Commentary
By Abdulai Bayraytay,Deputy Editor, Toronto, Canada.
If media reports about the recent spate of violence in the Sierra Leonean capital of Freetown are anything to go by, then there is every reason for observers to worry not because it would create some apprehension for tourists to troop over to that stunning country with all the natural beaches, but the rule of law,a pivotal aspect of democracy, would also be undermined.
The two most recent and nauseating examples were the beating to death of two men alleged to have recently raped a woman and the acts of lawlessness displayed by school-going children during sporting activities organized by the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Without any contest, any acts of rape of any kind are despicable and therefore demand reciprocal punishment albeit through the civilised means of the courts of law.
But the audacity on the part of my compatriots to give a free rein to alleged rapists has provoked more questions than answers. And without doubt, some of the questions could be whether the bureaucracy at the legal system is so cumbersome that the confidence of the people in the judiciary has been compromised; amidst rife allegations that justice is only available to the highest bidder.
Or, similarly put, whether such acts of hooliganism are part of the legacy of a developed culture of the barbarism unleashed on the country by prowling rebels of the hardnosed Revolutionary United Front (RUF) from 1991 until the cessation of hostilities in 2002 that left a whole nation traumatized, or by the same token, whether the youth are copycatting adults who have settled scores, especially political disputes, through the use of violence as manifested during the Ndorgbowusui crisis in Pujehun in 1982, the elections-related violence in 1977 and 1982 respectively and the beating to death of perceived collaborators like Sheikh Mushtaba, Sakomah and Alhaji Musa Kabia (of Lunsar fame), among several unknown others, following the restoration of the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP) Tejan Kabbah-led government after it was overthrown by the mercurial Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) headed by the fugitive Johnny Paul Koroma.
In order to restore confidence in lawbreakers that the rule of law matters in particularly a country like Sierra Leone that is still recuperating from the ashes of a destructive war, an investigation into why youth should take along guns, ammunition and other forms of weapons to sporting events with the tacit intention of committing violence, for instance, should be understood in order to devise appropriate therapeutic interventions.
The beating to death of criminals and rapists does not only indicate grave human rights violations, but is in itself discriminatory; in the sense that when a well-placed personality pilfers from state coffers, he or she will be euphemistically referred to by the justice and court system to have “misappropriated” while the petty cash thief would be a condemned criminal left to the mercy of predatory youth who would mob him/her in jungle-like justice.
That is why one is loudly calling on the police and the Ministry of Justice to particularly investigate and bring to book those responsible for the beating to death of the two Freetown “rapists” if only the nascent APC government could escape complicity in jeopardizing and undermining the very essence of the rule of law in a democracy.
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