MEDIA/REVIEWS
africanOz.com.au
A unique documentary containing footage shot by Sierra Leone refugee and photojournalist Edmondson Sonny Cole (pictured), was launched in Sydney last weekend. Kerry O’Brien from the ABC'S 7.30 Report launched the film "Darkness Over Paradise" that recounts the horrors of the civil war in Sierra Leone. The film was three years in the making, and a collaboration between Cole, refugee journalist Edison Yongai (see his previous story on africanOz), former sports journalist Abdul Jalloh, former teacher Bintu Kamara and Western Sydney's Information & Cultural Exchange. Cole, whose dramatic footage shapes the film, previously worked with Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service, Reuters and CNN.
Independent filmmaker and former head of Film Australia Deborah Kingsland says of the film: “I was completely blown away by Darkness Over Paradise. How different the horrors of war seem when filmed by an insider who speaks the language and has some humanity… For me, it's the ultimate film about asylum seekers.”"In the last six and a half years up to June 2006, over 2,000 people from Sierra Leone settled in Australia - a staggering 97% through Australia's Humanitarian Program. Darkness Over Paradise is their story – a heart-wrenching, thought provoking documentary that reveals the injustices, the senseless atrocities, the unimaginable grief and the international political inertia endured by innocent men, women and children and those brave journalists who dared, and still dare, to speak out. Through their eyes and their words we see what they saw, we learn what they lived through and understand what they escaped and why. We also come to know that for many it is still not over."
Anna Schinella
Program Manager
SBS Radio Sydney"I was completely blown away by DARKNESS OVER PARADISE. Several courageous Sierra Leonean cameramen and journalists have smuggled their extraordinary news footage out of Africa. How different the horrors of war seem when filmed by an insider who speaks the language and has some humanity. The film is made with great sensitivity, a masterpiece of understatement. For me, it's the ultimate film about asylum seekers."
Witness to Many Horrors
Deborah Kingsland
Independent filmmaker-- Parramatta Sun, Wednesday November 23, 2005
The Years of Living Dangerously
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Darkness over paradise is a rare local film that provides a first- hand look at the refugee experience and the role of the media. Isabell Petrinic reports.
Refugees arriving in Australia come from many areas of the world: particularly from African countries including Sudan and Sierra Leone.
Most are settling in Sydney area - especially Paramatta, Holroyd, Auburn, Blacktown and Liverpool.
They include three former journalist from Sierra Leone, who were persecuted for revealing the corruption and savagery in their homeland.
Sonny Cole, Edison Yongai and Abdul Jalloh describe their escape from the nation's capital, Freetown, to the refugee camps of Guinea and finally to western Sydney in Darkness Over Paradise.
The 60 minute documentary features original footage from Mr Cole, 40, who now resides in Granville.
He has been a photojournalist for 16 years. He worked freelance for international media such as Reuters and Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service Television, and was later assigned to the Ministry of Defence and State House.
"Life in Sierra Leone is like hell. "There is no clean water, no food" said Mr Cole "It is the darkest country in the entire world. There has been no light for over six years"
Since 1991, civil war between Sierra Leone national government and rebel leader Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the displacement of more than two million people (more than a third of the population).
Successive rebel offensive in 1998 and 1999 ended in massacres and atrocities on the streets of Freetown.
Mr Cole said members of the RUF told him he was to blame for the 1999 invasion, which claimed around 6000 lives.
"I covered the war extensively and some of the footage was used to execute 24 (RUF) military men," he said.
Once in a while, in my quiet moments, when I lie down I get the picture of those scenes again. It still haunts me."
Mr Cole described Sierra Leone as "the most dangerous place in the world to be a journalist."
"As long as you are against the regime, they will pursue you. If you are arrested, you are put in jail where you will be tortured," he said.
More journalist have fled to Australia than to any other country. Ten arrived in recent months.
Among them is Mr Yongai, also in the documentary. He was the first journalist imprisoned by the government for exposing corruption in the higher echelons of power.
Mr Jalloh, a former sports journalist, observes how sports stadiums were used for political rallies and mass funerals during the war. Darkness Over Paradise is a collaboration between the Granville-based Information & cultural Exchange and the Association of Sierra Leone Journalists in Exile, with project funding from the NSW Film and Television Office and The Mercy Foundation. it can be ordered through ICE on 9897 5744.
Isabell Petrinic-- The Manly Daily, Saturday April 22, 2005
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Sonny Cole (right) woks as a photojournalist in Sierra Leone during the civil war
The Sierra Leonean athletes seeking asylum in Australia are not the first to flee their war-torn country. JULIAN LEEBRUGGEN examines the country's bloody history, through talking to an earlier refugee, photojournalist Sonny Cole.
It is something that has been said of many African nations, but Sierra Leone should be one of the continent's success stories.
