Wednesday February 19, 2014 - Human Rights Watch slams London Mining in report out today. A new 96-page report throws light on a number of issues relating to the company's operations and its treatment and relationships with workers, traditional authority, labour unions and that Bumbuna protest in which Musu Conteh was murdered by a Sierra Leone police armed with weapons of war. "Sierra Leonean authorities should also meaningfully address longstanding human rights problems such as corruption, opaque governance, unrestrained security forces, lack of clarity in land ownership, and abuses of authority by powerful local chiefs."

According to Human Rights Watch, The 96-page report, “Whose Development?: Human Rights Abuses in Sierra Leone’s Mining Boom,”  documents how the government and London-based African Minerals Limited forcibly relocated hundreds of families from verdant slopes to a flat, arid area in Tonkolili District. As a result, residents lost their ability to cultivate crops and engage in income generating activities that once sustained them.

Police carried out a bloody crackdown in the town of Bumbuna in April 2012 to quell a protest by workers who went on strike after being barred from forming a union of their own choosing.

The report's author Rona Peligal, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch insists that "the African Minerals Limited case shows that, unless the government puts a stop to mining operation abuses, the people who most need to benefit from development will be excluded from it.”

Human Rights Watch claimed to have interviewed "close to 100 people in Sierra Leone for the report" adding that over an 18-month period it did research into the operations of the company meeting with top guns and asking questions the government would never dare to ask. This raises questions on the stewardship of the government whose duty, it should be, to engage in activities that best serve the interests of Sierra Leoneans whose natural resources are being exploited to enrich the few in government and ruling APC party.

Human Rights Watch reminded all and sundry just where Sierra Leone is coming from and the need for an extractive company like London Mining and more so the government to be aware of getting involved in acts that would prove detrimental to both company and the people of Sierra Leone.

"Sierra Leone is an impoverished West African country still recovering from a catastrophic civil war that ended in 2002. African Minerals Limited, which began mining diamonds in Sierra Leone in 1996, built its Tonkolili mine on what is regarded as one of the largest deposits of magnetite in Africa, a type of iron ore. The company exports the ore to steelmakers in China. The Sierra Leonean government, while promoting the company’s operations as essential to Sierra Leone’s economic development, permitted corporate actions that violated the rights of Tonkolili’s residents, Human Rights Watch found. For example, the government failed to provide adequate oversight of the company’s consultations with local communities or respond to repeated complaints about the forced relocation of residents. Both the government and the company misled villagers about what would happen once they were moved to the new site."

Human Rights Watch slammed the government for what the organisation sees as a deliberate ploy by State House to please extractive companies rather than the people whose resources were being exploited -

"The government also did not take action in response to apparent African Minerals Limited violations of Sierra Leone labor laws concerning employment, termination, and benefits for its workers. The government’s narrow reading of national labor law as well as political wrangling denied the company’s workers the ability to form a union of their choosing, rather than belong to an established union that the workers regarded as ineffectual."

It went on -

The Sierra Leonean government, while promoting the company’s operations as essential to Sierra Leone’s economic development, permitted corporate actions that violated the rights of Tonkolili’s residents, Human Rights Watch found. For example, the government failed to provide adequate oversight of the company’s consultations with local communities or respond to repeated complaints about the forced relocation of residents. Both the government and the company misled villagers about what would happen once they were moved to the new site. “The company went to the paramount chief, and the paramount chief told us what to do. We asked so many questions. What they told us they would do, they have not done.… It was a trap,” one village elder told Human Rights Watch. “They said, ‘It will be paradise for you,’ but it’s completely different.”

Human Rights Watch briefly put the spotlight on the rat's so-called Agenda -

The government of President Ernest Koroma, re-elected in 2012, is aggressively pursuing an “Agenda for Prosperity,” supported by bilateral donors, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and corporations attracted by the country’s mineral riches and fertile land. The strategy has yielded high rates of growth; in 2012, Sierra Leone’s economy grew by 21 percent, the fastest in sub-Saharan Africa, according to the IMF.

That growth, however, has not necessarily been matched by improved living conditions for Sierra Leone’s six million people, Human Rights Watch said. The country has ranked as one of the poorest in the world for many years, according to the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index.

Corruption and the lack of transparency interfere with Sierra Leone’s progress. The Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative in February 2013 suspended Sierra Leone’s bid for membership after the government failed to sufficiently address discrepancies in recording revenue or payments by companies.

“Is the growth going to foster corruption and sow conflict?” one Sierra Leonean, then working for a development agency, said. “The whole point is to improve the lives of citizens. If that doesn’t happen, then what’s the point?”

The new report by the rights organisation also has some piece of advice for the government embedded in a number of recommendations.

Human Rights Watch recommendations to the government include to:

• Provide sufficient resources for the Labor Ministry to oversee and inspect labor conditions throughout the country and allow multiple unions within the same industry;
• Put into effect Sierra Leone’s new law on access to information and publicize all mining contracts;
• Clarify the role of paramount chiefs in questions of land administration and ensure that the pending land law is transparent and equitable; and
• Provide immediate relief to the people who have been forcibly relocated by large-scale land investments, and put in place long-term measures to remedy negative human rights impacts of relocation, particularly concerning access to food, water, and livelihoods.

"The government should ensure that state land is allocated transparently and in accordance with the rights of its occupants, and allow residents to obtain accurate information – without fear of reprisal – on the deployment of the country’s resources, Human Rights Watch said.

Sierra Leonean authorities should also meaningfully address longstanding human rights problems such as corruption, opaque governance, unrestrained security forces, lack of clarity in land ownership, and abuses of authority by powerful local chiefs. Protecting the rights of all Sierra Leoneans is not an option, but a legal obligation,” Peligal said. “Particularly given Sierra Leone’s history of conflict, promoting rights as part of the country’s sustainable development is essential.”

The Voice of America has this on its web pages -

Francis Munu is inspector general of the Sierra Leone police. He says he appreciates the report but not enough dialogue happened between Human Rights Watch and the police before bringing forth the recommendations.

"Although I had hoped that there would've been better collaboration, consultations and discussion before coming up with these recommendations so that the recommendations would've been more reflective of the Sierra Leone police point of view. However, we still look at them and will take them into good part," he said.

Munu also says the police are being targeted and did what they felt was right at the time. "They [police] handled it in their own way, even though people have quarrels in the way they handled it," he said.

Peligal says there have been some improvements since the strike. Police did apologize for their actions. African Minerals gave workers a 400 percent salary increase but more needs to be done for those who were displaced in Bumbuna. She says people were moved because African Minerals needed to mine for the iron ore around their homes. Many of them are farmers who have lost their livelihoods.

For its part London Mining has provided answers to questions raised by Human Rights Watch. It is a written response and we would not be wrong in assuming that it was a well-thought-out document that provided answers to questions the government should have been asking of the company rather than having a rights group taking up matters on behalf of the disadvantaged people of Sierra Leone whose natural resources are being depleted all the time.

Kindly read through the African Minerals answers and you decide what picture we have here in one of the many extractive concerns that operate in Sierra Leone...and ah yes, they were asked about the shooting incident in Bumbuna in which Musu Conteh was murdered.

It will be good for those corruptly benefiting from the extractive industry in Sierra Leone to take heed in this statement from Human Rights Watch. It is also a message to the donor community especially the Bretton-Woods institutions of the IMF and World Bank, who though having offices in Freetown would be quick to bring out misleading statements about how well the government is managing the peoples' resources.