FRONTLINE HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS:MARY CONTEH has been ignored by fellow human rights activists in Sierra Leone, and has had her offices and home broken into, simply because she sought rights for women and gay and lesbian people.
At a conference in Dublin, which is organised by Frontline so that human rights defenders can share their stories, Ms Conteh laments that she would not have received the same warm welcome at a similar event in Sierra Leone.
“With human rights colleagues, we do not see eye to eye – most of them go at me and they call me names. They do not want people to talk about gay and lesbian issues,” she says.
The lack of support her organisation (the Women’s Centre for Good Governance and Human Rights) has received from “colleagues” gives some indication of the difficulties she has met in advocating such controversial issues.
In November 2010, after Ms Conteh spoke on radio about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues, a group of men forcibly entered her home. When they didn’t find her, they manhandled her brother. The attackers asked for her, telling her brother they wanted to take her life.
She fears for her safety and that of her only child, Marie Josephine (4), she says. “Unless I go and pay other people to come and stay in the house, because I am a single parent, I can’t live in the house alone. Even the security, I don’t trust them. I pay them but at times they come and at times they don’t.”
Less than three weeks ago, the offices of her organisation were broken into. Computers and sensitive documents were taken.
“They think that if they steal everything that all of us will scatter and there will not be an office anymore and there will be nobody to talk about this gay and lesbian thing.”
A native of the rural Bombali District in northern Sierra Leone, Ms Conteh witnessed her mother being killed during the civil war in in 1994.
She saw women being oppressed all around her during her growing up years. It motivated her to join the women’s centre, of which she is now director.
In recent years, major strides have been made towards equal status for women who now hold the right to own land, take out loans and bail people out of prison. “In the rural areas they are improving at a very gradual pace – authorities have started seeing the need to empower women.
“The lesbian and gay rights issue – near nothing is moving forward but the only thing is that we have started talking about it.”
For the latter to gain momentum, recognition must first come from fellow human rights campaigners in Sierra Leone, she says.
“Because we have taken that direction, most of them have abandoned us including the human rights commission in Makeni in Sierra Leone.
“The human rights commission don’t give us any protection. Any time we are attacked nothing has been done.”
This week, Frontline hosts Dublin Platform, a gathering of human rights defenders from around the globe. Reporter Cían Nihill will tell the story of one such defender every day this week