The country, to which 14 of its athletes are refusing to return after absconding from the Commonwealth Games Village in Melbourne in March, has huge mineral wealth, particularly from large diamond reserves, which could have seen it become a rich, progressive country.
The geograghic beauty of the capital, Freetown, located by the balmy North Atlantic Ocean, would make it a popular tourist spot in any developed country.
Yet Sierra Leone is one of the poorest nations on earth and it continues to struggle with toil of a nearly decade-long civil war which left tens of thousands dead and displaced almost two million people, a third of the country's population.
The brutality of the conflict which gripped the West African country, bordered by Liberia to the east and Guinea to the west, has been compared to Pol Pot's Cambodian regime and the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Murders, amputations, kidnappings and recruitment of child soldiers was commonplace.
The conflict began in 1991 as rebels started a rural revolts against perceived corruption and misrule by the capital's elites. The Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by Foday Sankoh, received backing from groups in Liberia and started attacking government soldiers and civilians indiscriminately.
Rebels campaigns such as Operation No Living Thing gives and insight into the motivation and method attacks.
The RUF was widely believed to be supported by ex-Liberian president Charles Taylor, now on trial by the special court for Sierra Leone for his alleged role in the war.
The Sierra Leone government, headed by Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was deposed in a 1997 coup by the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which comprises members of the military and who allied themselves with the RUF.
A Nigerain-led West African force, ECOMOG, intervened later that year and fought for control. Eventually Freetown was captured and President Kabbah returned form exile. But rebels once again attacked and seized Freetown in 1999 and UN monitoring personnel were evacuated.
A peace deal was signed when ECOMOG again recaptured the capital-but once they left the rebels resumed their attack on the city. UN peacekeepers were taken hostage in the country's west by a rebel group and eventually British troops were compelled to intervene in 2000.
Victory over the rebels came soon after and only after Sankoh's arrest was the war declared over. Since then, control of the country has been handed to the Sierra Leone defence forces.
Sierra Leone refugees and now permanent Australia resident Sonny Cole was at the very centre of the unrest.
As a government-employed photojournalist and cameraman he was often sent to cover battles which raged in the country's outer provinces and documented some of the worst violence the country experienced.
He was compelled to work for whoever was in power at the time, be it the Kabbah government of the rebels, and said atrocities were willingly committed on both sides, with little regard for the people each group claimed to be fighting for.
"It was very dangerous." Mr Cole explained. " I almost lost my life in that time but I realised I had to do my work for the interests of the Sierra Leoneans by showing the outside world what was going on."
He was ultimately forced to flee when the Kabbah government came back into power in 1998 and decreed that people who worked for the rebels were collaborators and would be hunted down.
" I had to hide in Freetown for a couple of months and then the ( US-based) committee to protect Journalists contacted me and told me to leave immediately." he said." I managed to get a boat to Guinea where I stayed a number of years before managing to be granted asylum in Australia. "
Now based in Granville, Mr. Cole has settled into regular work and in helping to produce a documentary on the civil war using some of his footage.
Sierre Leone images by Sonny Cole (with camera, top and bottom)
He still regularly keeps in touch with relatives in Sierra Leone and insists that though the war is officially over, the country is a shambles.
He labelled the current government of Ahmad Kabbah as corrupt and said it had no sense of justice.
He said random killings were occurring, as were constant threats of violence and intimidation against citizens.
"Sierra Leone is a corrupt country and because of that there is no true justice in Sierra Leone," he said.
"Talking to people in Sierra Leone, you realise it is not safe and that the situation is going from bad to worse.
"When the fighting was on, people managed to dodge it but this government has a killing machine and if they want you to be killed they will send people after you.
"That is still happening today. Once you have gone missing, they will find your body later on the street or in the cemetery."
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The Sierre Leone athletes' journey from seeking refuge in Manly (top), shopping and reuniting (above) and moving into a unit on temporary visas this week (right).
Mr Cole said he had followed the story of the 14 athletes who fled their Commonwealth Games village in Melbourne to seek permanent residency and this week granted the chance to work while on bridging visas.
Eight of the athletes have been staying with members of the Northern Beaches Refugee Sanctuary organisation, who have helped them with visa applications.
Mr Cole said he believed some of the athletes' family members may have been arrested and fears if the athletes deported, they may never be heard from again.
"If these guys do return it is possible they will be arrested, and jailed and if not, attacked, then killed secretly and the government will not take responsibility for it," he warned.
" And people may just take the law into their own hands."
The eight refugee athletes who have been staying on the northern beaches have now moved into a small share unit and are keen to find work. Anyone with a job to offer them can contact David Addington of the Northern Beaches refugee sanctuary on 9938 5082.
The NB RS is organising a fundraiser for the athletes at Wakehurst Golf Club on Monday, starting at 7.30 pm. Tickets cost $40 plus drinks. to book, ring Rosemary Ashton on 9939 7006 or Manly MP Davis Barr's office on 9976 2773.