By Kemo Cham
Frances Gassimu is desperately searching for justice. Her husband of over two decades suddenly decided to abandon her.
For the last 12 months, Frances has been taking care of their five children all by herself. Mohamed Gassimu only occasionally resurfaces to collect one or two household items which he allegedly takes to his new found love, with whom he has been staying.
“He doesn’t sleep with me. He says I am a prostitute,” Frances, 34, complained. She said she fears that her husband is not only intending to leave her, but also appears intent on taking along with him everything they worked for together in the last over 20 years of their marriage.
Frances’ greatest fear is losing her children. She said the man had already taken away two of their five kids. The oldest, 20, was taken without her knowledge. He only disclosed his location when she reported the matter to the police. Frances said he threatened to take the third child, a boy, who she currently relies on for help with raising his siblings.
Like many women in this southern region of Sierra Leone, Frances only relies on farming. In the dry season, she does gardening, proceeds from which she uses to take care of herself and her kids.
“I have suffered a lot. I want you to help me to get my right,” she pleaded.
Civil society activists say there are countless cases of this nature in the mining communities across Bonthe and Moyamba districts. Husbands suddenly abandon their wives when they have job with mining companies and soon realises that their women are no longer fit for them. Non-indigenous mine workers come to the communities pretending to be single, engage with local women only to impregnate them and disappear into thin air. In many cases it turns out they already have families were they come from. Foreign mine workers interfere with the wives of other jobless men, leading to many broken marriages. Rape is also very common.
According to rights campaigners, due to cultural and social factors, women facing abuse of all forms have become defenseless in the face of a culture of impunity perpetuated by the weakness of institutions that are meant to protect them. Sometimes, as in the case of Frances, the victims even become the culprit.
Whenever Mohamed Gassimu comes home, a fight is bound to ensue. In one occasion in March 2018, the confrontation led to his motor bike been damaged. According to Frances, she only tried to lean on the bike during an altercation when it fell. He reported the matter to the local police which summoned and detained her for a day, along with her four months old baby.
Frances was subsequently sentenced to one year by a magistrate in the circuit court in Gbangbatoke in nearby Moyamba District. Luckily for her, she had the option of paying a fine to avoid jail term. She had to part with Le850, 000 she’d gathered as part of her petty trading, she said. According to Frances, the court didn’t even allow her to say anything during the short trial.
Frances’ case was been championed by the Women’s Initiative Forum for Empowerment in Extractive (WIFEE), an organization which is based in Rutile and advocates for the rights of disadvantaged women and those facing abuse.
Augusta Nuwomah, Executive Director of WIFEE, said women are suffering a great deal of social problems resulting from the mining sector, like domestic violence by the husbands, rape by foreign mine workers, sexual penetration of underage girls and teenage pregnancy.
“We have a lot of children in this community who haven’t got father. We have a lot of women who have suffered rape. We have a lot of women who have been separated, are in broken homes, and are single parents,” she said.
She said the sad thing is that institutions that are meant to protect women from these abuses appear to be reneging in their responsibilities, citing in particular the court system where allegations abound of officials influencing the outcome of cases in exchange for money.
WIFEE has helped many women to get justice by pushing their matters when the courts attempted to slow them down. But, according to Augusta, in the last two years they have dealt with 10 cases, none of which were satisfactorily handled. She noted that there are indications that mine workers allegedly use their influence to buy justice. The activist added that sometimes these perpetrators openly boast about it to their victims.
“I have had multiple of that kind of complaints. They go to court and not get what they deserve,” said Augusta.
She explained that another way women victims lose their cases is due to protracted delay in hearings. After several adjournments, families, often barely making a living, run out of cash and discontinue the case by not turning up in court, forcing the magistrate to dismiss the matter.
The police often blame delay in such cases on family compromise. But activists say often this is as a result of the delay in investigation, which leaves the victims’ family frustrated after spending a lot of money in transportation and other related costs.
Victims say the police ask them for money for them to pursue a matter. Some women even complain of the courts officials treating them like second class citizens.
Frances, for instance, said she was humiliated in court when her husband sued her. She said the magistrate asked her to kneel down in court and beg the husband.
“Just like her case, this is similar thing women are going through. And it is why many of them don’t report experiences,” said Augusta.
WIFEE, in existence since 2013, is the first and only organization of its kind in the Rutile community. Augusta said she was motivated to form it after realizing that women either didn’t know where to report or had no place to report.
A spokesman for the Mine Workers Union in Rutile told Politico that they have never had in place a mechanism to take complaints of domestic and sexual violence against their members due to lack of capacity in doing so. But with the help of WIFEE, the union is hoping to change this status quo.
During the course of the last five years of their operations, she said they have identified several factors beyond the inefficiency of institutions in handling sexual ad gender based abused cases.
For instance, the issue of witness tampering points to the need for a ‘safe home’, she said. She noted that there are instances wherein the victims refuse to testify against the accused after the latter will have reached them and influence them in one way or the other.
Augusta also said due to extreme poverty, much of which is exacerbated by the operations of the mining companies, like land grabbing and joblessness, women have also become highly susceptible to abuse due to their own making. She explained that because the few indigenes [mostly men] who are employed by the mines are taken on casual basis, they can hardly provide enough to keep the family intact, hence the reason for the women to seek redress through unacceptable means like dating men with jobs at the mines.
“When you have a home where the father manages it with little, it is always chaos in the home,” said the activist.
Mariama Hassan, a women’s rights campaigner in Junttionla Village, is very familiar with this experience of living with nothing. She said many house wives have been abandoned by their husbands due to unending suffering caused by poverty. She said because of this many of them are tempted to give in to the advances of men who work in the mines, from whom they end up getting disappointment.
“Even myself, if I go to sell my cassava in the Moriba community and a man working for the company proposes to me, I am going to accept. It is difficult to deny,” she said.
© 2019 Politico Online
