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Two
down, many more to arrest
Tuesday,
April 11, 2006
By Tewroh-Wehtoe Sungbeh
The
last time the Liberian nation was constantly in the
news for all the wrong reasons was almost 26 years
ago, when our generation experienced a military coup
d' tat and that heinous public execution that would
later alter the history of our country.
The assassination of a president and the
execution of a dozen or more public officials brought
us bad publicity, didn’t do us any good then and
now, ensnarled our beloved nation into a series of
rebel activities, ignorance, abject poverty, and
further increased our appetites for more violence
years later.
So it is not bad at all now when one turns on
the radio, the television, read the newspapers, go on
the internet or hear from friends about the change in
leadership in a country that has suffered tremendously
over the years from the obvious lack of a good,
capable and positive leader who inspires an entire
nation – the young and old and encourages them to
dream big, to live and do good things for
themselves.
It is not bad publicity also when the global
news of the day is about arresting Charles Taylor;
because his arrest and eventual prosecution sends a
clear message to tyrants and warlords everywhere that they too
could be arrested if they behave just like Mr. Taylor
did when he was a rebel leader and president of
Liberia.
 Charles
Taylor (in handcuffs) Sekou Conneh
Prince
Johnson
Alhaji Kromah
We paid a hefty price for the cruelty and
destruction of our country after the coup and that
senseless civil war, and lived the horrific ordeals
for over two decades as our nation and people suffered
the consequences of incompetence, corruption,
arrogance, neglect, mismanagement and a failed
leadership that couldn’t inspire its weary citizens
but led them close to extermination.
We are still fighting the demons of the
post-coup years of Samuel Kanyon Doe and his gang of
16; the demons of the failed interim governments, the
recklessness of the opportunistic trio, the
self-imposed leaders - Alhaji Kromah, Oscar Quiah and
George Boley, who also occupied the Executive Mansion
briefly as vice chairmen of that infamous council of
criminals, and also the other notoriously inept former
rebel leaders and Charles Taylor, all of whom let us
down miserably.
The recent arrest of Charles Taylor for war
crimes and the arrest of his son, Chuckie, reminds us
that no one is above the law, and that we are all
accountable for our good and bad actions. And if a
person is ever found guilty of oppressing another
human being because of that person’s fortunate
position in life, he or she would be held liable and
prosecuted for such abuse.
Taylor’s arrest also shows another Liberian
leader who couldn’t prove his critics wrong, yet
missed an opportunity to make a difference in the
lives of his people.
The Taylor doctrine of armed warfare as a means
of acquiring state power brought us sleepless nights
and unpleasant days. That cruel adventure didn’t
only killed and starved innocent Liberians, it
separated them, kept them “behind the line,” from
their families and robbed us all of our rights to see
or hear from our loved ones who were reduced to
objects in their own country.
The other armed rebel leaders who joined Mr.
Taylor at the other end of the war were no better than
the devil they opted to oust. Those individuals, as
callous as they were, however, promoted their own
selfish ambitions at the expense of the entire
population.
And together with their surrogates, they
harassed, intimidated, killed, raped, maimed and stole
whatever natural resources they got their hands on in
a senseless war that benefited only them.
When their captors finally emancipated them
from behind the line, those Liberians that made it
alive scrambled and quickly call relatives and friends
abroad for that much needed financial help to buy
food, to buy clothes and medicine – or they just
wanted money at the moment to go to the clinic and
seek medical care, since their oppressors cared only
about using them as human shields and a bargaining
chip in their political/war games, than actually
treating them like human beings.
Those were anxious days we just cannot forget.
Are we capable of ever forgiving the killers? Maybe,
or maybe not, depending on whom one’s talking to
because the afflicted deals with pains and tragedies
differently.
It has been some very tough years since those
painful days when we Liberians cried and couldn’t
cry anymore because we used up all the tears, and
didn’t have enough to shed again for the conditions
of our people and the country we loved dearly.
We’ve come a long way, cried for too long and
always wished for the day Mr. Taylor and the rest of
the criminals would finally be arrested, put on trial
and jailed (with the keys thrown into the Atlantic
Ocean) for the crimes they committed against our
country, our people and us.
Charles Taylor is now sitting in a jail in
Sierra Leone, which is good news, while his son
Charles Jr., is now sitting in a Miami, Florida jail
for falsifying his passport application. How long
Chuckie will remain in prison? I don’t know.
However, some of the other former warlords are
in Monrovia working; some are living abroad enjoying
their stolen wealth, while few of their key
lieutenants are barred from traveling out of the
country. Is it fair that the Taylors are now sitting
in prison while the other warlords are roaming freely
and behaving as if they are innocent bystanders who
couldn't kill a fly?
It is true that Charles Taylor agitated the
armed rebellion, but he did not fight the war all by
himself. Justice will be served only when all the
known warlords/criminals are arrested, put on trial
and prosecuted for their roles in the Liberian civil
war.
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