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Text File | 1994-06-01 | 22KB | 412 lines

<text> <title> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992: Liberia </title> <article> <hdr> Human Rights Watch World Report 1992 Africa Watch: Liberia </hdr> <body> Human Rights Developments The widespread killing and brutality associated with Liberia's civil war have subsided since the November 1990 cease-fire. (The war in Liberia began in late December 1989 and gathered momentum throughout most of 1990. The conflict began in Nimba County, in the northeast, where Charles Taylor's forces attacked. The Liberian army responded with a brutal counterinsurgency campaign, killing civilians indiscriminately, burning villages, looting and raping. The victims were primarily members of the Mano and Gio ethnic groups. Doe's government was particularly hostile toward these groups because Thomas Qwiwonkpa, a former general from Nimba county who led an abortive coup in 1985, was a Gio. In the aftermath of the coup attempt, Doe's soldiers engaged in bloody reprisals against real and suspected opponents, targeting mostly Gios and Manos, an ethnic group closely related to the Gios. As war resumed in 1989 and 1990, all sides to the conflict committed egregious human rights abuses.) However, the human rights situation in Liberia continues to be marked by abuses ranging from extrajudicial killing and torture to restrictions on freedom of movement and intolerance of dissent. These violations are particularly evident in the ninety percent of the country controlled by Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), but civilians are also victimized by Prince Johnson's Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) and by former President Samuel Doe's army, the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL). The country remains divided among these three armed factions and the ECOMOG peacekeeping force. (ECOMOG, or the Economic Community Monitoring Group, includes forces from five countries of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS): Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. ECOMOG entered Liberia as a peace-keeping force on August 24, 1990, but soon took on an offensive role against Taylor's NPFL. ECOMOG sought to neutralize Taylor's troops, install an interim government and organize free elections.) Only the interim government led by Amos Sawyer, which governs the capital of Monrovia but has no army, has not been responsible for human rights abuses. Civilians in NPFL territory, which covers all of Liberia except the capital, no longer face the atrocities of all-out war. Nevertheless, they suffer the capricious actions associated with a military occupation--arbitrary arrest, physical abuse, confiscation and destruction of property, and restrictions on freedom of movement and expression. Underlying these problems is the perception among NPFL "fighters" that they are a law onto themselves. Many of them are young, undisciplined and unpaid. While security in a given area depends largely on the discipline exercised by the local commander, individual fighters have considerable latitude to arrest, detain, extort, threaten and sometimes injure civilians. Incidents of arbitrary arrest and restrictions on civilians' movements are particularly evident at NPLF checkpoints when civilians attempt to travel to or from NPFL territory. To move between Monrovia and the interior of the country, a special pass must be obtained from the NPFL. Liberian civilians have a particularly difficult time obtaining these passes. Many civilians attempting to travel to Monrovia complain of beatings, detention and harassment by fighters, and some have been forced to turn back. Out of desperation, some Liberians attempt to make it to Monrovia on bush roads. Others arrange to pay fighters significant sums of money to take them on these roads. In June, for example, a twenty-year-old man paid a fighter to take him from Kakata to Monrovia. The fighter turned him in to NPLF authorities at Mt. Barclay, in the buffer zone between NPFL territory and ECOMOG-controlled Monrovia, claiming that the man had been engaging in "reconnaissance." (It is fairly common for NPFL fighters to charge civilians with "reconnaissance," a blanket charge which means that they are suspected of spying on the NPFL, usually in the service of ECOMOG.) The young man was jailed for about two days before being released because another fighter happened to know him. He was detained again almost immediately by the same fighter who had arrested him, but managed to escape with the assistance of a woman fighter. Ethnic conflict, one of the tragic legacies of the Doe regime, remains a live issue, particularly in Grand Gedeh county, which is populated largely by the Krahn ethnic group. As recently as late July, fighting continued between the NPFL and a Krahn resistance movement. Civilians were subjected to abuses by the NPFL reminiscent of the fighting in 1990, including indiscriminate killings, targeting of Krahn and Mandingo people, burning of villages and widespread looting. These violations were particularly evident in July during an NPFL offensive on Zia Town, on the eastern border of Grand Gedeh county. Although difficult to document, human rights violations have also been attributed to the Krahn resistance. (The composition of these forces is not definitively known. Many are former soldiers of the AFL, but others appear to be recent recruits from the civilian population.) Prince Johnson and the INPFL remain armed on their base at Caldwell, on the outskirts of Monrovia. They have been responsible for summary executions, arbitrary arrest and physical abuse of civilians in the Caldwell area. In late July and early October, Johnson ordered summary executions of at least six and possibly up to nine fighters and civilians. The interim government, lacking any troops, is effectively powerless to exert control over Johnson, since he does not recognize its authority. ECOMOG has avoided using force against Johnson, since it would lead to renewed fighting. The AFL soldiers remain armed in their base at the Barclay Training Center and at Camp Schiefflin, and are themselves responsible for abuses against civilians in Monrovia, including looting, beating and harassment of civilians. Civilians are particularly fearful of these soldiers, who were closely associated with Doe's brutal reign. On June 5, for example, AFL soldiers attacked Sando Wayne, an assistant minister of the interim government--beating him, breaking his arm and knocking him unconscious--apparently because he was driving one of Doe's old cars. Liberia's conflict has already spilled into neighboring countries in the form of some 750,000 refugees--a third of Liberia's pre-war population--who have fled to Guinea, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone and Ghana, among other countries. According to the U.S. State Department's Refugee Bureau, (Testimony of Princeton N. Lyman, director of the Bureau for Refugee Affairs, before the House Subcommittee on African Affairs, July 16 1991.) as of July 1991 there were an estimated 227,500 Liberians in the Ivory Coast, 342,000 in Guinea, (The UNHCR estimates that since July an additional 100,000 refugees have entered Guinea from Sierra Leone, making the total number of refugees in Guinea over 400,000.) 6,000 in Ghana, and smaller numbers in Nigeria, Gambia and Mali. There had been some 125,000 Liberians in Sierra Leone, but after a March incursion by the NPFL, the number of Liberian refugees there was reduced to 10,000. Liberians continue to leave their country because of ongoing insecurity, though in much smaller numbers. There are also hundreds of thousands of displaced persons within the country. Monrovia has swollen to almost double its pre-war size, with an estimated population today of at least 800,000. Combat has been waged recently on the Sierra Leone border between the NPFL and the Sierra Leone military, which is allied with a Krahn-based Liberian resistance group known as the United Liberation