A young man, believed to be in his mid-twenties, is reported to have gone missing following alleged harassments, intimidation, and threats on his life by family and community members who perceived him to be involved in homosexual activities.
The youth, who goes by the name of Amara, is said to be one of the children of the Chief Imam of Portee Central Mosque in the east end of Freetown, Ibrahim Koroma.
Prior to his disappearance few weeks ago, Amara is said to have encountered and endured all sorts of punitive measures including public ridicule from his father and close friends at Portee and its environs for him to give up his homosexual activities which he refused.
Consequently, according to reports, this left his clerical father with no alternative but to ostracize him and allegedly lodged a surreptitious complaint against him to other community religious leaders and also at the Portee Wharf Police Post.
Narrating her son’s ordeal, Amara’s mother, Madam Aminata Kamara, who now lives at Waterloo in the outskirts of Freetown following the collapse of her marriage due to her son’s activities, expressed disbelief over what happened.
She recalled 8 August 2022, as the day she last saw her son. She said on that day just after the early morning Muslim (Fajr) prayers, she saw Amara’s father in the company of other community members, including some youths, manhandling her son and later handed him over to the police. She said since then, she had not been told why her son was reported to the police.
She added that on 10 August, she woke up with the hope of going to the police post to see her son and to enquire about the reasons for his arrest, when suddenly a violent protest erupted in the city which resulted in the deaths of many civilians and security personnel.
Madam Kamara averred that on 11 August 2022, she went to the police post again but her son was nowhere to be seen. She said she was later informed that all the detained suspects had fled due to a mob attack in which the police post was vandalized.
On his part, Amara’s father, Ibrahim Koroma, remained unmoved by his son’s alleged disappearance. He reportedly noted that he knew nothing about it and that he could not tell his whereabouts nor could he tell whether he was alive or dead.
A friend of Amara, who declined to be named, claimed to have seen Amara on the day of the protest being dragged out of the police cell by irate youths but could not tell whether he was re-arrested by the police who came to disperse the protesters.
Although Sierra Leone’s 1991 Constitution guarantees the rights of every citizen; yet it does not extend to Lesbians; Gays; Bisexuals, and Transgender (LGBT). “The Offences Against the Person Act” criminalizes same-sex activity between men. Offenders of this law face sentences including a maximum of life imprisonment. The criminal part of it aside, the LGBT issue remains sensitive and abominable in many parts of the country.
In 2004, the founder of the Sierra Leone Lesbians and Gays’ Association, Fanny Ann Eddy, was found dead in her office with stab wounds, a broken neck, and evidence of rape. Since then, nobody has been brought to court for the alleged offence.