Ahmad Abdul Sesay is originally from Freetown in the western part of Sierra Leone. He was born into an extended family that is deeply rooted in traditional African practices. He is the last child in a family of four and has a family of three, a daughter and a nephew.
For many years, he has been a staunch opponent of female genital mutilation (FGM), which is very prevalent in Sierra Leone. He is among the few men in our community who stood side by side with women’s non-governmental organizations to sensitize locals about the dangers of FGM, locally referred to as Bondo. Because of his bold advocacy, his sisters and children were always harassed for initiation by the traditionalists normally referred to as “soweis.”.
On 23rd November 2019, while he was attending an FGM conference organized by the non-governmental organization Secret Societies and Women’s Access to Justice, Sierra Leone, his daughter was forcefully grabbed from his family home and taken to the initiation hut, where the FGM procedure was meant to occur. Friends of his daughter immediately informed him about the initiation. He used a motorcycle and went straight to the FGM initiation hut, where his daughter was in a queue waiting to go through the process. He fought his way through, got his daughter out, and escaped to Lunsar, in the northern part of Sierra Leone.
Breaking through and entering the FGM initiation hut by a male is forbidden. His actions to prevent his daughter from being initiated drew the ire of the male-affiliated group of the Bondo called the ‘Soko’ society, who raided and ransacked his family house. Ever since, his family had been on the run. Because the ‘Sokos’ are all over Sierra Leone, it is very difficult for him to stay in Sierra Leone. They instituted a manhunt across the country, and even though the police negotiated for them to find a resolution, they refused. To them, it is a taboo to challenge these barbaric traditional practices, let alone to break into an initiation hut while the process is ongoing.
In Sierra Leone, campaigners against secret societies or harmful traditional practices have received death threats, and some even have their houses burnt down because of their work. Some reporters have been threatened, while some have actually stopped talking about secret societies, since the police are seeing it as a no-go area. Some people have been forced to go into hiding, including the young activist Ahmad Abdul Sesay, who is still on the run for his life.
