Sierra Leone was represented at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne by a 35-member strong contingent comprising 22 sportspersons and 13 officials.
Sierra Leone was represented at the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne by a 35-member strong contingent comprising 22 sportspersons and 13 officials.
On 22 March 2006 it was reported that seven athletes from Sierra Leone (three women and four men) had gone missing from the Commonwealth Games village. A further seven Sierra Leonean athletes also went missing during the course of the Games, bringing the total runaway count to fourteen (two thirds of the team).
Victoria Police believed that they had fled to Sydney where the Sierra Leonean community is much larger than Melbourne's. Eleven athletes from other nations (Cameroon, Bangladesh and Tanzania) had also fled the village.
On request of Sierra Leone officials, the Commonwealth Games Federation cancelled the missing athletes' Games accreditation, allowing the Australian Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) to cancel their visas at midnight on Monday 27 March, and begin investigating their disappearance.
At 7.20am on that day, New South Wales Police located six of the Sierra Leonean athletes in a house at Harbord near Manly Beach in Sydney. All six indicated they wished to seek political asylum in Australia, and were granted bridging visas by DIMA while their refugee applications were arranged. The athletes claimed to have been subjected to violence and torture in their home country; seventeen-year-old Isha Conteh stated she could be forced into female genital cutting if she returned (ABC News).
The remaining missing Sierra Leone athletes eventually turned themselves in to immigration officials in Sydney. They were all granted bridging visas.
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Sierra Leone, officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, informally Salone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea to the northeast. Sierra Leone has a tropical climate with a diverse environment ranging from savanna to rainforests, a total area of 71,740 km2 (27,699 sq mi) and a population of 7,092,113 as of the 2015 census. The capital and largest city is Freetown. The country is divided into five administrative regions which are subdivided into sixteen districts.
The Commonwealth Games is an international multi-sport event involving athletes from the Commonwealth of Nations. The event was first held in 1930, and, with the exception of 1942 and 1946, has taken place every four years since then. The Commonwealth Games were known as the British Empire Games from 1930 to 1950, the British Empire and Commonwealth Games from 1954 to 1966, and British Commonwealth Games from 1970 to 1974. Athletes with a disability are also included as full members of their national teams, making the Commonwealth Games the first fully inclusive international multi-sport event. It is also the world's first multi-sport event which inducts equal number of women’s and men’s medal events and was implemented recently in the 2018 Commonwealth Games. With such unique features, the World Economic Forum called the event inspiring and significant.
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At the 2006 Commonwealth Games, the athletics events were held in Melbourne, Australia from 19 March to 25 March 2006. A total of 47 events were contested, of which 24 by male and 23 by female athletes. Furthermore, three men's and three women's disability events were held within the programme. All athletics events took place within the Melbourne Cricket Ground, while the marathon and racewalking events took place on the streets of Melbourne and finished at the main stadium.
Australian immigration detention facilities comprise a number of different facilities throughout Australia. They are currently used to detain people who are under Australia's policy of mandatory immigration detention. Asylum seekers detected in boats in Australian waters have been detained in facilities on the offshore islands of Nauru and Manus Island, previously under the now defunct Pacific Solution and under Operation Sovereign Borders.
Eunice Barber is a Sierra Leonean athlete competing in heptathlon and long jump. Barber initially competed for Sierra Leone and then for France from 1999 onwards. She won the heptathlon at the World Athletics Championships in 1999, the long jump in 2003 and finished second in heptathlon in 2003 and 2005.
Border Security: Australia's Front Line is an Australian factual television program that airs on the Seven Network. The show follows the work of officers of the Department of Home Affairs, Australian Border Force, and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service, as they enforce Australian immigration, customs, quarantine and finance laws. It also shows scenes from Sydney mail centre.
The Opening Ceremony of the 2006 Commonwealth Games was held on 15 March 2006 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The ceremony was conceived and produced by Jack Morton Worldwide
Mohamed Haneef is an Indian born doctor who was falsely accused of aiding terrorists, and left Australia upon cancellation of his visa amid great political controversy. His visa was later reinstated and he was given some compensation.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games, officially known as the XXI Commonwealth Games and commonly known as Gold Coast 2018, was an international multi-sport event for members of the Commonwealth that were held on the Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, between 4 and 15 April 2018. It was the fifth time Australia had hosted the Commonwealth Games and the first time a major multi-sport event achieved gender equality by having an equal number of events for male and female athletes.
Samuel Komba Kambo is a retired captain in the Republic of Sierra Leone Armed Forces. Kambo was one of six young soldiers in the Sierra Leonean Army that ousted president Joseph Saidu Momoh and the All People's Congress government on April 29, 1992.
Sierra Leone is a source, transit, and destination country for children and women trafficked for the purposes of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Trafficking within the country is more prevalent than transnational trafficking and the majority of victims are children. Within the country, women and children are trafficked from rural provinces to towns and mining areas for domestic servitude, sexual exploitation, and forced labor in diamond mines, petty trading, petty crime, and for forced begging. Women and children may also be trafficked for forced labor in agriculture and the fishing industry. Transnationally, Sierra Leonean women and children are trafficked to other West African countries, notably Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia, Nigeria, Guinea-Bissau, and The Gambia for the same purposes listed above and to North Africa, the Middle East, and Western Europe for domestic servitude and sexual exploitation. Sierra Leone is a destination country for children trafficked from Nigeria and possibly from Liberia and Guinea for forced begging, forced labor in mines and as porters, and for sexual exploitation. There have also been cases of children trafficked from refugee communities in Sierra Leone.
The 2015 Commonwealth Youth Games was the fifth Commonwealth Youth Games which started in 2000. They were held in Apia, the capital of Samoa. Samoa were the only bidders for the Games.
Warren Kanu is a Sierra Leonean football player, currently without a club.
Sierra Leonean Americans are Americans who are descended from Sierra Leoneans. The population of Sierra Leonean Americans is relatively large and consists, according to surveys of 2013, of 21,538 people. are descended also from Sierra Leonean slaves who were exported to the United States since the 18th until the early 19th century, so the number of people with that heritage should be much higher. So, the number of slaves from present Sierra Leone exported to present United States exceeded the 25.000 people. A peculiar group of people of partially Sierra Leonean descent in United States is that of the Gullah, who, descendants of slaves, fled their owners at the end of the 18th and early 19th century and they established in parts of South Carolina, Georgia, and the Sea Islands, areas in which, even today, they retain their cultures. Moreover, according to the American Community Survey, there are 34,161 Sierra Leonean immigrants living in United States.
Visitors to Sierra Leone must obtain a visa from one of the Sierra Leonean diplomatic missions unless they come from one of the visa exempt countries.
The British Overseas Territories (BOTs) maintain their own rules regarding immigration requirements different from the visa policy of the United Kingdom, but remain under its sovereignty. As a general rule, British citizen passport holders do not generally have automatic right of abode in these territories.
Australia competed at the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Queensland between 4 and 15 April 2018. It was Australia's 21st appearance at the Commonwealth Games, having competed at every Games since their inception in 1930. Australia previously hosted the Games four times – 1938 Sydney, 1962 Perth, 1982 Brisbane and 2006 Melbourne.
Jimmy Thoronka is a professional sprinter from Sierra Leone. He defected from his native country to live in England after competing in the 2014 Commonwealth Games. His mother and four siblings were killed by ebola, and he was arrested in March 2015 found living on the streets in London. He then had a legal battle with the government of the United Kingdom after his application to stay was rejected.
A number of notable controversies and concerns associated with the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia emerged which were the subject of public debate and media commentary.