Cotton Tree News - Fondation Hirondelle/Fourah Bay College - Freetown, Sierra LeoneNdeke Luka Cotton Tree News - Fondation Hirondelle/Fourah Bay College - Freetown, Sierra LeoneFondation Hirondelle

A two-day community reconciliation ceremony has been held in Tar-wei village, Mandu Chiefdom in the Kailahun District.

The Forum of Conscience organized the ceremony through its Fambul Tok project. Chief Alpha Dorleh, the Kailahun Town Chief and the District's Chairman of Fambul Tok, told CTN that the ceremony was to settle grievances between perpetrators and victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone. Chief Dorleh said the ceremony provided the opportunity to perpetrators to openly testify their atrocities committed in the district against their victims. He said Kailahun was one of the districts where most of the atrocities during the war were perpetrated. He said bitterness among the people in the district, still persisted even after the official end of the war in 2002. Chief Dorleh said the Fambul Tok project had been mediating to reconcile people for lasting peace and development in the district. He said the project had undertaken similar programmes in other parts of the country. Several victims and perpetrators who testified at the ceremony were reconciled. The Ceremony was climaxed by the recitation of the Quran and the traditional pouring of Libation.