Human rights situation in Port Loko deteriorates

A human rights team from the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) has issued an “alarming report” after an assessment mission to Port Loko and Kabala, Marie Okabe, associate spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, told reporters in New York on Friday. In Port Loko, some 60 km north-east of Freetown, there were daily attacks during which villages were looted, houses burnt, and civilians harassed, abducted and raped by former rebels from the Occra Hills, Okabe said. Most women abductees arriving in the camps for displaced persons in Port Loko had suffered from rape and other forms of sexual abuse, according to the mission. Okabe cited health care workers as saying that cases of rape-related pregnancies among women were so frequent that they “cannot be counted”. The health care workers said that women and girls often felt forced to marry their abductors or live as their “wives”, because they feared the social stigma attached to rape and resulting pregnancies. Okabe cited the human rights team as saying that in Kabala in the far north, the systematic attacks on villages had subsided in the last three weeks, although disarmed former rebels searching for food and shelter were still roaming around, harassing civilians.