LIBERIA-POLITICS: Journalists Call For Speedy Disarming Of Rebels

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

ACCRA, Dec 4 1996 (IPS) - Liberian journalists fed up with their harassment by rebel fighters have appealed to the West African peacekeeping force in Liberia, ECOMOG, to speed up the disarmament of the estimated 60,000 combatants in the country.

“We have appealed to ECOMOG to collect all weapons from the fighters in Liberia,” Suah S. Deddeh, acting secretary-general of the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) told IPS during a seminar here on ‘Media, Conflict Resolution and Peace in Africa’.

“Taking away the guns will remove the war mentality. It will also enable journalists to practice free of fear from the fighters,” he explained, adding that failure by the rebels to hand in their weapons “will mean that the media in Liberia will continue to bear the brunt of the war.”

Lt-Gen. Emmanuel Erskine, a retired Ghanian army officer now serving in Liberia, told the Nov. 25-29 seminar that, up to Nov. 27, three days after a disarmament campaign was started in the West African country, only 1,500 fighters had turned in their guns to ECOMOG.

Erskine, a former UN Peacekeeper in the Middle East, said he doubted whether the factions in Liberia would hand in all their weapons to ECOMOG, whose full name is the Economic Community of West African States Cease-fire Monitoring Group.

Erskine said when Syria began to disarm the Christian militias in Lebanon, the later turned in old and useless weapons. “I don’t know what will happen in Liberia,” he added.

The factions in Liberia are supposed to be disarmed by the 8000- strong ECOMOG by January 1997, four months before general elections. “Once out of khaki, the government must find a job for them and reintergrate them into society,” said Erskine. “If not, they will become evil, and they will disturb your sleep.”

The Press Union of Liberia said it began appealing to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in 1993 to disarm the fighters. In August it sent another letter to ECOWAS heads of state meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, emphasising the need to have the rebels surrender their weapons.

Many of the fighters, whom Deddeh said should be disarmed as a matter of priority, are child soldiers. “They are a nuisance. They kill, at will. Once high on drugs, they even shoot their parents,” he said, adding: “We pray that the process to disarm the fighters will proceed smoothly.”

“During the six years of conflict in Liberia, approximately 50,000 children have been killed and between 30,000-50,000 abandoned or orphaned,” Johnson Byarugaba, the resident representative of UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Liberia, said last month. “More than 300,000 children have been uprooted from their homes and countless others face heightened risk of disease and malnutrition.”

All in all, about 1.2 million of the 3.1 million Liberians have been displaced by the conflict there, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), while another 725,000 are refugees in neighbouring countries.

And more than 150,000 persons, mostly non-combatants, are believed to have been killed since the Liberian conflict erupted in 1989. They include two journalists.

The first, R. Jayenneh Moore, was killed in 1990 by fighters loyal to Prince Yeduo Johnson, then head of the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL) rebel group. The second, Swenzy Elliotte, was murdered by gunmen in October 1992.

“Before his death, Moore served as Public Relations Officer for the ministry of Education in Monrovia. And Elliotte was a freelancer,” Deddeh said.

Unrest that broke out on Apr. 6 after an aborted attempt by members of the country’s interim government to have faction leader Roosevelt Johnson — also a member of the interim administration — arrested on a murder charge, was accompanied by the assault, harassment and arrest of journalists by both sides in the April- June fighting.

The fighting pitted the “government forces”, which include members of the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), against Johnson’s faction, ULIMO-K.

One of the victims, Nyanti Allison, a correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), was abducted from his home by NPFL fighters and taken first to NPFL leader Charles Taylor’s residence in Congo Town, then to an area outside Monrovia.

Allison was picked up one day after he reported that fighting had broken out between ULIMO-K and the “government forces”. He was released two days later.

The Press Union of Liberia denounced the “arrest”.

In May, Bukari Musa of the state-owned Liberia Broadcasting System (LBS) was grabbed and flogged by ULIMO-K fighters. “His crime was that he reported in favour of the ‘government forces’ during the April 6 madness,” said Deddeh.

“Not only that, but there are times when personal effects and items such as tape recorders are taken away from journalists by fighters,” he said.

Kwame Karikari, a leading Ghanian journalist, criticised Liberia’s factional fighters for destroying the free press in the country. “They have destroyed public radio stations and set up theirs,” he said.