Liberia: Rights Groups Praise Reburials of Doe and Tolbert but Urge Inclusive Reconciliation and Support for War Crimes Court Office  

Leading Liberian human rights organizations have praised the government for symbolically reburying Samuel Kanyon Doe and William Richard Tolbert, the country’s two presidents who were separately killed while in office. Doe, who ended more than a century of Americo-Liberian dominance by a military coup in 1980 was buried last week in his native Tuzon, Grand Gedeh County following a state funeral. Doe himself was killed in a military coup that started Liberia’s first civil war 9 years later. Tolbert, who was killed during the Doe-led coup, was also symbolically reburied this week, alongside 13 officials of his government, who were shot to death by a firing squad after a kangaroo court adjudged them guilty of a range of crimes, including corruption and treason.

The reburials of the ex-presidents were part of broader recommendations in the 2009 report of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Joseph Boakai-led government is the first in Liberia’s post-war era, to undertake such an initiative, which the government says is part of a national healing and reconciliation process. The human rights organizations, including the Liberia Massacre Survivors Association, Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia and Transitional Justice Working Group, say while the move is commendable, it’s short of the overall push for healing and reconciliation of all victims of the country’s two civil wars, which killed about 250,000 people and displaced millions.

“For reconciliation to be meaningful, it must transcend political symbolism and include the stories, pain, and demands of ordinary citizens suffered as a result of the back-to-back violence during Liberia’s conflict era,” said rights groups said in a statement issued by the Civil Society Human Rights Advocacy Platform of Liberia, their umbrella organization. “Reconciliation cannot be exclusive to political elites—especially those who have long contributed to Liberia’s suffering. If former leaders are welcomed home as symbols of peace, then the families of victims and survivors of atrocities and communities must also be acknowledged and included. These citizens were buried in mass graves, and to this day, their families have received no justice, no recognition, and no reparations, including those due to the aftermath of the 1980 coup.”

In addition to recommending the reburials of Doe and Tolbert, the TRC also recommended “that there be a specific date declared for proper reburial of all victims of massacres” and that “certificates of death adorned in the National Colors, be issued to the surviving heirs of all those who lost their lives during the period 1979 to 2003 as a consequence of the national conflict and who to date remain unaccounted for, are without a grave or other legal evidence of death.”

Responding to an inquiry about the issue at a government news conference  Thursday, Jarso Maley Jallah, Liberia’s education minister, who also chairs a special presidential reburial committee, said it was a decision for the president to make.

“In his wisdom and from where he sits, he can have a state funeral for whomsoever he chooses,” said Jallah. “But the constituting of this committee, the reburial committee, was to give dignified burials to former presidents. For those who lost their lives as I stated earlier, it was a tragedy. They are also captured in this planning process. Is there going to be a specific name to say, ‘those who died during the rice riot?’ It has not been planned, but it doesn’t mean that it cannot be inclusive of the names of those individuals, if we have and we dig back in history and get those names, that they will not be inscribed.”

The government said it will follow up the reburials by holding a ceremony this Saturday of “national healing, reconciliation, and unity program” to honor “victims of civil wars, Ebola, and COVID-19.” 

“These ceremonies have rekindled the call for accountability for wartime atrocities. Although there have been prosecutions, convictions, and sentencing of individuals in Europe and the U.S. for crimes related to Liberia’s civil wars, no one has been directly held to account within Liberia for the egregious human rights violations committed during the conflicts, which officially ended nearly 22 years ago. President Boakai was applauded by advocates for a war and economic crimes court, as well as a special anti-corruption court, when he established an office to oversee the drafting of the courts’ statutes and a roadmap for their establishment, along with the country’s overall transitional justice process. He was again praised by courts advocates when in May he instructed that the Office, headed by Jallah Barbu, a Liberian lawyer, be given a $US2 million annual budget, a sixfold increase in annual budget. But Barbu has consistently complained about the lack of funds to operate. He recently said he and his staff of 30 have gone more than 5 months without pay. The issue has raised questions about the president’s commitment and sincerity to a process, experts say holds the key to Liberia’s long-term peace and stability.

The human rights organizations warned that “the crippling lack of funding to undertake” the operations of the Office “threatens to undermine this vital institution envisioned by the Boakai-led government for perpetrators of war and economic crimes to account for their actions.”

“The pursuit of justice against those responsible for heinous war and economic crimes is crucial,” said the rights groups. “It offers the promise of closure, addresses the collective trauma that has long haunted our nation, and paves the way for an authentic and open dialogue about our shared history.”

Kula Fofana, a lawyer and presidential press secretary, did not respond to a FrontPage Africa/New Narratives request for comment on the criticism of the human rights organizations about the lack of support to the Office. As with the push for criminal accountability, campaigns for reparations for victims and communities of the wars are at heart of advocates’ agenda. They believe that reparations are critical to any national healing process.

“CSO Human Rights Platform admonishes the government to seize this opportunity to build a brighter future for all Liberians, rooted in justice, reparations and reconciliation,” the statement said. As well as reparations, the TRC did also recommend “memorial sites be built in the capital cities of each county to include every state of massacres where the remains our people en masse have been buried from 1979 to 2002.” With support from the United Nations Development Program, the Independent National Commission on Human Rights, a creature of the TRC, has constructed “nine memorials at massacre and mass grave sites across the country.”

 At a UN meeting in August, Cllr. Oswald Tweh, Liberia’s justice minister, pledged the government’s commitment to establishing a reparation trust fund to support conflict victims” to “help victims rebuild their lives and communities, ensuring that they are not forgotten as we move forward.” But no of those promises have been fulfilled. Minister Tweh has responded to a request for comment on the latest concern by human rights advocates about the issue.

Jallah said although the issue of reparations “is not in the mandate of the committee,” she was “sure the next process may try to explore that inquiry.”

This story is a collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project. Funding was provided by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia which had no say in the story’s content.