The good people of Liberia saw how Tubman quashed revolt or voices of dissent. Ritualistic killings were also commonplace during Tubman’s era. Maryland County undeservingly earned for itself a stereotype (Gboyo) for all the clumsy reason. Surely, all Marylanders aren’t Gboyos! Willie Tolbert allowed the rule of law to take its course in 1979 – when the Supreme Court sent to death by hanging some seven Marylanders allegedly accused of ritualistic murder. Did the precedent achieve its desired impact? No! Ritualistic killings are now widespread and no longer unique to – Maryland.
By Ekena Wesley, [email protected], Contributing Writer
Some Liberians have diversely – for whatever their cultural orientations – subscribed to fetishism or cultism. Amid the explosive rioting of April 14, 1979; the bloody April 12, 1980 coup d’état; the trappings brought to bear by coup-makers – in a dog-eat-dog society; the November 12, 1985 abortive invasion and its attendant consequences; and of course Liberia’s brutish cum senseless bloodbath, which was ignited on December 24, 1989 – coupled with successive see-saw battles between rival factions of looters and murderers.
The conflict unveiled a collapse of our humanity – exposed our animalism – unearthed our inherent warlike nature and unraveled the unconsciousness of our barbarism. Our judgment became clouded by regional and ethnic sentiments; we created or did a grim construct of real or imagined enemies. People fleeing fighting – and already traumatized by the sounds of rockets, artillery bombardments and grenade explosions; were forced to form queues and summarily singled out for mass killings. Many innocent people were either suspected of being enemy collaborators, reconnaissance operatives or voodoo-conceived disguised AFL soldier…or worst still rebels. Their fate culminated in horrid deaths!
Liberians died based on the determination of too many insignificant fighting men and women either posing as AFL soldiers or NPFL rebels. The destiny of ordinary people the war had come to ‘liberate’ hung in the hands kids between 11 to 14 years – abandoned or coerced as child soldiers let alone recruited and programmed into war machines. The child soldiers stood at checkpoints and became ghastly overnight surgeons for pregnant mothers – based on lottery. Entire villages were wiped out let alone families; captured non-combatants were thrown into deserted wells; death squads roamed churches, mosques, refuge-stricken centers, and hospitals to wantonly commit massacres in an orgy of indiscrimination.
A quasi-war seemingly meant to end Doe’s regime considered a nightmare for Liberians started to occasion gruesome, horrific, and grisly murders in total violation of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of captured soldiers or civilians taken hostage. Liberia, supposedly – a once ‘sweet land of liberty’ had become a horrendous and spine-chilling theatre of barbarism. It was a horrifying and dreadful concentration camp to say the least. Shamefully, the senseless war has not taught any lesson as it were. The same old, same old frightening madness that necessitated the frightful and awful scenes of nearly 14 years are manifesting in the CDC-led – ‘power-to-the-people’ playbook.
Barely a week ago that was fear-gripped and incensed by an aura of macabre and hideous mysterious deaths of the Commissioner of Audit and Research Analyst – Albert Peters and Mrs. Gifty Asmah-Lama of the Liberia Revenue Authority (LRA) on Broad Street, the LRA – some 48 hours later unceremoniously witnessed yet another gory, morbid and somewhat grotesque murder of George F. Fanbutu by callous and faceless creatures.
The unimaginably horrifying, fearsome, shocking, appalling, repulsive and sickening murder of George Fanbutu speaks of the era of barbaric gladiators – when humans were treated as animals. George did not deserve to be murdered as such no matter how damaging the alleged information he might have supposedly been poised to expose. The deaths of George Fanbutu and his colleagues – Albert Peters and Gifty Asmah-Lama might be an attempt to hide the truth; but the truth – like light will always triumph… What manner of cowardice is this? How come Liberia still has ‘barbarians’ parading as ‘human beings’ in the 21st century? In the face of yet another fiasco police investigation – there is no doubt it will inevitably become a waste of public resources with no outcome in sight.
Which way Liberia – folks? Is it the ‘Change for Hope’ or ‘Hope for Change?’ Central Bank’s Matthew Innis and Representative Adolph Lawrence were all victims of puzzling deaths. These strange murders – must STOP! 1 Samuel 19:5 – says: “So innocent blood will not be shed in the midst of your land which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, and blood-guiltiness be on you.”
In the Book of Proverbs 6:16-19: “There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an …abomination to him, haughty eyes and lying tongue and hands that share innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discords among others.” Let the deaths of those innocent murdered souls who sought to keep the torch of integrity – probity and accountability burning be memorialized in our hearts and minds as we champion the cause of a just, free and transparent Liberia for the vast majority who have been let down by a bunch of fake and greedy ‘doomsday prophets.’