Liberia buries last war victims

  1. Posted on Monday 7 September 2009 - 10:43
    Murtala
    Image of Murtala
    Murtala Mohammed Kamara, AfricaNews reporter in Freetown, Sierra Leone
    The remains of hundreds of Liberia's war victims who were brutally killed in Kolokpai village in central Liberia during the war were laid to rest last weekend. The victims were all residents of the village and displaced people who had sought refuge in that village some 15 years ago.
    ex liberian president
    The remains of the victims were taken in wheelbarrows from a cocoa farm and buried in mass grave while church leaders and farmers watched them dropped in a 10ft pit late on Saturday. A group - the Young Women Organized for Sustainable Development (YWOSD) – sponsored the burial. The killings were blamed on rebel forces that overran the nearby main provincial town of Gbarnga. Gbarnga which is situated some 40km south of Kolokpai used to be the headquarter town of former warlord President Charles Ghankay Taylor’s NPFL rebel movement in 1994.

    Gracey Yeaney spokesperson for YWOSD told the BBC that they decided to bury the bones after discovering them upon a research. Yeaney added: “The story we heard was that lots of people have been coming and seeing the bones and promising that they would carry out a ceremony like this, but that was not happening.”

    Liberia, a settlement of freed slaves from the United States went through a bloody civil war which left thousands killed. The West African State is just recovering from that war and is in the process of reconciliation and rebuilding. Despite the presence of one of the United Nations largest peacekeeping mission hosted in the country, the UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in his recent report to the Security Council that unemployment, rape, drug trafficking among others still pose threat to Liberia’s ‘fragile’ peace.

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