Two weeks ago, my colleagues and I left the United States to embark on a solidarity tour in Europe and Africa, meeting with human rights organizations and policy leaders to brief them on fundamental rights in Sierra Leone. As you already know, for six years now, my colleagues and I at the Africanist Press have been the sustained targets of death threats, online harassment, and exile after we uncovered high-profile corruption in Sierra Leone.
These acts of transnational harassment and death threats have come from political leaders and supporters of various political factions and interest groups in Sierra Leone. In recent years, we have engaged with multiple organizations and diplomats in New York and Washington, including those at the State Department, regarding this ongoing harassment and the need to impress upon Sierra Leonean politicians their responsibility to ensure the safety and freedom of all Sierra Leoneans. In addition to our own efforts, several human rights organizations and advocates for press freedom, including the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the American Historical Association (AHA), the Committee of Concerned Scientists (CCS), and the Network of Concerned Historians (NCH), have all condemned the attacks and harassment directed against us and our press organization. Despite the international condemnation from these organizations, these acts of harassment have continued with impunity.
In early August 2025, we decided to embark on a solidarity tour to address this ongoing transnational repression being waged against our organization. Our goal is to amplify global voices in defense of free speech and democracy, not only in Sierra Leone but across Africa, where many independent journalists and human rights defenders face similar threats to their safety and their work. Through this tour, we aim to promote solidarity in support of our campaign for free speech and academic freedom in Sierra Leone and beyond.
As we mentioned in our previous communication, we seek to engage European and African leaders to ensure that their ongoing collaboration with the Sierra Leonean government prioritizes the protection of fundamental rights for all Sierra Leoneans, including the rights to free speech and academic freedom.
In the past two weeks, our teams have traveled extensively across Europe, engaging with various organizations and individuals in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany. We have met with press freedom advocates, policymakers, and non-governmental organizations in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, and Berlin to brief them on the anti-corruption efforts and developmental journalism of the Africanist Press. We also discussed the challenges faced by human rights defenders, the crisis of electoral democracy in Sierra Leone, and the role of European citizens in holding Sierra Leonean leaders and European diplomats accountable to the rule of law and standards of good governance. We highlighted the crucial role of European Union countries in Sierra Leone, particularly their funding and oversight of elections and infrastructure projects.
We stressed that European taxpayers’ money should be used to promote fundamental rights and genuine economic development and must not serve in recipient countries, like Sierra Leone, as a direct or indirect endorsement of authoritarian regimes. We also emphasized the importance of conducting principled and disciplined international relations, as well as foreign direct investment that prioritizes the protection of free speech, academic freedom, and the fundamental rights of all citizens in Sierra Leone where the European Union continues to play a significant role.
Our visit to Europe, which occurred during the second week of August, coincided with the peak of summer vacation, when most institutions and individuals are on their annual break. Despite this, we received a warm welcome and engaged with notable organizations, including a meeting at the German Bundestag. There, I personally presented the human rights situation in Sierra Leone and requested that German lawmakers help raise these concerns with their leaders and European counterparts involved in Sierra Leone.
We concluded the European leg of our visit on Saturday, August 16, with a six-hour historical tour that included both walking and boat travel across Berlin. The tour featured visits to the city’s most notable attractions, such as the Berlin Wall, Brandenburg Gate, the Reichstag, and Checkpoint Charlie. Our guided experience offered a comprehensive overview of Germany’s complex history, highlighting significant sites like the Palace of Tears, the Altes Museum, and Humboldt University, where influential figures such as Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Albert Einstein studied and taught before being forced into exile.
We also walked through the Holocaust Memorial, dedicated to the murdered Jews of Europe, and visited the Book Burning Memorial at Bebelplatz, the very site where the Nazis burned tens of thousands of books in 1933. Additionally, we toured the Topography of Terror and the Führerbunker, where Adolf Hitler spent his final days during World War II. This visit served as a poignant conclusion to the first leg of our European solidarity tour in Berlin, a city that continues to reflect on the historical consequences of anti-intellectualism, totalitarianism, and fascism in its landscape, its people, and its infrastructure.
In Germany, we engaged with individuals who deeply understand the profound implications of repression and exile for academics, writers, artists, activists, and journalists.
We believe that our trip to Europe has been very successful and has laid the foundation for ongoing collaboration with our friends and allies on mutual issues related to the protection of fundamental rights and democracy. This achievement has been made possible by the outstanding efforts of our colleagues in Europe and Africa, particularly our friends at the International Peace Bureau in Berlin, who played a key role in coordinating the German portion of our tour.
In the coming days and weeks, we plan to travel to several African countries to continue our solidarity campaign. Our itinerary includes Kenya, Tanzania, Senegal, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, and the Ivory Coast. We hope to hold similar meetings with human rights organizations, civil society groups, and policy leaders to discuss issues related to human rights and democracy in Sierra Leone and the African region.
By the end of this tour, we hope to create a common organizational platform and generate sufficient global support for the defense of fundamental rights, democracy, and the rule of law in Sierra Leone and beyond.
