THE mutilation of Fatimatu Sumoh’s young body is all too plain to see. But the
psychological scars remain hidden until she describes what was done to her
by rebel soldiers linked to Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president
who is now facing trial for war crimes.
Fatimatu shudders as she recalls January 6, 1999, the day her childhood was
stolen. Tears well up at the memory of family annihilated, innocence
besmirched, dreams turned to dust. It is clear that whoever hacked off her
left arm shattered her spirit, too.
The ordeal she relates is typical of nearly 130 that will be set out in
testimony at a court in the Hague. The prosecutors are intent on holding
Taylor to account for the horrors inflicted by the “chop hand” units of the
rebel forces that he is alleged to have armed in Sierra Leone in return for
a ready supply of so-called blood diamonds.
The plunder of Sierra Leone, a poor country bordering Liberia that desperately
needed its mineral wealth, came at a terrible cost to girls such as
Fatimatu.
It was 6am when the rebels burst into her family’s house in Freetown, the
capital. The eight-year-old Fatimatu’s heart beat fast with fear as she
curled up under a bench where her father, a well-to-do trader, concealed
her.
Her mother lay on the floor beneath one of the mattresses on which they had
been sleeping. But the rebels saw it move and started shouting.
“My mama jumped from beneath the mattress and showed herself, begging them not
to harm anyone,” Fatimatu says.
Her father gave the men money to leave. But her mother insisted the family
pack a bag of belongings and move to a safer place. No sooner had her
parents, two brothers and two sisters stepped outside their gate than they
were confronted by another group of rebels.
“Papa was holding my hand, my sisters were walking nearby and mama was walking
behind us, carrying the bag on her head,” Fatimatu says. “Some rebels
stopped her and demanded that she undress.”
They pushed her to the ground and as she sat there one of them shot her twice
in the back. “My mother was screaming with pain and crying. I ran to her and
papa came to help her as well. He raised his hands to them and begged them
to leave her alone.
“Mama was shouting but another rebel came and said, ‘We must finish you now’
and he shot her one more time. She dropped dead.”
Fatimatu struggles to go on. “Papa began crying,” she says. “He kept on saying
quietly, ‘Oh, my woman died’. When I started to scream he stuffed something
in my mouth to keep me quiet.”
The rebels pulled Fatimatu away from her father and ordered him to lie on the
ground. One of them thrust a long, sharp knife into her hand. “They told me
I must cut his throat,” she says, trembling at the thought. “I began to cry
and just shook my head. Then one of them shot him once.
“Papa beckoned to me with his hand to go to him. As I walked to him, they
dragged me away. They told him they will punish him before they kill him.”
The street was enveloped in smoke from nearby explosions and in a moment of
confusion, Fatimatu managed to wriggle free. She ran back to the house,
screaming for her brother Junior, 18, who had also escaped, and hid under a
stairway on the outside of the building.
“Then I heard my brother calling me quietly. I looked across and saw him
hiding in the gutter. I ran to him and he hid me with him,” she says.
They lay still and watched as the rebels set the house ablaze. Then they
crawled out of the gutter and ran as fast as they could. Somewhere along the
way, Fatimatu became separated from Junior and found herself alone.
“Suddenly I saw a group of people. They looked like civilians so I walked up
to them,” she says. It was not until she had sneaked in among them that she
realised they were being held by the rebels.
“They had wooden boards on the ground all over the place.
One woman was standing dripping with blood. They had chopped off both her
arms. A child nearby had both his hands chopped off,” she says. “I tried to
go back but one of them saw me and grabbed me.”
Fatimatu breathes quickly as she remembers the atrocities she was forced to
endure. The rebels kept her for a week, during which she was raped
repeatedly. By the end of the week they had had enough.
One of the men put her arm on a piece of wood. “He chopped off my hand with a
cutlass,” she says.
“I couldn’t feel anything any more at that point. I was dead inside. I walked
away drenched in blood.”
