Athletes from war-torn Sierra Leone who went missing from the Commonwealth Games village phoned team officials and said they didn’t want to return, and the prime minister warned competitors on Friday that they could be treated as illegal immigrants if they tried to stay in Australia.
Commonwealth Games Federation officials said there was no consideration being given to banning countries with a history of having athletes go missing from the event, as the problem escalated at the Melbourne Games.
Sierra Leone team officials said on Friday two more of its competitors had gone missing from the athletes village, just hours after police confirmed nine others were absent in suspicious circumstances.
Half of Sierra Leone’s squad of 22 athletes were missing with three days of competition remaining.
Two other athletes, one from Bangladesh and one from Tanzania, also went missing several days ago.
Sierra Leone team attaché Robert Green said the latest athletes to go missing were two cyclists who telephoned their coach from outside the village late on Thursday. The coach urged them to return to the village and then Sierra Leone, telling them they had been granted scholarships and had a future in sport.
”The athletes said they were not prepared to come back to the village,” Green said.
The team and police have refused to identify the missing athletes, but Sierra Leone’s only cyclists are Alhassan Bangura, who finished last in the men’s individual time trial on Tuesday, and Mohamed Sesay, who was disqualified from the same event.
The Commonwealth Games paid airfares for the Sierra Leone team to come to Melbourne, and the cyclists were given new bikes.
Australian media identified boxers Gibrilla Kanu and Alie Kargbo as two competitors who left the village on Wednesday, the same day a group of seven others Sierra Leone athletes went missing.
Victoria-state police chief commissioner Christine Nixon said an investigation had been launched ”in Victoria and other states”, but police were mostly concerned about the athletes’ welfare at this stage, she said.
Games competitors were given special visas that allow them to stay in Australia until April 26. Police said the cases would become a matter for immigration authorities if the athletes overstayed.
Prime Minister John Howard said athletes who sought asylum would not be given special treatment.
”We don’t give blanket asylum to people who leave sporting teams visiting the country unless they have some bona fide reason, but it would have to be a bona fide reason,” Howard said in a radio interview.
”I don’t want any other athletes who might be thinking along those lines to imagine they will stay behind, it doesn’t work that way,” he said.
At the previous games in Manchester, 20 of the 30 athletes Sierra Leone failed to leave Britain as they were supposed to.
Bangladeshi and Pakistani athletes also went missing.
Mike Hooper, CEO of the Commonwealth Games Federation, said it was up to team officials from each country to keep track of their athletes.
”It’s a global community that we have. In the context of the size of events like Commonwealth Games and Olympic Games you are going to get these things happening,” Hooper said. ”As a percentage of the teams competing it is a small number of instances.”
Asked if the federation was concerned that the games may be being used as a springboard for asylum seekers, Hooper said: ”That is not something that we can address. We can’t impose conditions on anybody. It’s up to the proper authorities.”
Sierra Leone has a violently troubled history. Founded in the 18th century by black former British troops and freed slaves, it gained independence from Britain in 1961 and has been plagued by military coups and insurgencies ever since.
A decade-long civil war — one of the most brutal in Africa, with children forced into combat and rebels and government troops using terror to cow the civilian population — ended in 2002. The west African country remains mired in poverty. — Sapa-AP