Monrovia – When the Coalition for Justice in Liberia (CJL) wrote United States President Barack Obama in June 2013, it did not expect the response it received more than six months after.
The President did not even mention the group or Liberia in his reply, except in the salutation.
The group might not have been impressed, compounding a series of lamentation over the culture of impunity in a country where more than a quarter of a million people lost their lives.
CJL is a Liberian civil society organization based in the United States.
In the 2013 letter, CJL pleaded with the administration of President Obama to intervene in the Liberian situation, as it was the only means through which the culture of impunity could be eroded.
“As Liberia stands at the crossroads of injustice, the Coalition for Justice in Liberia (CJL) hopes that your administration will stand behind efforts to war criminals accountable everywhere, including Liberia,” CJL’s Interim Director Lovetta Tugbeh wrote.
“It should not be this way where international conventions are disregarded or discriminately applied and war criminals are allowed to go unpunished.”
Tugbeh said impunity undermined peace and development in Liberia, decrying how warlords were loitering along the corridors of the government while their victims grapple with abject poverty and misery. “President Obama, our hopes may be dashed because the situation in Liberia is becoming very tenuous,” she wrote.
“Even though the country has made a postwar transition, having emerged from a 14-year brutal civil war that brought death and destruction to nearly 250,000 innocent citizens, including five American nuns, peace remains a far-fetched reality due to the culture of impunity and disregard to uphold the rule of law that has become pervasive in our society.
“Because of this continued development, the fragile peace and security of the country remains threatened as notorious war criminals roam freely amongst their traumatized war victims.
In addition, these victims continue to live with unpleasant memories of how these perpetrators gruesomely mutilated, raped, murdered and abused their children, mothers, fathers and neighbors during the 14-year civil war.”
The Liberian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) ended its work in 2009 and handed its report to the government. The TRC report in addition to listing former President Charles Taylor, former head of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) and other warlords here as most notorious perpetrators to face a “special tribunal”, recommended that President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf be barred for 30 years from participating in politics.
The report has since been rejected, especially by officials of the government, most of whom are captured in it.
The Supreme Court of Liberia ruled against the Commission on several occasions just within the two to three years since the release of the report.
However, the government has said it has able to implement some of the TRC recommendations, including the Palava Hut conflict resolution scheme that is being run by the Independent Human Rights Commission to bring victims and perpetrators together.
But Tugbeh said such initiatives were far insufficient amid the absence of a war crimes court to try those who bear the greatest responsibilities for the war.
“As Liberia stands at the crossroads of injustice, the Coalition for Justice in Liberia (CJL) hopes that your administration will stand behind efforts to war criminals accountable everywhere, including Liberia.
It should not be this way where international conventions are disregarded or discriminately applied and war criminals are allowed to go unpunished,” she wrote the White House.
President Obama, however, said that the United States was not backing off on its fight to foster a free, democratic and just world.
“No country can claim immunity from human rights abuses, or responsibility to confront them.
By embracing that responsibility, we will prevent mass atrocities, replace tyranny with good governance,” President Obama said.
“We believe that each of us is created equal with the right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness,” Obama said in his reply to CJL in January 2014.
“For more than two centuries, we have fought to extend that fundamental promise of fairness and opportunity to all our citizens.
Many countries have made that same commitment. Nations around the world have pledged themselves to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, recognizing the inherent dignity and rights to all member of our human family,” he added.
“Because even now, we know our journey is not yet finished. Too many people still labor in the darkness of tyranny and oppression.
In too many parts of the world fundamental freedoms remain unrealized and the protections of law extend only to a privileged few.
Our values call upon us to care about those who are denied the chance to build a decent for themselves and their families, no matter where they live.
They call upon us to embrace the common endeavors of all humanity.
“I believe that work begin with the example we set here at home. We know from our own history that intolerance breeds injustice, whether it is based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation.
We understand that we are stronger when all our people are granted opportunity and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and sons.
“These are moral obligations just as our moral obligations to help lift impoverished corners of the world. We promote growth, education, agriculture and public health. These efforts are about more than charity.
They are about new models of empowering people by building institutions and abandoning their rot of corruption, and creating ties of trade.
When developing nations succeed in offering all their people the opportunity to start a business, educate their children and improve their standard of living, America will be more successful as well.
“Yet none of us can be truly prosperous when unspeakable violence continues to rob men, women and children of the chance to live in dignity with basic rights.
My administration puts preventing genocides and other mass atrocities at the forefront of America foreign policy and we are bringing every tool to bear in this critical fight.
And while we know too well the challenges that remain in places like Sudan, we also know that our efforts have saved lives in places like Libya and Burma, and areas of central Africa affected by the Lord’s Resistance Arm.
In Syria, we continue to stand with those seeking a free, inclusive and democratic future. We are helping lay the groundwork to hold the perpetrators of atrocities accountable while providing support to those who work for the common good of all Syrian.
“Upholding our commitment to universal human rights also means combating human trafficking, whether it occurs halfway around the world or here within our borders.
The United States will continue to lead in this fight.
We will keep giving countries incentives to meet their responsibilities, supporting those that pass and enforce anti-trafficking laws and calling out the worst abusers.”