By Joseph Lamin Kamara
If the only reason for the health emergency was to stem the transmission of the Ebola virus, restriction on freedoms of opinions and assembly should have now been lifted.
According to President Ernest Bai Koroma, he proclaimed the “State of Public Emergency to enable us take more robust approach to deal with the Ebola outbreak.”
That was on July 31, two days after Dr Sheik Umar Khan died at age 39, in 2014. The Ebola onslaught had already extended to Freetown. Hundreds of people had already been infected and about hundred had died, according to government.
Quarantining homes.Deployment of police and military personnel.Restricting public meetings, etc. The implementation of emergency measures was then appropriate. And even the extension of The Public Emergency Regulations 2014 was not unnecessary and it would still be so until Ebola is eradicated if government were not using the health emergency as a smokescreen to abuse human rights.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) defines public health emergency of international concern as “an extraordinary event which is determined, as provided in these Regulations: to constitute a public health risk to other States through the international spread of disease and to potentially require a coordinated international response.”
That definition, according to the UN global health agency, means the situation “is serious, unusual or unexpected; carries implications for public health beyond the affected State’s national border; and may require immediate international action.”
That has exactly been the situation in Sierra Leone, which called for the emergency. Whatever emergency measures implemented should have been, and should have really been, to control the risk of infection, not to violate fundamental rights, though they could be limited.
Even where a nation is under attack by foreign troops, a state of emergency is never intended to be abused but to limit people’s rights so that that nation could have an uninterrupted atmosphere to fight back and restore normalcy.
The health emergency in the country ultimately prohibits public gatherings, particularly those unrelated to fighting Ebola. But reopening schools and colleges is a signal that the outbreak has considerably receded. I’m sure government has even now started preparing for post-Ebola era. That is because it feels it now has regulated the spread of the disease considerably.
That same feeling is what many people now share and they feel that even conventional wisdom would tell that certain emergency measures should now be lifted. That is just common sense!
Liberia will on Saturday be declared Ebola-free, if the Mano River Union nation with the highest Ebola death toll does not record any new case. Long before the ‘American-colonized’ country reopened learning institutions, it revoked its own health emergency. That was because the emergency there was solely to curb the spread of Ebola and the authorities had no hidden political motive. That is quite converse in Sierra Leone.
The unfolding political events in the poor British-colonized country can only tell the purpose for which the government still maintains the emergency measures. The sacking of Sam-Sumana as vice president, which followed his expulsion from the governing All People’s Congress (APC) party can be defined, on legal grounds, by only the Supreme Court. But that controversial act was truly untimely. It has generated a lot of interest, necessitating public condemnation of the act and protests against it, in and out of the country.
Because there is public emergency, opposition members have been arrested and detained for coming together on political matters, even though at the home of one of their leaders. Apart from that detention of the Sierra Leone People’s Party western regional chairman, MansoDumbuya and others, young members of the party have also been detained for protesting in front of even the American embassy, though peacefully.
Presently, 15 SLPP members from the east including a female, whom the party says was severely tortured, are in detention, having been denied bail twice.
However, ironically, though, a spokesperson of the government has said demonstrations are part of democracy. Abdulai Bayraytay was being challenged on the protests by Sierra Leoneans in the country, England and the United States of America.
The head of the national body coordinating the fight against Ebola, Palo Conteh, has also been quoted to have said same.
The Sam-Sumana sacking has not only been followed by violation of human rights, as put by rights’ activists, but has diverted the national focus from eradicating Ebola. And with that attitude of government, many people now feel the emergency should be revoked.
The director of the civil society group Society for Democratic Initiatives, Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai, told me that: “If the numbers of Ebola cases have dwindled, it makes sense for government to remove the emergency.”
Saffa was responding to questions about a press statement by the country’s journalist association, SLAJ.
SLAJ has called on government to remove the emergency which it says government is using to muzzle press freedom.
Albeit government is detaining opposition members for public gathering, preferences are seen given to certain people. Wedding ceremonies, among others, are being held almost every day. Members of the ruling All People’s Congress (APC) have been coming together in their hundreds on political matters, though it was only using Ebola to convene an emergency delegates’ conference, recently.
The main issue at the Bintumani conference last week, as APC made us see, was for the party to determine whether President Koroma was right or not to expel Sam-Sumana.
The party did not invite journalists to cover the events, and even when some of us made attempts, officials of the party and the police pushed us out because we did not carry party tags.
At the Bintumani Hotel gate at Aberdeen in western Freetown, a police officer asked that I present a tag before I could have legitimacy into the conference. I told him I’m a journalist, putting my hand into my back pocket for my identification card. He insisted I present the tag.
“Even when I’m a journalist?” I asked.“Whether you are a journalist or not, you need to have the tag,” he stressed.The tag he was requesting was a kind of a laminated plastic card showing the holder’s constituency number and status in the party.
“I’m not a member of the party, how can I possess the tag,” I asked. But the police officer had already walked away.
When I approached a young man, also manning the entrance, Abu Bakarr Kamara, who claimed he was a regional organizing secretary of the party, told me the party had its own journalists. He said they would not encourage other journalists.
“That’s even what we don’t like,” he said.
The middle-aged man, probably in his late thirties, refused to tell me which region he was organizing secretary for, when he saw that I had started taking notes on my Samsung GALAXY ЅIII Mini.
“Our democratic credentials are being badly damaged by the selective implementation of the [emergency] regulations. The fundamental human rights of citizens to free expression, especially the right to hold a different opinion and demonstrate is being denied. This threatens peaceful coexistence and democratic inclusion,” SLAJ said in its last World-Press-Freedom-Day statement.
The journalist group is also worried about “threats like security agencies monitoring the phone conversations of journalists, phishing, Denial of Service (DoS), fake domain attacks and man-in-the-middle attacks.”
Democracy has not been abused at emergency times; journalists – with Tam Baryoh as the most popular instance – and other citizens have been detained arbitrarily at normal times.
Whatever explanation government can give for arresting Adamu and others from Kono, under Sierra Leone’s laws it is a violation of a person’s right to freedom to be detained for about eight weeks without charge.
© Politico 07/05/15
