In Freetown, C.O. Cuts Hands

If you search for Sierra Leone on the web, the first article would not be about its natural wealth (like diamonds). The first line of any article would read something like this: "After the rebels had fled into the surrounding hills, Lamine Jusu Jarka was carried to the main hospital here one morning in January. A young man named Mr. Junior, wearing a shirt that declared "C.O. Cut Hands," had chopped off his arms with an ax. " And what irony, the country's capital is called Freetown!!!

If you think that your life is fucked up, just read stories of Darfur or Freetown or Monrovia or Kinshasa and you won't feel that bad. We are just so fortunate to have escaped what is happening in Africa. The march of democracy and all decency has somehow missed a whole continent.The place is littered with so many bodies, raped women and amputated limbs that counting them would be a huge exercise in itself.

I want to talk about Sierra Leone today because this country has witnessed the most horrific of the crimes. People maimed by child soldiers just to prove that their government cannot protect them....the most conservative estimate is at least a million. They would come to a house and go to each of the members of the family and ask them whether they want their hands cut from the elbow or from the palm...same thing for the legs. One million people amputated like this!!! A mad rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, aided by a diamond crazy war lord from Liberia called Charles Taylor ran bersek for 10 years. And at the end of all these atrocities, what was the punishment given to these gentlemen? Foday Sankoh got a power sharing arrangement through a peace accord and Charles Taylor got to become the president of Liberia!!

Well, justice has been delivered in some sense in recent years.Foday Sankoh died a mad man and Charles Taylor is awaiting trial at the Hague but the fighting hasn't stopped...it just goes on and on...there are new Sankohs and Taylors running their militias...battlegrounds have shifted a bit but reality is still the same....can someone talk about march of freedom in these countries?