MONROVIA – In a country still nursing the scars of war, disease, and decades of political repression, President Joseph Boakai’s administration has unveiled a grand ceremony branded as a symbol of “healing and reconciliation.” But beneath the carefully choreographed speeches and candlelit symbolism lies a truth too bitter for some Liberians to swallow: the glorification of a man many remember as a butcher, not a bridge-builder.
President Boakai’s lighting of the so-called “Unity Candle” on July 5 at the EJS Ministerial Complex was intended as a solemn, historic gesture, a move toward remembrance and peace. Yet for many Liberians like Cephas MMD Flanzamaton, it was nothing short of state-sanctioned historical revisionism. His father, Col. Moses M.D. Flanzamaton Sr., was executed under the Doe regime, tortured, paraded, and vanished without a trial. The family was imprisoned, including Cephas, then a mere four-month-old baby. Their suffering, like that of thousands more, has yet to be acknowledged or atoned for. Instead, it is being brushed over with wax, flame, and pageantry.
The irony is bitter. The man responsible for the Boatuo killings, the Lutheran Church massacre, and the execution of 13 government officials on a public beach is now being afforded a ceremonial reburial, complete with honor guards and polished rhetoric. No war crimes court. No truth commission implementation. Just candles and imported wisdom.
Cephas’s statement, raw, painful, and unsanitized, cuts through the official narrative like a scalpel through propaganda. “Samuel K. Doe was not a victim. He was a villain,” he wrote. And he is not alone in this sentiment. Many Liberians remember the sound of boots, the sting of fear, and the silence that followed every disappearance. They do not forget as easily as governments move on.
Dr. Antoine Rutayisire’s presence at the ceremony was likely meant to lend credibility and gravitas to the occasion. A survivor of the Rwandan genocide and a respected figure in post-conflict healing, his message was clear: reconciliation requires honesty, confession, and accountability. But how does that square with honoring a man whose crimes are as documented as they are unpunished?
There is a glaring contradiction between the professed goals of the Boakai administration and the actions taken in Doe’s name. If the government truly seeks national healing, it must begin by listening to those who suffered most, not by paving over their pain with choreographed ceremonies and symbolic flames. Reconciliation does not begin with the elevation of perpetrators. It begins with justice for the victims.
No candle can light the path to peace when the path itself is buried under unmarked graves and unanswered questions. Liberia needs not symbolic events but structural change. It needs a war crimes court, reparations, institutional reform, and education that tells the truth. It does not need public relations exercises disguised as national rebirth.
President Boakai may have intended to unify the country with this event, but he risks deepening the fractures that remain. By centering the legacy of Samuel Doe in a process meant to heal, the administration has alienated families like the Flanzamatons, families that still grieve, still wait for answers, and still carry the trauma inflicted by Doe’s rule.
National reconciliation cannot be outsourced. It cannot be cloaked in ceremonial grandeur. It must begin in truth, proceed through justice, and culminate in restoration. Anything less is not unity. It is betrayal.
And no candle, no matter how bright, can burn that truth away.
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