What really happened, "Cry Freetown"

I have hesitated a long time before publishing this item.  On our recent visit, one of our party who has visited many African countries, believed that Sierra Leone was different. She felt there was a spirit of anger just below the surface. This was confirmed by a man who runs a security company in the country. In seeking to minister to people, we couldn't escape the immense traumas they have gone through during the civil war, relatives killed or gone missing, homes and businesses destroyed. There is a film which tells of the days of the rebel attack on Freetown, called "Cry Freetown" by Sorious Samura. It is graphic. Maybe you should not watch it.

Sorious Samura was born in 1964 and is a Sierra Leonean journalist. He attended the Methodist Boys High School where we held the Sports Day, and self-funded the film "Cry Freetown", which depicts the most brutal period of the civil war in Sierra Leone when the RUF rebels captured much of the capital city on 6th January 1999. The film has won both Bafta and Emmy awards, and is credited with bringing the brutal nature of the war to world attention.

It was first shown on Channel 4 on 13th January 2000, a year after the events took place, under the title "Out of Africa", and showed graphic evidence of the atrocities being committed in Sierra Leone by both the rebels and  the Nigerian troops who, with the support of the West, were nominally acting as "peacekeepers". It was made before the decisive British intervention which brought the war to an end.

TV executives were concerned that the pictures - including executions of civilians, and soldiers beating a young boy - were "too shocking".

Ron McCullagh, who directed Samura's documentary, believes that television news treads a fine line between showing what is really going on and exposing its audience to unnecessary horrors. "It's reasonable to want to protect the audience but it can take us in a direction we don't want to go," he says, "Slowly, involuntarily, we'll end up with a sanitised version of history."

When it comes to Sierra Leone he argues that the barbarity there was "so extraordinary that people needed to see it to know what has been happening".

Martin Bell, who was a year ahead of me at the Leys School in Cambridge, had been a TV war reporter himself and  MP for Tatton when he wrote to Mr. McCullagh a fortnight after the film was shown.  "I wish to congratulate you on your film 'Out of Africa' and for your achievement in raising the important issue of truth in TV."

So watch it, if you think you should. Not comfortable, but it can help us to understand the trauma that so many still bear.

Part 1

 
Part 2


Part 3