Sierra Leonean president orders mass arrests before elections
Just weeks before the general elections in Sierra Leone on June 24, the administration of President Maada Bio has begun to make mass arrests of innocent people and to crack down on demonstrations. According to Coco Rioko, eight protesters were arrested by the police for brandishing placards that said, “No Data, No Elections.” As per Coco Rioko, the Electoral Commission for Sierra Leone️ refuses to release voter data for the 2023 elections. As of the time of this reporting, the eight protesters were still in police custody. Coco Rioko also reports of the mass arrests of former servicemembers before the elections: “Many ex-soldiers have been nabbed in the last few days by the Bio brutal police who are taking instructions from the state house. The reasons for the arrests of the retired soldiers are not made public.” The same source says that the police are allegedly planting guns on some of the retired soldiers before they arrest them. Opposition candidate Samura Kamara promised to hold a press conference on Wednesday to discuss his party’s disapproval of the published voter register and poor quality of the voter ID cards issued to voters before the elections this month. Five years ago, SLPP presidential candidate Bio barely defeated APC challenger Kamara. This year, over 3 million Sierra Leoneans (roughly half the population) are registered to vote in what is expected to be a hotly contested presidential election. While on the campaign trail, Bio promised to provide jobs for the nation’s largely unemployed youth, which he has failed to do. According to the Institute for Security Studies, almost 60% of Sierra Leone’s youth are unemployed while two-thirds of the population is below the poverty line. The Bio administration cracked down on demonstrators last August when they protested in the nation’s capital Freetown the high cost of living. Security agents killed more than 20 of them.
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