I was conferencing in the United States recently when my attention was drawn to an article titled “David Tam-Baryoh on crossing the path of junta apologist Ibrahim Seaga Shaw” posted on Victor Sylva's blog on April 16  2007.  This hate piece, laden with lies informed by smear campaign, is the latest in a series posted on the web by Victor Sylva since March 2001 when, following my reaction to another piece, this time a letter to one of the sponsors of my web site, I decided to ignore him. And this for two reasons: first, I thought it a waste of time and energy to continue a press war with Victor who I knew was never prepared to accept the truth of his own responsibility for whatever might have befallen him even if I succeeded in bringing the clouds—of truth—down; and second, I thought it was going to distract me from my graduate studies and work, a sacrifice I was least ready to take.

Now that Victor has succeeded in luring David Tambaryoh, another of his kind, into the fray, coupled with the fact that Victor himself has been lately busy multiplying his lies in a desperate bid to smear my name and distract my attention, I have decided to break the long silence and put the records straight. Since there are a number of interrelated issues raised in this article and others written by Victor, I have elected to address them in turn. In this article I would address those raised in the article of April 16 2007 while the rest would be left for my subsequent article coming shortly on this web site.

The article under review carries no by-line although it is clear Victor Sylva, who is running more of a blog than an online newspaper, wrote it.  But since the principal source of the article happens to be David Tambaryoh, whose line Victor chose to spin to make his point, there is no way he can escape being directly addressed in this talk back. To expose the fabricated lies in that article, I am going to draw on data gathered from some press freedom campaign organisations.

 First of all I want to make it clear that I hold no grudge against Tambaryoh even after inflicting bodily harm on me in the wake of the bitter encounter he largely distorted  in the article. Thanks to my upbringing and education, I am a very forgiving person; I would rather like and encourage anybody who chose to be my enemy to make them change course than hate and alienate them. I still remember how I enjoyed reading Tambaryoh's opinion articles in the Concord Times; he was such a fine writer that I was even contemplating on inviting him to join my newspaper when he suddenly moved on to register his own, The Punch. We had no problems then except that perhaps when he started his own paper we did not necessarily agree on all important issues, which is perfectly normal given the nature of our profession. That was of course not enough to bring us on a collision course. And from the look of things there was no reason for us to go that far since we were never rivals, neither personally nor institutionally; at least his newspaper was nowhere near mine by any stretch of the imagination. The records are there and so there is no point going into all that here.

What is clear to all observers of the media landscape in Sierra Leone is that politicians have been largely successful in setting more moderate and boot-licking journalists against their more outspoken and successful colleagues as a way of keeping them busy and distracting them from their professional work.  And for all you know, Tambaryoh and Victor Sylva were among the former; their opinion, among others, was often sought by the authorities whenever they wanted to swoop on their more down-to-earth colleagues. Thank God I have given that context.

 Now back to the article in question. I see it draws a lot on the dispatch from the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) dated October 15 2007. The first inaccuracy I wish to correct here is that, contrary to what was insinuated in the introduction of that Victor Sylva article, the CPJ was the real source of the dispatch and not the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX), a network run by the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), which specialises in circulating press freedom alerts to sister networks. The other inaccuracy in the introduction that I think I must correct is that there is absolutely no reference to any observation in the dispatch by the CPJ pointing to how, as Victor put it, ‘a journalist was brutalised and could have lost his life because he dared oppose Ibrahim Seaga Shaw during Junta rule in 1997'. Victor Sylva must be careful not to allow the sentiments of his desperation to get at my throat blind him to the reality of how unprofessional it is to attribute fabricated insinuations to press freedom organisations in the name of seeking credibility for what he wants to say.

