HARPER (TRC)?Fighters of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL)
massacred scores of ethnic Mandingos and Krahns in the town of Kanweaken, River
Gee County, after they captured the area, a witness told Commissioners of
Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in Harper, Maryland County.
Robert S. K. Freeman, was among 13 witnesses who testified Wednesday at the
ongoing hearings of the TRC at the Harper
City Hall.
"After the killings, the whole place was filled with dead bodies. Most of
them were Mandingos, because most of the Krahn people had left by then. Then
one of them asked, ?Are there any of those people around here?' I asked, ?Which
people?' He said, ?the Krahns and the Mandingos.' I said, No, there are no
Krahns and Mandingos around here. We are Grebos.' He said, ?If we catch any
Mandingo and Krahn we will kill all of you,'" Freeman revealed.
He said the fighters executed his brother and children because his fianc?e
was an ethnic Krahn. "It was on Sunday and my brother came from Zwedru. He was
a student there and had a Krahn girl with two children. Then somebody said just
because of that Krahn girl business they kill your brother. I went there ,and I
saw them on the ground dead," he explained.
Another witness, Blind Denedi Walker, age 60, said fighters of the NPFL
tortured him and urinated all over his body after capturing his village.
"Since the revolution, I have always been on my farm, because when war was
fighting, we had nowhere to seek refuge but to go on the farm and hide. So
while we were on the farm, I saw somebody who came and started pushing me and
said, ?What do you have in the village?' He said, ?If you don't show it to me,
you will see.' I was afraid and I took him to my sugarcane mill. He said, ?Oh,
so that is what you are doing here.' Then he rake my feet, threw me on the
ground and he started to pepe all over my body and he was torturing me," the
witness explained in colloquial English.
Also testifying, Toe Derricks claimed fighters of the Liberia Peace Council
(LPC) killed his uncle, Klah Martin, and brother Warchu in the town of Wechoken
when the rebels went on a killing spree.
Toe also accused NPFL fighters who previously controlled Grand
Gedeh County
of commandeering his vehicle and threatening to kill him.
One of Thursday's primary witnesses, Martha Maya Toe said fighters of the
NPFL killed all of her children in Kaloken after they discovered they were
ethnic Krahns.
"When the war started in 1990, we were in Kaloken when people started
running into the bush. We were there for a whole month. Me and my children were
there and one man say, ?You are keeping Krahn woman here.' So from that time, we
started running again. Then my children wanted to go in town, and I said, ?No,'
and one man and his wife said that we must go in town. I agreed to go in town
so they can't come look for me. So that is the place I was when they catch all
my children and kill them," the distressed mother explained.
She named some of the dead victims of the NPFL as Samie Harris, Alex Diah,
Charlie Toe and Samie Dugba.
Narrating her war experiences, Sarah Wesseh said fighters of the LPC killed
her husband and two brothers.
"During the war when the LPC entered our town and as we tried to escape,
they killed my two brothers," she explained.
After the fighters left, Sarah said, another group of fighters entered the
town, looted her husband's house and severely flogged him, resulting in his
death.
