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The
Golden Rule I
-The
Mark of Cain
Thursday,
May 31, 2007
By
Mulbah K. Morlu, Jr,
On
24th December 1989, as Liberians prepare for the
rapturous delight characterizing Christmas celebration, a
tragic page that was to unveil one of humanity’s
darkest chapters in history, was about to read. Many
had shopped as usual and jubilant kids hurried to
their peers displaying whatever the salaries of their
daddies had afforded in getting them ready for the
public conviviality and wassail sure to follow the
next day.
Liberians had lived like this
from time immemorial, enjoying a relatively peaceful
atmosphere, though the usual life’s challenges
remained. Traditionally, the few radio stations
available would fill the airwaves with jingo bells and
other songs of joy befitting the holiday. But,
everything was about to take a different trend, a
negative paradigm shift. And it did. On December 24th,
1989, towering far above the whispering echoes of the
Christmas lyrics was the BBC broadcast of the voice of
a man, Charles Taylor, whose determination to disrupt
the civil stability, peace and democracy of the
Liberian state proved itself months later.
Now that the entire country got dragged
into the concoctions and whims of unscrupulous
military campaigners disguised as “freedom
fighters”, the aftermath failed to observe the rule
of law, respect for international humanitarian law,
adherence to the principles enshrined in various
international protocols governing arms aggression,
etc. Quite to the contrary, the vices and excesses
that was said to have motivated the employ of such
military activity cross-multiplied to reproduce a
blood bath unparallel in the history of Liberia.
Massacres, raping, maiming and the hacking off of
innocent people’s limbs, ethnic cleansing, pillaging
of resources, looting, summary executions and various
other international abuses that could be amounted to
war crimes, crimes against humanity, the crime of
genocide and the crime of aggression, took center
stage.
The
ignominious and diabolic aftermath of Liberia in the
hands of the “liberators” is a scene too
horrifying to capture the imagination of any artist.
For the first time, though unfortunately, evil
geniuses and scalawags seized upon the time to launch
Liberia into a “lake of fire”. There has been no
time like it before in Africa’s oldest independent
state. There were surpluses everywhere; depravity,
heinousness, unpropitiousness, extreme criminality and
accompanying vices seemed to be crossbreeding at
astronomical speed. Children were thought the killing
game to mastery, and for some, their own fathers
suffered prey when their skulls were battered with
brains dished out for refreshment.
Whole villages and towns crumbled under
the weight of bandits and thugs running around in wigs
and makeshift wears, as though recruited from
Satan’s capitol to punish the masses for their
unquestionable submission to authority over a hundred
and forty three years
time span. The personality of evil grew so tall that
some thought Liberia was a selected state for the
unleashing of demoniac torturers foretold in the Bible
under the caption of “the great tribulation”.
Churches and mosques were desecrated and
despoiled as the remains of butchered bodies were
common scenes. A dead woman’s body hung from a
Lutheran Church window with brains scattered
everywhere, while her baby cried tied to her back
after a massacre of over 600 innocent people. A two-year
old boy’s stomach was ripped open during a butcher
practice in the Monrovia suburb of Duport Road; a
hundred other bodies were discovered burned, severely
chopped to pieces or, badly mutilated.
The
Tellewoyan hospital inVoinjama diametrically served as
the roasting room for almost two hundred innocent
people, mostly women and children accused of loyalty
to a warring party; they were taken hostage, jailed in
the hospital and the building set ablaze. The anguish
of those innocent women and children, their cries of
indescribable pains from the furnace of consuming
fire, the agony of dying at the hands of one's own
brother and sister, such torment, torture and
affliction must awaken in us a new consciousness for
justice.
I could go on and on detailing the
egregious climate that engulfed Liberia for 14 years,
leading to some of the most sinister acts man has ever
seen. I could speak on the Sinje massacre where
countless persons were chopped like goats being
prepared for a feast; I could unravel details about
the U.N compound massacre of over a hundred poor souls
exterminated right under the shadow of the United
Nations flag; I could even have a 16 year old boy take
his turn in testimony, a survival of a systematic
massacre of over 600 helpless souls in Carter
Camp.
Or I
could recount the shelling of Monrovia during “World
War III” leaving behind limbs detached from their
bodies and babies separated from their unrecognizable
slain mothers. I could discuss the plunder and looting
of the state by schismatic burglars and furtive
criminals whose coiffeurs overflow with valuables
stolen from our national treasury. I could also go
back to the beginning and tell you how it all started.
