By Naneka Hoffman
Those that will cause killings in the 2023 elections will be taken to the Hague for prosecution, Independent National Commission On Human Rights (INCHR) Chairperson Cllr. T. Dempster Browne has warned.
At the official launch of a UNDP – sponsored Sanoyea District palaver hut hearing in Bong County, Cllr. Browne warned, “We can’t continue to remain like this.”
He lamented that people are killing and there is no redress to the pains of the victims.
But Cllr. Browne disclosed that the INCHR will lobby to ensure that those that will cause killings during the 2023 presidential and legislative elections are taken to the Hague for prosecution.
He further assured participants at the palaver hut hearing that the Human Rights Commission is determined to go ahead and do its work.
He warned here that where there is no justice, there is no reconciliation. Cllr. Browne argued that victims will reconcile their differences when those who committed crimes are punished.
He explained that the Human Rights Commission is charged with the responsibility to promote and protect the rights of the citizens.
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Cllr. Browne recalled that during the 14 years of civil crisis in Liberia, crimes were committed.
But more than that, he said the massacre committed in some parts of Liberia was an international crime.
In Bong County alone, Cllr. Browne said the record indicates that 75 persons including women, children and elderly people, were massacred during the war.
He continued that there are domestic crimes that can be tried under Liberian laws, but international crimes can only be taken care of by a War Crimes Court.
The INCHR boss wondered how can the peace in Liberia be sustained and reconciliation takes place when those who committed crimes are bluffing all around the environment without justice being served.
“And so the human rights commission is determined to do everything possible to bring [those who committed bad crimes] to justice by lobbying,” he noted.
Cllr. Browne said he is in sympathy with the victims of the civil war including his own town he came from in River Gee where human beings’ skulls were hanging all over the checkpoints.
Browne lamented that those people that did this thing are still around today.
He therefore urged victims to voice out what is in their stomachs, assuring them that nobody can do anything to them. “But we assure you in order to sustain the peace … in this country, there must be justice,” said Cllr. Browne.–Edited by Winston W. Parley
