April 16, 2008
Voinjamin (TRC)?Militiamen
loyal to former President Charles Taylor forced civilians to eat human flesh
and dogs after they massacred scores of civilians in 2003 in Popalahum, Lofa
County, a witness told
commissioners of Liberia's
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Twenty-five-years-old Siafa Amadu said government fighters under the command
of Zigzag Mazzah and another only identified as Stanley
fed the town's inhabitants dogs and human flesh and threatened to kill anyone who
refused to eat them.
"When they killed dogs and human beings they used to force us to eat
them. If you failed to eat the dogs and human beings they cooked, they would
kill you. So we were forced to eat what they gave us," he explained.
Amadu said during repeated onslaughts of rebel fighters of the defunct
Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) on the towns and
villages of Kolahun District, government fighters massacred hundreds of
villagers and inhabitants accusing them of being sympathizers of the advancing
rebels.
He said the civilians including his father were slaughtered by the fighters
and the survivors were given the dead flesh to feed on or risked being killed
by the government fighters.
He explained that Mazzah and his men dismembered the bodies of victims by
extracting parts including their hearts, legs and hands and then piled their
remains in a house and burned them.
Amadu was testifying Wednesday at the ongoing county public hearings of the
TRC in Voinjamin City,
Lofa County.
He explained that government fighters killed 33 inhabitants of Kailahun
Town and left the bodies in the
open to rot. He said the decomposed bodies of the dead were buried when
fighters of LURD overwhelmed government troops and briefly captured the town.
The witness said he was compelled to join LURD rebel forces in their
military campaign against the Taylor
government because most of his relatives were killed.
The TRC is an independent body set up to investigate the root causes of the
Liberian crisis, document human rights violations, review the history of
Liberia, and put all human rights abuses that occurred during the period from
1979 to 2003 on record. The TRC mandate is to also identify victims and
perpetrators and make recommendations on amnesty, prosecution and reparation.
The public hearings are being held under the theme: "Confronting Our
Difficult Past For A Better Future."
