March 13, 2008
GREENVILLE (TRC)?Chilling accounts of the massacre in 1990 of 50 inhabitants
of the town of Prafar, Sinoe
County have been recounted by
survivors to commissioners of Liberia's
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
According to survivors, on August 1,
1990 rebels of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia
(NPFL) rounded up all inhabitants of Prafar
Town and ordered them to march to a
junction to meet their commander, where they were subsequently massacred.
Seventeen years later the killings Tuesday became the focus of the ongoing
hearings of the TRC in rural Liberia,
which is Liberia's
way of trying to make amends for the horrors of the country from 1979 to 2003.
Now full disclosures of what became known as the Prafar Massacre are coming to
light.
Testifying at ongoing TRC Public Hearings at the Greenville
City Hall, James Tarlu, general
town chief said after NPFL rebels captured the town on the evening of August 1,
they called the inhabitants out of their homes and separated the males from the
females and children before marching all of them to a junction.
At the junction, Mr. Tarlu explained, the rebels formed two columns of
people, the males on one side and the females and children on the other side. "After
they separated us from our wives and children, they ordered us to lie down flat
on the ground before their commander, General Noriega, ordered them to open
fire on us."
He explained that the firing lasted for several minutes until there was
complete silence at the scene of the killings. Tarlue said he escaped the
massacre when he pretended to be dead adding that, after the rebels left he
fled into the nearby forest. He said the rebels accused the town's inhabitants
of being members of the Krahn ethnic group. "We were surprised because majority
of us in the town are Sarpos but they insisted that we are all Krahns."
Another survivor, Alexander Tarlue told TRC commissioners that after the
massacre, the fighters returned to the town and set all the houses ablaze. He
added that all of the houses were razed to the ground before the fighters led
the women and children to the nearby town, Weah
Town, where they held them
captives.
Alexander explained that during the arson attack on the town, the fighters
shot and killed a pregnant woman who tried to escape their onslaught. He said
after the fighters left the scene of the killings, he counted about 50 dead
bodies of the town's inhabitants.
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."
