By Brima Sannoh (ATJLF/MRCG Fellow 2025)
Abu Rogers remembers the day vividly. “They dragged me off my motorcycle at the Makibie River Bridge,” he recalled, his voice still trembling. “They beat me mercilessly until I could barely breathe. I thought I was going to die right there.” At 35, Abu Rogers, a motorcycle mechanic from Gobaru Community in the Kpanga Krim Chiefdom of Pujehun District, southern Sierra Leone, lives with the trauma and physical scars of that brutal day. His peaceful journey home turned into a nightmare when, after a day of work in Pujehun town, he was ambushed by a mob on the bridge, a mob, he says, accused him of being affiliated with the ruling Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP). “I saw a group of men wearing red T-shirts signalling me to slow down. I assumed they were warning me about the bridge ahead. Instead, they surrounded me, shouting in Krio that I was ‘one of the SLPP guys’ and started attacking me with sticks, fists, anything they could find.”
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