By the time she was found by west African peacekeepers and taken to hospital,
several days had passed and her arm had to be amputated just above the
elbow.
THE number of children and adults mutilated by the chop hand units is
estimated at between 4,000 and 6,000. In the local parlance they are divided
into “short sleeves” who had an arm amputated and “long sleeves” who lost a
hand.
Photographs of victims and harrowing accounts of child soldiers carrying bags
of body parts through the streets of Freetown to the rebels’ commanders
became the focus of a good deal of international attention by 2000, when
British forces intervened to secure the capital.
As the rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) were pushed back into
the bush and a substantial force of United Nations peacekeepers was
mustered, many of the amputees thought a brighter future was at last being
heralded.
Although Sierra Leone’s civil war formally ended in 2002 and a UN-backed Truth
and Reconciliation Commission recommended financial help for the amputees in
2004, the money has never come and most feel abandoned and cheated.
They claim that more has been done to rebuild the lives of former rebels than
their own. While reformed fighters - including some who wielded the machetes
- have received apprenticeships and the tools of a trade to rehabilitate
them, most of the amputees have been left to fend for themselves, begging on
the streets.
The government of President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah has reasserted its authority
over previously rebel-held areas but has not come to grips with the grinding
poverty to which 11 years of war condemned the country. This, say Taylor’s
accusers, is another part of his enduring impact on the region.
Shanty towns of corrugated iron shacks housing those who fled the countryside
for the capital as the rebels advanced now stretch from the coastline - once
one of the most beautiful in Africa - to the lush jungles of the hills
overlooking the city.
One third of the country’s 5.3m people were displaced by the conflict; more
than two-thirds live on less than $1 a day. The vast majority are too busy
surviving to worry about the plight of a few thousand people disabled by the
rebels.
Fatimatu, now 17, stayed in an amputees’ camp until 2004 and although she has
recently received help with accommodation from a Norwegian organisation, she
has completed only two years of education and can no longer afford to go to
school.
Given the odds against their making anything of their lives, it is all the
more remarkable that some of the most spirited young amputees have earned
recognition and respect through football. The Single Leg Amputee Sports Club
has replaced their helplessness with a sense of comradeship and purpose.
After training on a sandy Freetown beach where the players displayed
astonishing speed and agility as they raced around their makeshift pitch on
crutches, some of them talked about their wartime suffering and their hopes
for the future - most immediately in the amputee football World Cup in
Turkey in November, if they can raise the money to get there.
One team member’s leg was cut off after he made a deal with the rebels to save
his mother and sisters from being raped. Another lost not only his parents
but also nine siblings.
Mohammed Jalloh was 14 when the rebels attacked his home. His family and their
fellow villagers fled to the bush where they lived for two months until
their food ran out. They sent Mohammed and others to search for something to
eat but he stepped on a landmine.
“My foot was blown off and the others ran away. I crawled for three days on my
own. I cried and bled a lot,” he said.
Eventually he reached a farmhouse and was taken to hospital. He never saw his
parents again: they were said to have starved in the bush.
Mohammed survived by begging for three years until the Norwegian Refugee
Council gave him one of 330 rudimentary homes it has built in clusters of 10
around Sierra Leone for a lucky 5% or so of the amputees. Now 23, he hopes
to marry.
Maxwell Fonah, also 23, was shot in the kneecap when he ran out of his school
in a northern province during a rebel attack. His ambition is to become an
international player in a disabled football league.
Another aim is to see Taylor punished. “I hope they never let him out,” he
said. “Let him live in jail for ever so he can suffer every day.”
WHEN the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone convenes in the Hague
tomorrow to decide the timing of Taylor’s trial on 11 counts of war crimes
and crimes against humanity, developments will be monitored closely in
Freetown, where they say justice cannot come too soon.
The charges include acts of terrorism, murder, rape, sexual slavery, use of
child soldiers, abductions and forced labour. Taylor emphatically rejects
the case against him and has accused the court of preordaining convictions.
