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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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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