Oct 6, 2022

African people cannot stand by when any African government shoots down our impoverished people.

On Wednesday, August 10, 2022, a peaceful demonstration by African women known as “market women” demanding that the Sierra Leone government act on the rocketing cost of living was met with a hail of bullets from the police.

This police attack on peaceful demonstrators enraged young African workers, kicking off resistance as those young Africans joined in to defend the right of the people to demonstrate without fear of losing our limbs or being attacked by the neocolonial government.

At least 27 people are dead and many more wounded–mostly as a result of the police firing live ammunition into the crowd.

The African Socialist International (ASI) condemns this neocolonial attack by the Sierra Leone government against the people.

This government’s terrorist attack on the people demanding bread, clean water and decent meals to eat must be denounced everywhere.

We are calling on African people everywhere to hold Julius Maada Bio, the current neocolonial president of Sierra Leone, and William Fayia Sellu, the new inspector general of the police, responsible for the murders of innocent African people.

This government cannot and will not serve the needs and aspirations of the people. It is instead primarily at the service of the colonial multinational companies which loot Sierra Leone of its natural resources.

In Sierra Leone—despite living in a place that has some of the best minerals in the world such as diamond, rutile, gold and some of the most fertile land in the world—most of the people live on far with less than a $1 a day.

Our people have all the right to fight against the rising cost of living in a country that has already one of the lowest life expectancies in the world.

We can no longer tolerate having a government at the service of foreign colonizers and profiteers

Colonialism is an economy of death that strips African people of any human dignity unless you are part of the African petty bourgeoisie that unites and serves the colonizers at our people’s expense.

Colonialism is a mode of production that requires police terror against colonized African people everywhere to hold us in this parasitic relationship. Police terror is just a defense of colonialism and colonizers!

The government is painting the people as terrorists, but no one should blame the people fighting back for the right to live like human beings. The people are the freedom fighters against police terror. To call the masses terrorists is a blatant and grotesque distortion of the obvious truth.

We know who the real looters, profiteers and terrorists are!

We do not all suffer in general. The colonizers find happiness and prosperity every day in our land. More and more resources are leaving Africa with increasing intensity and frequency.

In a March 23, 2021 article, Sieraleonetelegraph.com gives an example of the exploitation of gold alone. The article states, “In January 2018 there was only one industrial gold mine operating in Sierra Leone. In March 2021 there are nine industrial gold mines (6 small-scale and 3 large-scale) operating in Sierra Leone.”

Koidu Holdings, African Minerals, London Mining, Branch Energy, MEYA Mining Company, Wongor Investment Mining Company, Sierra Diamonds Mining Company, Kingho Mining Company and Cheng Li Mining Company are some of the historical colonial companies who have enriched themselves by exploiting our resources in Sierra Leone with the complicity of the successive neocolonial governments.

It matters if the ruling class is led by the Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), like the current government, or the All People’s Congress (APC) like the previous government of Ernest Bai Koroma.

Real change begins with the African working class and all toiling masses turning their back on the treacherous African petty bourgeoisie and building a viable alternative with the African People’s Socialist Party of Chairman Omali Yeshitela.

We are the initiator of the new project of African unity that requires African people everywhere to fight for one united Africa nation and government that will collectivize all African, human and natural resources across the planet for the benefit of all African people everywhere.

But we need to free Africa by building the African Socialist International to eradicate the colonial mode of production that only serves the colonizers at our expense.

We need to organize an international campaign to demand justice for all the fallen African comrades, victims of the neocolonial repression of the regime of Julius Maada Bio and William Fayia Sellu.

What You Can Do:

• Organize protests outside the Sierra Leone Embassy in your city.
• Organize protests outside the colonial corporations’ offices involved in Sierra Leone.
• Phone your local Sierra Leone Embassy and demand the following:
  1. Liberation of the protesters who faced the police bullets on August 10
  2. Reparations to the family of all the victims of the colonial corporations killed by the police in Sierra Leone
  3. The immediate resignation of Julius Maada Bio and William Fayia Sellu

Join the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) today: 07723-067-486; [email protected]