18 April 2008
Witnesses and "victims" in Buchanan in Grand Bassa County and Voinjama in Lofa County said NPFL commanders subjected them to inhumane treatment including cannibalism, a TRC press statement said here Wednesday.
Militiamen loyal to former President Charles Taylor forced civilians to eat human flesh and dogs after they massacred scores of civilians in 2003 in Popalahum, Lofa County, a witness told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
25 year-old Siafa Amadu said government fighters under the command of Zigzag Mazzah and one Stanley fed the town's inhabitants with dogs and human flesh and threatened to kill anyone who refused to eat them.
"When they killed dogs and human beings they used to force us to eat them. If you failed to eat the dogs and human beings they cooked, they will kill you. So we were forced to eat what they gave us, he explained.
Amadu said during repeated onslaughts of rebel fighters of the defunct Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) on the towns and villages of Kolahun District, government fighters massacred hundreds of villagers and inhabitants accusing them of being sympathizers of the advancing rebels or Muslims.
He said the civilians including his father were slaughtered by the fighters and survivors were given their flesh to feed on or be killed by the government fighters. He explained that Mazzah and his men dismembered the bodies of victims by extracting parts including their hearts, legs and hands and then piled their remains in a house and burned them.
Amadu was testifying Wednesday at the ongoing rural public hearings of the TRC in Voinjamin City, Lofa County. He narrated that government fighters killed 33 inhabitants of Kailahun Town and left the bodies in the open to rot.
He said the decomposed bodies of the dead were buried when fighters of LURD overwhelmed government troops and briefly captured the town. The witness said he was compelled to join LURD rebel forces in their military campaign against the Taylor government because most of his relatives were killed.
The 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.
The TRC mandate is to also 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."
At the same time, a witness told commissioners of Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Buchanan this week that popular musician "Sundaygar Dearboy" ordered the killing of her son in 1994 when rampaging fighters of the defunct National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) under his command captured the town of Sagbah, Grand Bassa County.
Weeping profusely while testifying recently at rural public hearings in the port city of Buchanan, Grand Bassa County, the witness, Madame Tohn Suah said Michael Davis ordered fighters to tie her son before they slaughtered him on the outskirt of the town.
"So they took us to one town call Sagbah town. When we got there, they started singing one song that means: that place is hot, don't put your self there. They had their commander call Michael Davis. He said they should tie my son. When they tied him, I started crying. Even his father wanted to talk, they started putting fire on him," she explained.
"So they carry my son. We were sitting down and one boy came and asked: oldma how many children you got? I say I get three children. Then the boy said, your son they carried, they not finish killing him," the distressed mother continued.
Madame Suah said the fighter later displayed the cutlass used to slaughtered her son after she disputed the story of his death, saying, "I asked him if that true you talking so? He said here is his blood here on the cutlass. I wanted to cry but the soldiers said if I cried they will kill me."
She said one of her nieces bled profusely to death after the fighters' gang raped her. The witness said when the fighters captured the town they assured inhabitants that they had come to redeem them, but no sooner they separated the men from the women and started raping the women.
"They took the men from us. They put them in the artic and they put fire under it with pepper. Then they started sleeping with our daughters them. I had one of my daughters with me, who was sick, and they wanted to sleep with her, I say she is sick oh, but they still raped her," she explained.
The 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.
The TRC mandate is to also 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."
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Analyst. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
