Archive for June, 2007

It’s amazing what you can find when you really research . My great Uncle Sir Albert Margai was the second Prime Minister of Sierra Leone from 1965-67.

I came across this piece concerning the 2007 elections to be held there.

The interim leader of the People’s Movement for Democratic Change (P.M.D.C.) of Sierra Leone, Charles Margai, who is on what party officials refer to as a Transatlantic Tour for Positive Change in the United States, was honored by Rizwan Pureshi, president of the Student Bar Association, and Joshua Senavoe, president of the International Law Society, after he arrived to speak and take questions from students at Howard University Law School in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 14.

The meeting was arranged by a former student of the law school, Yolanda Thompson, who is a Sierra Leonean American and the daughter of Raymond Bamidele Thompson, national chairman of the P.M.D.C. Media Committee. Kurt L. Schmoke, dean of the Law School, gave the closing remarks.

Rizwan spoke briefly about Margai as a graduate of the University College of Dublin, Ireland, where he obtained a bachelor’s degree in civil law , a leader of the P.M.D.C. party of Sierra Leone, a son of the late Sir Albert Margai, the second prime minister of Sierra Leone, and a father of three children. Rizwan added, “Mr. Margai is of a good pedigree.”

Joshua, the second speaker who introduced Margai, demonstrated remarkable knowledge of the decade-long rebel war in Sierra Leone and the judiciary system that he said “is controlled by the government.” He asked his fellow students to “imagine themselves with opposing views in a country in which the judiciary is controlled by the government” before he introduced the keynote speaker.

Following a brief history of Sierra Leone and its precise geographical location on the world map, Margai, in a somber mood, reminisced about a winter day in December 1980 when his father gave a speech at the same Houston Hall at Howard, where he was now honored to speak.

“Twenty-five years ago my father, Sir Albert Margai, second prime minister of Sierra Leone gave a speech here in the Houston Hall of this great institution. He was then probably the only African leader in power who had lost elections to a political rival. He admonished the then government of Siaka Stevens to elevate the economic status of the poor or they would rise up to demand what they deserve,” he said.

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Some 400 million people around the world live and work in what are effectively minefields, at daily risk of death or maiming by cluster bombs.The report, from the campaign group Handicap International, said over 13,000 civilians are known to have been killed or injured in recent years by the bombs, but that the real figure was probably many times higher.

In the wake of armed conflicts “unexploded cluster submunitions turn homes, livelihoods and social areas of 400 million people living in affected countries into de facto minefields,” the report said.

In February, 46 countries meeting in Oslo pledged to aim for an international ban by next year that would prohibit the use, production, transfer and stockpiling of the munitions, which can be set off years after they are dropped.

But major cluster bomb-producing states, including the United States, Russia and China, were not in Oslo and have made clear they oppose a blanket ban, arguing that they need to keep the option of using the weapon for defense.

In March Britain became the biggest military power to ban one variety of the weapons, which are designed to kill large numbers of enemy troops by scattering hundreds of tiny bomblets that spread deadly shrapnel over a wide area.

The British government said it would in future use only weapons with self-destruct mechanisms, a decision dubbed insufficient by landmine charities supporting a total ban.

Britain and the United States used thousands of cluster bombs during the invasion of Iraq in 2003 .

The Handicap International report said that 98 percent of the casualties of the weapons were civilians “killed and injured while returning home in the aftermath of conflict or while going about their daily tasks to survive.”