PHOTO: Malcolm Joseph, CEMESP boss (Left) and Charles Coffey, PUL President (Right)
Monrovia- Two media advocacy and development institutions in Liberia—the Center for Media Studies and Peacebuilding (CEMESP) and the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) have condemned the July 26 violence against protesting students of the University of Liberia campus-based party SUP.
In a press release issued on Wednesday, July 27, 2022, CEMESP condemned in the strongest terms the violence meted out against protesting students of the University of Liberia’s Student Unification Party outside the United States Embassy on July 26.
CEMESP says there can be no justification for anyone to be brutalized by thugs for expressing their views regardless of how their opponents feel.
In its press release signed by CEMESP Executive Director, Malcolm Joseph, the group says the barbarous act of the thugs led by a known partisan of the ruling Coalition for Democratic Change must be responded to forcefully by government if the impression that it was state sponsored is to be avoided.
The group noted that the violent act which went unchallenged by the police and other state security agents was reminiscent of similar actions carried out during Liberia’s civil war and its many years of dictatorships.
In a statement released in Monrovia, CEMESP called on the government to immediately arrest each of the thugs shown violently assaulting a protester in the video of the incident and speedily bring them to justice for their crimes, as a way of discouraging any future occurrence of such act.
The Media development and freedom of expression group noted that Liberia has felt too much pains for state authorities to allow people to settle their disagreement with others by resorting to thuggish and extrajudicial violent action.
CEMESP is therefore cautioning the government to espouse a zero tolerance for thuggish jungle justice as an unjustified attack on peaceful protesters could trigger the desire for and perpetration of counter action by rival groups, which is a recipe for dragging the country into anarchy.
Meanwhile, the Press Union of Liberia (PUL) has also condemned the act as cruel and anti-democratic the 2022 Independence Day violence on the sidelines of the celebrations.
Members of the campus-based Student Unification Party (SUP) had for weeks informed the public of what it had built as the “Fix Liberia Campaign”. The party said it was peaceably assembling to petition their government and partners to improve the living standard of the people.
To actualize their plan, the Student Unification Party placed some of its members before the United States Embassy, the group was infiltrated by the CDC- COP thus leaving many of them injured.
CDC- COP operatives were seen chasing after the SUP militants, destroying, beating, and attacking inhabitants of the Greystone Community neighboring the US Embassy in Liberia.
The Press Union of Liberia is meanwhile calling on the Liberia National Police, Coalition for Democratic Change and the Liberian Government to investigate the embarrassing impasse and violation of the laws, the PUL said in a press release signed by its Secretary General, Musa M.B. Kenneh on July 27, 2022.