An ex Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL) Chief of Staff ended his testimony to Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) with a call for the erection of a national memorial in honor of those who lost their lives during the country's turbulent past.
Retired Lieutenant General Henry Dubar recommended that a single memorial be erected for those who died so that Liberians can collectively assemble there on "Memorial Day" and remember all the dead.
"I will like to recommend to government to erect one memorial for everybody that died, so that every "Memorial Day" we can go there and carry flowers instead of one set of people," Lt. Gen. Dubar who was chief of staff during the reigns of the Peoples' Redemption Council (PRC) military junta and the civilian regime of slain President Samuel K. Doe said.
He apologized to Liberians for all those who died since the 1980 coup to the civil war years.
Dubar said when he was appointed chief of staff he wanted to reject the post but accepted it for fear of his life. "I was in Grand Gedeh when they called and appointed me. I wanted to reject the position but I was afraid, that I would have been haunted had I not accepted it," he said.
He said as chief of staff he helped save a lot of people. He claimed he helped intervened and released 15 men sent by former commanding general Thomas Quiwonkpah to spy.
Under the theme: "Understanding the Conflict Through its Principal Events and Actors," the ongoing hearings will address the root causes of the conflict, including its military and political dimensions.
The hearings are focused on events between 1979 and 2003 and the national and external actors that helped to shape those events.
The TRC was agreed upon in the August 2003 peace agreement and created by the TRC Act of 2005.
The TRC was established to "promote national peace, security, unity and reconciliation," and at the same time make it possible to hold perpetrators accountable for gross human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law that occurred in Liberia between January 1979 and October 2003.
