January 10, 2008
MONROVIA (TRC)?Nationwide hearings of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission of Liberia continued Thursday in Monrovia
with three witnesses givng ghastly testimonies of their experiences during the
country's civil conflict.
Beatrice Q. Tuazama, Gladys Arthur and Augustine S. Tuoplay stunned hundreds of
Liberians gathered at the historic Centennial Memorial Pavilion, with stories
of alleged atrocities committed against them and their relatives by various
warring factions during the conflict. They were the third set of ten witnesses
that have appeared since the hearings commenced Tuesday.
The first of Thursday's witnesses Beatrice Tuazama said a bullet entered her
left leg when she was shot in Nimba County
in 1990 by a National Patriotic Front of Liberia combatant because her husband
was of the Mandingo tribe. She said a four-year-old girl, along with another
person, was executed in her presence. Her case involves assault, killing and
sexual abuse.
Gladys Arthur, the second witness, claimed that her mother was killed in her
presence in Gardnerville, when rebels of the NPFL discovered huge sums of money
left behind by her father, who was the paymaster for a company called Flamingo.
She explained that in 1990, before the arrival of the rebels at her home,
soldiers of the Armed Forces of Liberia visited their residence and intimidated
her father, causing him to flee and leave behind the money with which he intended
to pay Flamingo employees' salaries.
"I tied the money around my waist but the rebels discovered it and then jailed
my mother, twin brothers and me, taking away all the money," Gladys said.
She said the rebels, led by their commander Mango Miller, asked for a volunteer
to be executed. Her mother volunteered and was killed.
Arthur said they later moved to Kakata
City in Margibi
County, where she was raped by
Miller. She added that later, in Nimba
County, Miller forced her to become
his wife and dispatched her two brothers to stay with other families.
According to her, she later escaped to the Ivory
Coast. She returned to Liberia
and, at the request of her father, launched a search for her brothers. During
the search, she said Miller demanded a sum of US$600.00 for their return, but until
now, only one of them has been reunited with the family. The whereabouts of the
other remains a puzzle. She is appealing to the TRC for the recovery of her
missing brother. The nature of her case is killing, rape, abduction and
extortion.
Thursday's last witness, Augustine Saybeah Touplay, claimed that in 1994,
rebels of the Liberia Peace Council (LPC), killed his uncle and his wife in his
presence in Sinoe County
when the group captured the area.
He said that following the killings, he was abducted and forced to carry
ammunition for the rebels from 1994 to 1997.
Touplay, whose testimony involves killing, torture, force displacement, force
labor and destruction of properties, said he was forced to have sexual
intercourse with a dead pregnant woman who died from hunger while in the
rebels' captivity. He is calling for a reconciliation conference in Sinoe with
the aim of restoring peace among the county's tribes.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission is investigating and documenting Liberia's
crisis riddled past from 1979 to 2003 during which an estimated 300,000 persons
died.
The hearings which started Tuesday will last for the next six months until May
31st and will be held throughout the country. The public hearings in Monrovia
will continued until January 31st before extending to Maryland County February
for one week.
