By Eliasu Jalloh

I was born and raised in Sierra Leone, and for as long as I can remember, my identity as a Fulani has always been used against me. As children, we were bullied, mocked, and labelled as “Fullah G,” often followed by hateful chants and songs meant to humiliate and dehumanize us. We were taught by our parents to ignore it, to respond with love and patience, and to hold our heads high despite the pain. Most Fulani children in Sierra Leone carry these same scars, remnants of a childhood spent proving their worth in a place they called home.

But today, those painful childhood memories have returned with a vengeance, and the situation has escalated beyond bullying. It is heart-breaking to witness the systematic targeting of Fulani men, women, and children in Sierra Leone by authorities. People are being rounded up, loaded onto trucks like criminals, and told they are not citizens, told they do not belong in the very land they have lived in for generations. The justification? Retaliation for Guinea’s deportation of Sierra Leoneans a week ago. But what we are witnessing is far more sinister, a nation slipping down the treacherous slope of xenophobia and ethnic persecution.

History has shown us time and again what happens when governments allow ethnic targeting to go unchecked. Rwanda, Bosnia, Myanmar, and even Nazi Germany, these are nations that carry the horrific scars of ethnic hatred and cleansing. Each began with small, “justified” acts of discrimination, one group singled out, vilified, and stripped of their humanity. What began as exclusion, deportation, and marginalization quickly escalated into unspeakable horrors of genocide, mass displacement, and a collective trauma that generations still carry today.

In Rwanda, hate propaganda divided communities along ethnic lines, culminating in the 1994 genocide that claimed the lives of over 800,000 people in just 100 days. In Myanmar, the Rohingya, another marginalized ethnic group were denied citizenship, deported, and systematically massacred, leading to one of the largest refugee crises in modern history. In Germany, the Jews were first treated as outsiders, stripped of citizenship, and blamed for societal problems. What followed was the Holocaust, a dark stain on human history.

We are a country that has fought to rebuild itself after years of civil war. We know the value of peace and unity; we know the devastating cost of division. Yet today, by targeting the Fulani people, authorities are sowing the seeds of ethnic hatred and risking everything our nation has worked to achieve.

This is not justice. This is not patriotism. This is xenophobia, plain and simple. The Fulani people are not strangers in Sierra Leone. We are teachers, business owners, mothers, fathers, and children who have contributed to the fabric of this nation for generations. To strip us of our citizenship and humanity is to tear at the very heart of Sierra Leone’s unity.

Sierra Leone government this is your moment to act with integrity and justice. Stop the arbitrary arrests and deportations of Fulani people. Do not allow this dangerous rhetoric and behaviour to escalate. Remember that once a people are dehumanized and cast as “outsiders,” the road back is long and bloody.

Silence in the face of injustice is complicity. If we do not speak out now, we risk becoming bystanders to the same tragedies we read about in history books.

We cannot afford to walk the path of ethnic cleansing. The horrors of such actions leave wounds that never fully heal.