Since the start of this tour, several significant developments have taken place in Sierra Leone that are directly or indirectly related to our ongoing global campaign. Although these events may seem spontaneous and coincidental, they are closely tied to our international efforts to bring attention to the governance crisis in Sierra Leone, which has persisted since President Julius Maada Bio took office in 2018. Therefore, it is essential to contextualize these developments and highlight their implications for our mission to raise global awareness about the precarious situation concerning fundamental rights in Sierra Leone.
On May 30, the Gambian law firm Modou Drameh and Associates in Banjul sent a letter to President Bio, notifying him of my planned visit to Sierra Leone before the end of the year. The lawyers specifically requested that Sierra Leonean authorities take appropriate measures to ensure my security and protection during my stay in the country. They also asked that Sierra Leonean authorities designate a liaison officer within the Sierra Leone Police to coordinate security logistics prior to and during my visit.
This letter was also sent to various press freedom organizations and diplomatic missions, including the United States Embassy in Sierra Leone. However, the Sierra Leonean government never acknowledged the letter. Approximately three weeks after this letter was sent, Julius Maada Bio assumed the rotational chairmanship of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), succeeding Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu at a summit held in Abuja on June 22.
During the same week that we began our tour of Europe, Bio also embarked on a similar subregional tour in West Africa, visiting the Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, the Ivory Coast, Senegal, and Cape Verde. During his meetings with West African leaders, Bio reportedly called for subregional unity and the safeguarding of mutual security, as well as the supervision of cross-border movement of West African citizens.
Since taking on the leadership of ECOWAS, President Bio has recently launched an international lobbying campaign, enlisting support from European media agencies as part of his strategy to leverage his new position and Sierra Leone’s role as the coordinator for the African Union’s Committee of Ten (C-10), which focuses on reforming the UN Security Council. This media relations strategy aims to promote and highlight Bio’s new leadership role within ECOWAS as a potential solution to the ongoing impasse with the Sahelian states (Mali, Burkina Faso, and Niger). ECOWAS has faced recent challenges due to the departures of these three countries, which have experienced military coups and subsequently left ECOWAS to form their own security partnership, the Alliance of Sahel States. Bio’s primary intention is to position himself as a potential intermediary in a recalibrated U.S. foreign policy across the Sahel and West Africa.
In Sierra Leone, these developments have raised significant concerns. President Bio is currently serving a contested second term, and the constitutional legitimacy of his government remains in question, particularly in light of the disputed elections held in June 2023. There are increasing worries about the government’s genuine commitment to upholding the rule of law and fulfilling its constitutional obligations to its citizens.
In addition to concerns about legitimacy, there have also been numerous instances of state-orchestrated violence in Sierra Leone that have gone unreported and uninvestigated since President Bio took office in 2018. These incidents include the cold-blooded killing of dozens of prisoners at the Freetown Central Prison in April 2020 by presidential guards, as well as the suspicious death of Canadian journalist Stephen Douglas during an alleged coup plot in Freetown in November 2023. Similar killings have occurred in various communities across Sierra Leone over the past six years.
In March 2023, Amnesty International reported that Sierra Leone’s security forces allegedly killed and injured protesters and bystanders while suppressing demonstrations in Freetown, Makeni, and Kamakwie during August 2022. The organization specifically highlighted the lack of justice for those injured and for the families of those killed during these protests.
Tragically, this state-sponsored violence, orchestrated by both state and opposition political operatives, has continued unabated, becoming a fundamental aspect of governance in Sierra Leone. The violence is compounded by a legislative environment that is entirely hostile to democracy and accountability. Over the past five years, there has been a systematic dismantling of all legislative and judicial safeguards against tyranny and oppression, explicitly designed to silence any dissenting voices in the country.
For instance, in November 2021, President Bio signed into law the Cybersecurity and Crimes Act, which was intended to prevent the “abusive use of computer systems” and to facilitate the timely and effective collection of electronic evidence for investigating and prosecuting cybercrime. Unfortunately, this law is already being misused by authorities to silence critics.
A few months ago, Sierra Leonean lawmakers enacted a new anti-terrorism law containing unconstitutional provisions that restrict citizens’ fundamental civil rights. This legislation violates the 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone, which guarantees fundamental rights to all citizens. Among its many anti-democratic and draconian measures, the new law criminalizes all opposition to and dissent against state policies and practices, granting the government absolute power to label any individual or group as a “terrorist individual or entity.”
Consequently, Maada Bio’s new position within ECOWAS and Sierra Leone’s role in coordinating the reform of the UN Security Council overshadow the pressing realities faced by the majority of Sierra Leoneans. It serves as an international relations campaign that places him at the high diplomatic tables of global geopolitics while neglecting local governance concerns. It is this context that underlines the rationale for our current European and African tour.
Our current global campaign is an independent, citizen-driven initiative aimed at providing an alternative and complementary narrative about the situation in Sierra Leone, particularly concerning the rule of law and the constitutional protection of its citizens. As we conclude our visit to Europe and prepare to head to Africa, our objective is to convey a democratic message that highlights the critical challenges faced by Sierra Leonean citizens, both domestically and abroad. We assert that a genuine democratic process, one that prioritizes the needs of the citizens and holds political leaders accountable, requires the support of all democratic nations and organizations worldwide. Our message is a clear call for solidarity in the pursuit of a just society.