The trial, which is expected to last 18 months, will turn on arguments about
the alleged links between Taylor and the RUF. He is said to have financed
and supported it with weapons, ammunition and training in return for
diamonds.
While the pivotal evidence will relate to these alleged connections, the most
poignant component of the hearings will be the accounts of suffering. The
build-up to the trial has revived excruciating memories for many in Sierra
Leone.
Kabiyatu Fofonah, 47, recalled last week how, after seeing her sister’s hand
hacked off, she hid in a river with a baby in her arms, only to be hauled
out onto the bank. “There and then they chopped off my two legs, one after
the other,” she said.
“Maybe when the trial starts we will know more about the war and why it
happened. I need to understand this.”
Mariatu Mayongo was 10 when her father was beaten and shot to death in front
of her, pleading for her life to his last breath. Her mother, two-year-old
brother and baby sister were burnt alive when the rebels set fire to the
family’s house.
Along with 15 other girls and five boys from the same part of Freetown,
Mariatu was taken into the bush. By day they were used as human donkeys,
carrying ammunition and weapons. By night they were raped.
“I lost my virginity in the bush on the first night,” Mariatu said. “For five
nights different men took me in turns. I could not even cry for fear of
being killed.”
She and two other girls finally made a run for it, even though their legs had
been tied together. Mariatu was shot in the thigh and although she escaped,
gangrene set in and her leg had to be amputated up to her hip.
This weekend she and Fatimatu Sumoh were comforting each other, bound in
friendship by shared horrors and the vague hope that one day their lives may
be better.
Following the murder of her parents, Fatimatu was reunited with her brother
Junior. But to this day the fate of her other brother and two sisters is
unknown.
As she waits for news of Taylor’s trial, she yearns to return to school and
ultimately to become a lawyer. “Not just any lawyer,” she explains, “but one
that will defend and support the poor victims like us in the future if ever
they endure what we have gone through.”
Cost of the 1991 - 2002 civil war
- 50,000 dead
- 4,000-6,0000 amputees
- Up to 2.5m displaced
- Infant mortality at 158 per 1,000 live births, the world’s highest
- Unemployment at 80%
- More than 70% existing on less than $1 a day
- Less than 10% with access to electricity
I wonder what would happen to the people of South Africa if one day the miners were to discover a diamond large as the Empire State Building in NYC? And I wonder how the rest of us would perceive them?
jannell , Bronx NY , NY
so sorry to note an effort to lessen the atrocities suffered in S Leone and Liberia in recent years, by referring to similar activities in history. tthe victims of the S Leone and Liberian strocities ARE, MOSTLY, STILL ALIVE. AND SO ARE THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR INFLICTING THEM..e.g. our man in the Hague just now. We do not need back references to comfortably distance ourselves from the victims. That is just another way of sitting on the fence, like most of the "international community" during the executing of these horrors. I am a witness. Elsie
Lee Cahill, Cork,
Very unfortunately, what has happen is terrible and the suffering was immense! But please keep in mind that the tradition of chopping hands started with the Belgians in late 1800s at the Belgian Congo; don't blame entirely on Charley Taylor and his cronies. From then onwards it became a tradition with the rebels to punish the government sources (and anyone else they perceive against them). The mistreatment of original people of Africa started with the Europeans: look at the Rhodesian, South African history. Definitely Charles Taylor begs a punishment, but equally the raising of education standards so such traditions as chopping hands, female circumcision, etc. come to a stop in Africa.
Ed, Wilmington, NC, USA
Disgusting. And the world sat back and watched.
Philip Sutherland, Sydney , Australia
The world must help to this beutiful country.One day Sierra Leone can be a haven in AFRICA.I am form BULGARIA and i am working in S.L. allmost five years in the sity of KONO.I want to tell to the world that they need our help.And the people of this country are very nice and peaceful.
Stanlay, Burgas, Bulgaria