28 March 2008
It has been revealed by a victim that fighters of the defunct Liberia Peace Council (LPC) ordered a captive to eat human grease after they massacred scores of people in the town in Kanweaken, a witness recently told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Elizabeth Brownell, 34, said the fighters of George Boley's LPC went on a macabre killing spree on May 7, 1995 after they captured Kanweaken District from forces of the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL).
Testifying during rural public hearings in the provincial capital of Fish Town, River Gee County, Elizabeth said on that day alone the fighters killed uncountable numbers of civilians in her village including her entire family. She said during the killings the fighters smashed babies dead and did not even spared the elderly.
"While I was looking they killed my three years old daughter. They also killed my brother and killed my mother and while she was shouting my step mother came and they killed her," the witness told a bewildered crowd at the jam packed Fish Town City Hall.
Elizabeth said at the time of the killings she was pregnant explaining that they also killed her seven years old daughter warning her that if she cried they will also kill her. Elizabeth: "While two of my kids were crying and coming shouting don't kill us they killed the two of them with an axe and there was an old woman and she said before they kill her she wanted to say her prayer and after that they killed her."
In another village, the witness explained, the fighters massacred all of the remaining inhabitants after others fled into the forest. At that point, Elizabeth narrated, she and her sister-in-law were held hostage by the rampaging fighters who stripped them entirely naked as they traveled with them on the killing spree.
"They took me and my brother's wife and when we reach, the people there escaped. They killed all those they met and they stripped us nicked as we were born and put the houses on fire. They tied us and said when the fire goes off they will untie us and when it went off we were untied."
She said they traveled with the fighters to another town were 18 inhabitants were killed adding that the fighters threw a three months old baby away.
"I asked them to give me load so that they will not kill me and they said I will not die and they took five of us from there and took us to another town and they give us human grease to eat. I refused to eat it and they said they will kill me.
I said they should kill me and I said my prayers and the next day they took us to the water side and they called my brother's wife and they said today you are finish and they killed her. She was killed with another woman leaving only three of us," the witness stunned the audience.
She named her massacred relatives as Even Chea, Victor Chea, Lucy Chea, Hard-time Teh, Cecelia Teh, Precious Teh, Toe Teh, Jefferson Teh, Juty Teah, Patricia Toe, David Toe, Gerald Chea and Doris Wah, amongst others.
TRC is an independent body set up to investigate the root causes of the Liberian crisis, document human rights violations, review the history of Liberia, and put all human rights abuses that occurred during the period from 1979 to 2003 on record.
TRC mandate will identify victims and perpetrators and make recommendations on amnesty, prosecution and reparation. The public hearings are being held under the theme: "Confronting Our Difficult Past For A Better Future."
Her claims could not be independently verified but massacres were commonplace during the course of the Liberian conflict. According to reports, litany of massacres almost occurred in all of the 15 counties of the country.
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