I can tell you because the cast-blame-debate has been
on for long and those masterminds and hatchers of the
collapse of the state have been throwing blames and at
the same time erecting bulwarks around themselves to
stay clear from the hodgepodge. In the process,
truths, contradictions and enormous historical
resources have come up to the advantage of the serious
fact-finder.
However, a few of the pioneers of doom and disorder in the
Liberian affairs have submitted to their conscience by
confessing their roles. Whether those confessions
totalize their sincere involvement or not, at least,
some one has accepted responsibility, a good start.
For others, a self-righteous approach is indulged and
not even the torment of an inner conviction will do
though the flotsam and jetsam of a collapse state
points to individuals that cannot escape identity. Not
even the thickest curtain of darkness is sufficient
enough to veil their faces from national recognition.
These are the ones that obstreperously speak out the
loudest on this “human right” and that “human
right” while they protect the skeletons in their own
wardrobe. But our own archive is replete with the evil
chronicles of these phlebotomists, bamboozlers and
pseudo-manometers that brought our nation down to a
new low.
This
is Liberia anyway, the land where the wicked can form
a cheering squad and the incorrigible misperceive
justice a witch-hunting process. If such a mentality
is not challenged, alas, the Liberian crisis goes in
circle unabated! In fact, it is non compos mentis to
think that the deaths of more than three-hundred
thousand innocent people will pass off into the abyss
of nothingness under the guise of “let’s move
forward and forget the past”.
The fact is that Liberia can never be rebuilt on the blood of innocent
and systematically slain war victims without their
true killers, at least, accepting the apportionment of
their roles in the annihilation process.
I
could tell you more on the Liberian terror. The
various nefarious operations and how they started,
right from the inauguration of the vampire crusade. It
was a crusade whose incipience saw key players quite
visible on the political stages giving military
orders. They wanted power. They got it, each according
to his or her turn. Through all this self-indulging
power chess, the ransom for ascendance remained the
same; hundreds of thousands of slain innocent babies,
women and children.
For those who rebelled against the state and now seemed to be enjoying
power, the carcass of innocently slain war victims is
proverbially embedded in every stair used to climb the
offices.14 years back had seen intense lobbies,
campaigns and hustles for guns for the one reason of
killing others so they (liberators) might live and
govern.
And
now, after more than 14 years of extreme mayhem and
barbarity upon the peaceful people of Liberia, many
are shying away from the history they actively help
create when power was all that matter then, not the
people. Charles Taylor, the one man amongst many that
Liberia and Liberians will never forget for dragging a
whole generation down the drain of wretchedness,
commanded the fighting men or, the desperados. But he
was not alone. Charles Taylor and his men, being
messengers, had external actors pulling the power
trigger as rivers back home overflow with the influx
of the blood of the innocent.
These
are the full truths I am set to decipher and to give a
prophetic forecast of what may happen to Liberia if
our past actions are not reconciled with our present
endeavors. Under that burden, I am convinced that
there must be no hiding place for political monsters
and yesteryears’ insurgents who must accept their
fair share in bearing the greatest responsibility for
the Liberian nightmare. These are the crimes that
weigh heavier than the victims they are inflicted
upon. They don’t just render the past a scarring
ghostly abyss full of innocent dead corpse with
spirits starring at us with the high expectation of
the transparence of justice, but equally creates a
bleak future for Liberia which foundation runs weak in
the absence of justice and the rule of law.
Truly, our failure to prioritize and pursue justice
for the innumerable victims of our nightmare brings us
in partnership with those who butchered them for
power. And every time I am in reminiscence of the
Liberian tragedy, the words of a poet come to mind:
“…Those
who would gain by others' grief In the name of
freedom, and allocate the Earth's abundance to
themselves, and allow the marketplace to starve
children; those who would lavish lives for the sake of
climbing the ladder that gives men power; those
who would see such things happen and do nothing; the
mark of Cain is on them, and on their followers, and
on their generations; forever”
Mulbah K. Morlu, Jr. can be reached at godsprince2001@yahoo.com. Cell: 002316626209.
He resides in Sinkor, Monrovia-Liberia and
Teshie Nungua Estates, Accra-Ghana, and is
Chairman of the Forum for the Establishment of a
war Crimes Court in Liberia.
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