Mahamadou Ceesay of Garawol is dead. The nation should stop trivialising the very basis of its unity and cohesion as a nation. There can be no multi ethnic republic without building sovereign citizens.
At this very moment there is a wave throughout West Africa against traditional slavery. It is an undercurrent which if uncontained would create civil strife within ethnic groups. This is why when the incident occurred in Diabugu this paper called on those who are familiar with international law and the republican constitution within the Sarehule speaking community to build a movement to raise the awareness of their own families on the current realities about slavery. If human rights defenders take the task they will be accused of intrusion into the cultural lives of ethnic groups and would in fact be deemed to be inciters of civil strife. They may even be accused of being agents of those who are against tradition. Political figures may hesitate to comment because of fear of losing votes from either side of the ethnic spectrum.
Hence it is the educated within the Serahule linguistic (language) grouping who should read the provisions of Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 8 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 5 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, to enable family members understand when a system could survive and when its time has come to an end. Religions are surviving today because they accumulated some of the cultural practices that they found on the ground and then tried to change them through religious injunctions and practices. This is why certain religious injunctions of certain religions do require freeing slaves for failure to carry out religious obligations. This was a way of promoting the liberation of slaves. Such teachings should be relied on by the educated not only in English but also in Arabic to eradicate any tradition whose maintenance could lead to conflict.