To put the CPJ news alert itself in context, it is difficult to believe how Tambaryoh,  being the then stringer for the CPJ in Sierra Leone, could have written that dispatch without spinning it in his favour, especially when he was directly involved, even if it was going to cost him to pepper it with fabrications. For that I think the CPJ are to blame since they were supposed to have thoroughly and independently investigated the matter, which would have required, among other things, hearing my own version of the story, before going to press. This, particularly so given my background of being a victim of well documented persecutions in the years and months leading to that experience.  Against this backdrop, it is therefore unfair and unreasonable to use that dispatch to explain what actually transpired between Tambaryoh and I during that time.

It is also not true to say that RSF ignored the persecution of journalists during the AFRC junta; if the organisation did not document the problem between Tambaryoh and I it was simply because it was a personal problem that involved aggravation and causing bodily harm and therefore had nothing to do with persecution as a journalist. It is therefore not fair to use this incident that had nothing to do with persecution to dismiss the work of RSF, arguably one of the most respected press freedom organisations in the world. You only need to go into their archives to appreciate the enormous work they did in documenting the persecution of journalists in Sierra Leone not only during AFRC junta rule but before and after. In fact Expo Times' General Editor, Gibril Gbanabome Koroma, now Publisher and Editor of the Canada-based online Patriotic Vanguard, was the RSF correspondent in Sierra Leone at the time, an occasional work that he was doing independent of his normal work at Expo Times, and so it is inaccurate to say that ‘Expo Times were correspondents for this organisation'. As far as I can remember Gibril did his best in sending alerts of all cases of persecution of journalists be it under the AFRC junta or other regimes. As a matter of fact the Expo Times was publishing some of these alerts. Besides, apart from the CPJ, perhaps Victor Sylva should be bold enough to come forward with any organisation that documented the personal confrontation between Tambaryoh and I.

The fact of the matter is that the personal confrontation between Tambaryoh and I, which took place at a Sierra Leone Association of Journalists (SLAJ) meeting in August 1997, had nothing to do with his arrest for alleged subversion on October 8 of the same year. Of course other organisations such as Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and International League for Human Rights (ILHR) documented the latter without any reference to our personal confrontation in August. In a desperate effort to lend credence to his own distorted version of the story regarding our confrontation, Tambaryoh smartly, but unprofessionally, presented it together with his arrest for alleged subversion in October in that CPJ dispatch as if they happened at the same time. If this is not intellectual dishonesty par excellence then I beg to differ.  In fact Tambaryoh himself did acknowledge in Victor's article of 16 April 2007 that the SLAJ meeting itself took place sometime in August, and yet he went on to contradict himself in the CPJ dispatch that the meeting took place on October 6 and that he was arrested for aggravation against me and subversion two days after. This contradiction is enough to dismiss all the CPJ account as a bunch of cooked-up lies intended to bring my name into disrepute. When you are being dishonest with the truth you are more likely to get confused, and that is exactly what has happened here.

 Now back to the SLAJ meeting itself. There are many inaccuracies and exaggerations in Tambaryoh's versions presented in the article by Victor posted on his blog and the CPJ alert that I think I need to address here for the records. In the first place, most journalists, and not necessarily newspaper editors, were in attendance at the meeting, again contradicting the version in the CPJ account. The two main issues discussed were the need to call on the AFRC junta to stop the persecution of journalists and to address its call for re-registration of newspapers. I remember supporting the call for the junta to stop the persecution of journalists and the need to oppose the call for re-registration while cautioning that we must do it in such a way so as not to appear to be toeing the line of the Tejan Kabbah government in exile in Guinea-Conakry.  At no time did I suggest, contrary to the fabrication in Tambaryoh's account, ‘that SLAJ should write a letter of support for the junta, throwing the organisation's weight behind Johnny Paul Koroma's AFRC'. That was simply a concocted version of what happened.  

 How on earth could I have said that when, in my first editorial following the coup, I condemned it as unconstitutional although I stopped short of calling for an immediate military intervention by ECOMOG to restore democratic rule, opting instead for a diplomatic solution as a first step.

