Liberia: Bush Takes over Liberia’s Oldest Cemetery in the Heart of the Capital, Monrovia

Monrovia — The Palm Grove Cemetery, the once glorious final resting place for most of the country’s dead has now become the bush in the heart of the country’s capital with grass overtaking all the tombs and graves.

The cemetery which has over the years been notorious for being for a criminal den and a drug hub continues to lie in ruins with little or no attention from the Monrovia City Corporation which is responsible for ensuring its sanctity.

FrontPageAfrica on Monday took a tour of the Palm Groove and observed the cemetery had been abandoned with making the Center Street a fearful place to tread due to the criminals who have taken the cemetery as their residential area.

Every second Wednesday in March is Decoration Day and Liberians from all walks of life will troop in their numbers to every cemetery in and around the country to clean and decorate their loved ones’ graves.

During the Tolbert administration, the Palm Grove cemetery became the focus of the national Decoration Day, which continued to be observed after Tolbert was murdered in a 1980 coup d’état and his body dumped at the cemetery. Once the country’s national cemetery, it was threatened during June 1982 by Monrovia municipal authorities. In a complaint to the People’s Redemption Council, the city noted that the cemetery was being used as a waste dump and was so full of graves that new burials were being conducted unsafely, even though increasing numbers of local residents were being buried in Paynesville. The authorities requested permission to close the cemetery to new burials and to move the cemetery to a new location, away from its original Center Street site, but the cemetery remains in Monrovia to date.

Former President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf’s regime had promised to relocate the entire cemetery, but that decision was put to halt by the Senate through the intervention of Senator of Bong County, now Vice President of Liberia, Jewel Howard-Taylor.

In 2016, the most famous and historic cemetery came close to being demolished by the Special Presidential Task Force headed by General Services Agency Director General Mary Broh.

Madam Taylor wrote the Plenary of the Senate requesting the body to put halt to the ongoing demolition of the Palm Groves Cemetery.

In her communication, she stated that the cemetery was established by law for the permanent hosting and the final resting place for people she described as “distinguished citizens, respected patriot and ordinary citizens.”

“This trend of thought to remove our loved ones from their resting place should not be accepted, but instead designated burial places should remain as such, which shows our collective national respect for the dead,” she stated back in 2016.