Editorial: Ending impunity in Liberia is for the general good
The Government of Liberia is glaringly reluctant to implement recommendations from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, mainly calls for prosecution of key actors who committed heinous crimes and crimes against humanity during the Liberian Civil War.
The Weah administration will do everything, including bending over to protect former rebel Field Marshall Gen. Prince Yormie Johnson, who is Senator of Nimba county.
However, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice from the Office of Global Criminal Justice in Washington, DC, Beth Van Schaack says she is in the country to hear from the Government of Liberia what are the hitches preventing implementation of the TRC report.
The TRC recommended establishment of a war and economic crimes court for Liberia to prosecute those who bear highest responsibility for atrocities committed during the 14-year civil war in Liberia.
But President George Manneh Weah and his ruling Congress for Democratic Change that campaigned for war crimes court, toting caskets in the streets, are today silent because one of the key actors from the civil war Senator Prince Johnson is a political bedfellow of the ruling establishment. Another former rebel leader, Dr. George S. Boley of the erstwhile Liberia Peace Council (LPC), who was deported from the United States for arming child soldiers in Liberia, is a member of the 54th Liberian Legislature.
Others are the ailing leader of the defunct Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD) and Thomas Yaya Nimely of the Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL), among others.
Liberia is at the junction of decision-making, whether to stamp out impunity and embrace accountability or to maintain the status code and wallop in a vicious cycle of terror, misrule and bloodshed in a jungle justice style.
International partners, particularly the United States is willing to assist Liberians deliver themselves from a few hands of blood-thirsty people, who only means of survival is the muzzles of the gun at the expense of the youths.
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We must end impunity now or never. It is important that we welcome the establishment of the war crimes court like neighboring Sierra Leone did to discourage anybody from jumping in the bush again with selfish motives under the disguise of coming to liberate the people only to subject them to mental slavery.
The war crimes court will help to keep this country stable for the good of the majority and attract investors wanting to do business in an environment that is safe and reliable under the rule of law with accountability as hallmark.
