What right has the Tony Blair Labour Party to interfere, militarily, in the internal affairs of Sierra Leone where British nationals and British supplied weapons and ammunition are being used to kill innocent Africans in the rural areas of Sierra Leone?

If in Northern Ireland Her Majesty's Government will not countenance any external military interference there why should Tony Blair be allowed to interfere in Sierra Leone killing with impunity civilians who live on their ancestral lands blessed with diamonds? Is it that the price of a diamond is worth more than the life of a rural poor African? Is the Tony Blair Labour Party telling us that the rural poor in Sierra Leone are dispensable when it comes to the control of diamonds? This is the stark truth facing the British taxpayers and voters who are being lied to day in and day out by Tony Blair and Robin Cook, the foreign secretary.

Tony Blair's Labour government continues to give piece meal information to parliament and the public about the extent of British involvement in the internal civil conflict in Sierra Leone. Both Blair and Cook continue to be economical with the truth and they seem not to have learned any lesson from the 1997 "Arms to Africa" scandal when Blair supplied arms to one side in the Sierra Leone internal conflict in violation of a British Order in Council and also a UN resolution which the Blair government had drafted.

Yet again, the Blair government, flouting its own ethical foreign policy pronouncements and both the UN and EU policy on mercenaries, is presently directing the operations of mercenaries in Sierra Leone. These mercenaries are using helicopter gun-ships to kill the rural poor living in the diamond belt of Sierra Leone be they rebels or defenceless children and women. Whole villages are grazed to the ground and thousands of the rural population are now displaced scattered deep in the forest with children separated from their parents.

Yes, Africans are being slaughtered by British nationals and British supplied weapons and ammunition to enable the Blair Labour party and its commercial partners to gain unchallenged access to the diamond fields in Sierra Leone. Here, the life of Africans who are poor and from the rural areas is not worth a penny. The rural African poor is dispensable for their own elite has sold them out and care less what happens to them.

This warfare in Sierra Leone is a low-intensity genocide and it has become imperative that British taxpayers and voters are exposed to the facts of Tony Blair's intervention to secure diamonds for his business cronies. How else does one explain why Britain came to export, both in 1998 and 1999, 40 million carats each of diamonds to Belgium and also the fact that Switzerland imports most of its diamonds from Britain? Where are the diamond fields in Britain? Are the coalmines now producing diamonds?

It is the rural poor who are losing their life and ancestral lands in this Tony Blair-led re-colonization of Sierra Leone.

The Blair Labour Party has managed to use the UN to pursue its own mercantile agenda in Sierra Leone. The Chief of Staff of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) is a British called Brigadier Alastair Duncan and the Assistant UN Secretary-General for Political Affairs is also a British called Mr. Kieran Prendergast. As stated above, Tony Blair has stationed British troops, including a naval force, in Sierra Leone and refuses to place his troops under UN command. Yet still, British nationals control and direct both the political and military operations of the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone. And guess who is heading the police force in Sierra Leone? The ruling elite invited Tony Blair to appoint another British called Inspector Keith Biddle as the current Inspector-General of Police in Sierra Leone.

The plot is now complete but the only barrier is the rural population and the rebels who are dispensable because the ruling elite in Sierra Leone have sold them out. How else could Robin Cook, on 7 November 2000, have the gull to make a statement in parliament, to the effect that, "We will pursue with determination our goal of a Sierra Leone free from fear and rid of the rebels. Britain is already making a bigger military commitment to Sierra Leone than any other Western nation."

Why have Blair and Cook assigned themselves the task of ridding Sierra Leone of rebels? Who is a rebel? Who is a guerrilla? Is a guerrilla not a section of a population in arms? Are they from another planet? Are they not Sierra Leoneans? Is a section of the population of Sierra Leone dispensable? Is a section of the population in Northern Ireland dispensable? Are Blair and Cook ridding Northern Ireland of revels with helicopter gun-ships manned by mercenaries? Why is it that there is uproar when a single person is shot in Northern Ireland and Labour Party politicians applaud in parliament when British nationals shoot to death Sierra Leonean nationals? What is the life of a rural and poor African to Tony Blair and Robin Cook?

We, who are gathered here today, the tenth day of November 2000, at the Friend's House, Euston Road, London, at the Great Pan-African Rally, organised by the Pan-African Association of the United Kingdom, to regain the lost power of Africans, do resolve that British troops should leave Sierra Leone forthwith as the unintended consequences of their presence is the spread of the armament of war in the West African sub-region and the killing and decimation of the next generation of Africans.

We agree and affirm that the African people of Sierra Leone must be assisted and encouraged to settle their own internal problems without recourse to violence and arms. We are aware that the African people of Sierra Leone do not manufacture arms and neither do they manufacture the machinery to exploit diamonds. We know that the rural poor of Sierra Leone do not have access and the means to travel by plane to London to dispose of diamonds in the vaults of British companies.

Realising that the African population is being decimated by the imported disease of aids and arms and having come to the conclusion that the African Glory cannot be resurrected without first mobilising the African population in the diaspora and their allies to put a stop to the genocide policies of the British Labour Party government and their allies, we hereby demand an unconditional and total pull out of British troops from Sierra Leone.

We hereby also appeal to the British taxpayers and electorate to denounce the use of British nationals and mercenaries to kill poor and rural Africans in Sierra Leone for diamonds. In respect of the above, we solemnly call for African solutions to African problems.

Signed:
Lester Lewis
Fmbaye@aol.com

Thanks a million
Date: 7 November 2000

Dear Webmaster

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Jacob Conteh
Jacob.Conteh@cwusa.com