Press Release
We the members of the Association of Sierra Leonean Journalists in Exile Incorporated (Australia Branch) are calling on President Tejan Kabbah and his SLPP government for the immediate and unconditional release of our colleague journalist, Paul Kamara, who was recently charged with allegedly libelling the President and then sent for a “four-year” jail term to Pademba Road Prisons. The reason we learnt for his incarceration was that Paul, the proprietor and editor of For di People newspaper, had dug up and published some “hidden” records of the President’s past.
We trust that Paul Kamara was carrying out his duties as an investigative journalist but, in a country where journalists operate under strict supervision of draconian laws, Paul Kamara’s quest for the truth has now turned against him. Instead of a hero, he is now a villain in the sight of the law.
In addition to demanding Paul’s immediate release, we also ask that the diabolical and suppressive 1965 Public Order Act, which is the government’s cudgel for press torture, be abolished immediately.
The SLPP government and its predecessors have been continually using this Act to subdue those outspoken journalists whom they termed as recalcitrant journalists. Such a law can and will never be in the interest of Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans in this era of recovery from the aftermath of a brutal war brought on innocent people through the avarice and selfishness of our politicians.
We further call for the complete separation of the three arms of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The “fusion” of these arms of government in our country has ever been an element of judicial misplacement, with magistrates and judges playing to the tune of the high powers in their adjudication exercise so that they can continue to retain their positions. As a result, those poor people not connected to “the high places” are often the anvil against which the hammer of the law constantly falls. Every honest and patriotic Sierra Leonean today would admit that the courts only jail people the government wants to get out of the way and leave the government’s lackeys to go free, irrespective of the magnitude of their crimes.
Such tendencies are no demonstration of the democratic spirit we think Sierra Leone should have at this time for which so many people, for ten years, lost their arms and limbs and many their lives. But it just seems as if the same short-sightedness and self-indulgence of our politicians that prolonged the war are back in full force. They know that their helicopters are always on the ready to fly them out at the faintest sounds of gunfire.
Sierra Leone, with its abundance of mineral wealth, needs to be moving forward by now. This aspiration cannot be achieved if the government continues to be corrupt and indolent; if the government continues to silence those journalists and other Sierra Leoneans who, out of undiluted patriotism, mortgage their neck to speak out the truth.
We are quite aware that through the continuous trickery and inglorious manipulation by politicians, the press in Sierra Leone still remains divided, but the country at this time cannot remain to have all journalists singing the praises of the President and his cohort, or the banditry against the nation will go on forever.
We therefore once more ask the SLPP government to release Paul Kamara with no conditions attached so that he would be able to carry out his noble duty of an outspoken journalist. It is Paul Kamara today; who next will it be tomorrow?
Signed on behalf of ASALJIE INC. (Australia) by:
Edison Yongai……………….
Edmondson Sonny Cole……………………
Abdul Rahaman Jalloh………………………..
We trust that Paul Kamara was carrying out his duties as an investigative journalist but, in a country where journalists operate under strict supervision of draconian laws, Paul Kamara’s quest for the truth has now turned against him. Instead of a hero, he is now a villain in the sight of the law.
In addition to demanding Paul’s immediate release, we also ask that the diabolical and suppressive 1965 Public Order Act, which is the government’s cudgel for press torture, be abolished immediately.
The SLPP government and its predecessors have been continually using this Act to subdue those outspoken journalists whom they termed as recalcitrant journalists. Such a law can and will never be in the interest of Sierra Leone and Sierra Leoneans in this era of recovery from the aftermath of a brutal war brought on innocent people through the avarice and selfishness of our politicians.
We further call for the complete separation of the three arms of government – the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. The “fusion” of these arms of government in our country has ever been an element of judicial misplacement, with magistrates and judges playing to the tune of the high powers in their adjudication exercise so that they can continue to retain their positions. As a result, those poor people not connected to “the high places” are often the anvil against which the hammer of the law constantly falls. Every honest and patriotic Sierra Leonean today would admit that the courts only jail people the government wants to get out of the way and leave the government’s lackeys to go free, irrespective of the magnitude of their crimes.
Such tendencies are no demonstration of the democratic spirit we think Sierra Leone should have at this time for which so many people, for ten years, lost their arms and limbs and many their lives. But it just seems as if the same short-sightedness and self-indulgence of our politicians that prolonged the war are back in full force. They know that their helicopters are always on the ready to fly them out at the faintest sounds of gunfire.
Sierra Leone, with its abundance of mineral wealth, needs to be moving forward by now. This aspiration cannot be achieved if the government continues to be corrupt and indolent; if the government continues to silence those journalists and other Sierra Leoneans who, out of undiluted patriotism, mortgage their neck to speak out the truth.
We are quite aware that through the continuous trickery and inglorious manipulation by politicians, the press in Sierra Leone still remains divided, but the country at this time cannot remain to have all journalists singing the praises of the President and his cohort, or the banditry against the nation will go on forever.
We therefore once more ask the SLPP government to release Paul Kamara with no conditions attached so that he would be able to carry out his noble duty of an outspoken journalist. It is Paul Kamara today; who next will it be tomorrow?
Signed on behalf of ASALJIE INC. (Australia) by:
Edison Yongai……………….
Edmondson Sonny Cole……………………
Abdul Rahaman Jalloh………………………..
Posted on Friday, October 1, 2004 at 01:47AM
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