SIERRA
LEONE
World
Report 2001 Entry
World
Report 2000 Entry
World
Report 1999 Entry
Sierra Leone:
Getting Away with Murder, Mutilation, and Rape
This sixty-page report documents how, as rebels took control of the
city in January 1999, they made little distinction
between civilian and military targets. Testimonies from victims
and survivors describe numerous massacres of civilians
gathered in houses, churches and mosques. One massacre in a mosque
on January 22 resulted in the deaths of sixty-six
people. A woman describes how she escaped from a burning house
after rebels set her mother and daughter on fire. A
child recounts how, from her hiding place, she watched rebels
execute seventeen of her family and friends. The report
also includes testimonies from girls and women who describe how they
were systematically rounded up by the rebels,
brought to rebel command centers and then subjected to individual
and gang-rape. Young girls under seventeen, and
particularly those deemed to be virgins, were specifically targeted,
and hundreds of them were later abducted by the
rebels. Human Rights Watch documents how entire families were
gunned down in the street, children and adults had their
limbs hacked off with machetes, and girls and young women were
taken to rebel bases and sexually abused.
(A1103), 6/99, 56pp., $7.00
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online
Sowing Terror : Atrocities
against Civilians in Sierra Leone
Since losing political power in February 1998, members of the Armed
Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) and the Revolutionary United Front
(RUF) have been engaging in a war of terror against civilians in Sierra
Leone. With no recognizable political platform, the AFRC/RUF rebel alliance
is committing widespread and egregious atrocities against unarmed civilians
in an attempt to regain power. As the violence in Sierra Leone continues,
grave abuses continue to take place. Human Rights Watch interviewed civilian
men, women, and children who had been intentionally mutilated or
shot as recently as June 12, 1998 in eastern Sierra Leone.
(A1003) 8/98, 42 pp., $5.00
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