and imperialism.”
Through
the African Socialist International he sees “the beginning
of a new era in our struggle for freedom and unity for the oppressed
masses of African people. Today, I
am fully optimistic that the day has come for us the oppressed
and exploited masses. As I stand here, I am beginning to see
a free, united Africa; united…in our common desire to
live and move forward together and collectively decide what
our destiny should be.”
