A Sierra Leonean Member of the ECOWAS Parliament has called on Guinea to return complete territorial ownership of the disputed town of Yenga to Sierra Leone. The small town in the eastern district of Kailahun has been a source of disagreement between the two countries for more than 20 years.
Saa Emerson Lamina, MP, was responding to the presentation of the Guinean Delegation’s Country Report at the Plenary of the ECOWAS Parliament on Tuesday 9 July.
The MP, who is a deputy House Majority Leader in the Sierra Leone Parliament, invoked Article 40 of the “Supplementary Act Relating to the Enhancement of the Powers of the ECOWAS Parliament” which connotes “External Relations and Parliamentary Diplomacy” by urging the Guinean delegation to influence their Government “to completely restitute territorial ownership of Yenga to the Government and people of Sierra Leone”.
He said Yenga, including the nearby Makona River which seems to naturally separate the two countries, was and remained part of Sierra Leonean territory.
He said that Guinea, as a sovereign state which respects international law, must allow Sierra Leone “to enjoy her sovereignty over the river and Yenga as established by the Britain and France, the two colonial powers.
"Our people in that part of our country have over a century-long traditional relationship with the Makona River as it provides them irrigation for farming, and other means of livelihoods including fishing and transportation across their family members resident in Guinea," Lamina stated, noting that over the last two decades since the end of Sierra Leone's civil war in 2002, the Guinean soldiers who had deployed in the area to serve as a buffer against any rebel incursion into their country, had “systematically transformed that security gesture into a means of harassment, bullying and violation of the fundamental rights of Sierra Leoneans on their own land”.
Yenga was an undisputed part of Sierra Leone until the RUF rebel war in 1991. The war intensified, prompting Guinea to send troops to back the Sierra Leone army. Guinea also deployed troops across the border to Yenga. But the country laid claim to the town and the river following the end of the war in 2002. Residents of the small town complained of harassments at the hands of Guinean troops who also stopped them from farming on the rich arable land.
After some diplomatic push by both then presidents Ahmad Tejan Kabbah and Ernest Bai Koroma, the area was demilitarized when Guinean troops pushed back and withdrew their armored tanks from the area.
However, recent reports from the area have spoken of renewed Guinean troop deployment in the area.
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