Sierra Leone - War Crimes and Genocide

Sierra Leoneans look for peace through full truth about war crime

By Jina Moore Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the July 8, 2008 edition


Bomaru, Sierra Leone - Little but its history distinguishes Bomaru from other villages scattered across Sierra Leone's countryside. A quiet place with mud houses the same color as the dust kicked up by the occasional passing vehicle, it would seem, on an ordinary day, impoverished and washed out.


But today, women dress in freshly laundered wrappers ablaze in color; men wear regal Muslim gowns or their best T-shirts. An anonymous few sweat beneath layers of straw and fabric, in costumes like something from Sesame Street: They are – or are dressed as, depending upon your belief system – the village's local devils, whose appearance signals celebration; their rapid footwork leads a dancing procession to the village center.


Nearly 800 people from Bomaru and nearby villages have gathered for Fambul Tok, a grass-roots reconciliation initiative John Caulker wants to bring to every Sierra Leonean village. The phrase is Krio (English-based creole) ­for "family talk," the old way of resolving disputes through conversations around bonfires.


Mr. Caulker, whose human rights organization, Forum of Conscience, developed Fambul Tok over the past three years in villages across Sierra Leone, wants the bonfire to be a space for confession and forgiveness for war crimes. Bomaru is the first test of whether the idea works –­ or whether anyone even cares.


Dozens of people have come to Bomaru 17 years to the day after the war began here in March 1991. They're here to recount crimes they committed after their abductions and forced conscriptions in the 1990s into the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group from neighboring Liberia infamous for chopping limbs off civilians. But by the time the bonfire is lit and the crowd settles in for storytelling, they've changed their minds.


Maybe it's coming face to face with the moment, maybe it's the half-dozen white people here to document it, but something has spooked the former war criminals.


"They are afraid that if they talk, they will be prosecuted," Caulker explains.


It's a legal impossibility; Sierra Leone negotiated its peace in part by offering fighters blanket amnesty. But here, legal promises can feel like borders – slippery when interests shift.


Caulker sends a film crew, print reporter, and intern – all white – away from the assembly briefly. He talks with the town chief and convinces them to proceed; the chief, a former RUF rebel, promises to offer the first testimony.


And so, the perpetrators talk one after another, until 2 in the morning. Mostly men speak, confessing atrocities they committed as unwilling soldiers forced to choose: kill, maim, rape, or be killed.


If any of the victims in these stories are present, they don't speak. Which is not what Caulker, whose career in human rights began with dangerous undercover research for Amnesty International during the war, had imagined. He'd thought he'd see perpetrators apologizing to victims, and victims reaching out in forgiving embrace.


"I don't want to make the mistake that this is reconciliation," he says. "This is not reconciliation. This is the beginning of the process."

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The idea of reconciliation forums became 'the thing to do' with the fall of apartheid in South Africa.

However noble and endearing it may be, it is naive, foolish, and dangerous. The events in South Africa are as far from events in Sierra Leone or Rwanda as you can get. The West ignored Rwanda, and now feel terribly guilty - they work very hard to absolve themselves, without realizing it is not the West that can absolve them, but Rwanda, and from my perspective - THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN ANYTIME SOON.

What we find is do-gooders, liberals from the West, want to develop social and cultural dynamics peculiar to Western culture onto the 'other' and they have no idea the consequences. Often are amazed it didn't work out as they thought it would (above quote).

When one tribe slaughters another, the remaining members of the tribe being slaughtered do not want to talk about it, hear apologies, or forgive. Not the next day, not ten years later, not twenty years later - maybe sixty years later. I am ashamed of what the US and the West did not do, for that matter - the bloody world did not do in April of 1994. Telling people to sit down and hear what their killers have to say ... does not bring people closer together - it takes the wound and pain, and forces you to rub salt in the wound. It is time that heals and time that allows one to begin the process for reconciliation. TIME NOT jawbone sessions.

It is odd that the left become apoplectic at the idea of 'installing democracy' in the Middle East, yet have no issue with reconciliation forums. First, the West is NOT creating democracy where none existed nor where no foundation exists to support it, yet reconciliation forums are trying to implement a procedure / dynamic that does not and has never existed. Sure tribes would sit around and settle disputes without war - that isn't the point. The war happened and millions were butchered - now they want to sit around and discuss and apologize and create reconciliation avenues for both sides.

IT DOES NOT WORK. IT HAS NEVER WORKED. It has created more animosity in Rwanda and Cambodia. It is a silly Western liberal idea.

Yet another reason why the left are out to lunch.











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