At the SLAJ meeting I remember saying that while we were right as a professional body to condemn the AFRC junta take-over and call for the restoration of democratic rule it was also fair to support the wish of majority of Sierra Leoneans at the time to explore the diplomatic option first, which was on course at the sub-regional level, instead of supporting the indiscriminate shelling of Freetown on a daily basis by ECOMOG bombs which was inflicting a heavy human toll on the innocent population. I did emphasise that our allegiance was supposed to be with the people and not to any political class, be it a junta or a civilian regime in exile. I cautioned that we as a professional body must be seen to be neutral in condemning human rights violations committed by both the junta and ECOMOG. Little did I know that I was inviting trouble from the likes of David Tambaryoh who took it to mean that I was supporting the junta.

 Tambaryoh was quick to jump the gun and start raining insults leading him to say I was supporting the junta ‘because of the looted vehicle given' to me by them. I was visibly and understandably furious because even after having only recently published documentary evidence to support my claim that I genuinely purchased the said vehicle from the open market, following similar accusations made by the clandestine pro-government in exile FM 98.1 station, the likes of Tambaryoh, who could have possibly been reporting for this station, were still prepared to make it an issue. I kept my cool but verbally lashed out at his provocation as a mere attempt to distract my attention from my professional work even with all my attempts to clarify the issue. Before I knew what was happening, Tambaryoh had roared at me with a punch that inflicted a severe cut on my mouth, which was by then oozing a lot of blood. Colleagues quickly came in and parted us. I was shocked because I did not have any inclination that it was going to develop to this. I asked why he had opted to take the law into his hands. I then rushed to the hospital for treatment before going to the police to report the matter. My decision to take the matter to the police was purely personal as I wanted to teach Tambaryoh a lesson that he must not take the law into his hands, and to demonstrate that, contrary to the message that was being communicated to the world at the time, there were still some law and order institutions like the police and judiciary that were still operational in Sierra Leone.

 After filing a case of aggravation causing bodily harm against Tambaryoh at the CID headquarters, a warrant of arrest was issued to go get him. The OC in charge then asked if I knew his residential address since by then he had temporarily closed his newspaper operations, I answered in the affirmative and agreed to show them. Contrary to the exaggerated version of two trucks of armed men executing the arrest warrant as reported in the Victor Sylva's article, only a small CID van with about 5 policemen carried it out brandishing the warrant of arrest. Here again Tambaryoh contradicted himself by saying in the CPJ alert that ‘one truck' of armed men instead of ‘two trucks' he referred to in Victor's article. This mix-up would only go to further expose the fabricated nature of the two versions.

 Moreover, as far as I know, he was not brutalised during the execution of the warrant, and when he was brought to the CID he was told that I had filed a case of aggravation causing bodily harm against him. No mention was made to him about any alleged subversion he had committed; at least not at this time. A statement was obtained from him before he was detained. Two days after his detention, the OC dealing with the matter called and asked whether I was going to continue with the charge against Tambaryoh, I then came and said I was dropping the matter because after all that had happened he was still my colleague. He was then released. The records are there at the CID for anybody who is interested to find out more. I did it in good faith although I am still carrying the scar of that cut on my mouth.

 And so this personal incident which had nothing to do with persecution must not in anyway be confused with any case of imprisonment for alleged subversion, if any, Tambaryoh might have suffered in the hands of the junta. I never served the AFRC junta in whatever capacity, not even as an adviser, to qualify me as a journalist who was fingering colleagues for persecution, and so I see no reason why I should deserve such an accusation. In fact I was also a victim of harassment because I remember receiving death threats from some of the junta honourables; I remember in particular a death threat I received from Tamba Gborie following my newspaper's coverage of human rights violations, including looting, carried out by some junta hooligans at the Iranian embassy in Freetown.

 In my second article of this Talk back series, coming shortly on this web site, which would be re-visiting the issues raised by Victor Sylva,  I would revisit some of the points I have raised here especially those relating to the so-called ‘looted vehicle' and  false accusations of fingering colleagues for persecution.