By William Selmah–wselmah@gmail.com
The head of the Victims and Survivors of the Liberian Massacres says he has been receiving death threats, a situation that has forced him to change his dwelling place.
Mr. Peterson Sonyah, a survivor of the 1990 Lutheran Church massacre, said some of the suspects called his mother, cautioning her to advise me to discard my campaign to seek justice for massacre victims and survivors.
A number of massacres took placed in Liberia’s 14 years of senseless civil war that led to the deaths of some 25,000 people. Sonyah was just one of those who managed to have survived the carnage.
Addressing journalists attending a West Africa Justice Reporting Project in Monrovia at the weekend, Mr. Sonyah went on to quote those who threatened his mother as saying, “if the rope I’m pulling goes far, everyone will carry a piece of it.”
He said most of the warlords have been hearing his name in the media and that he’s not surprised that he would be a target for assassination.
Mr. Sonyah has at the same time dispelled the notion in some quarters that his campaign is meant to promote himself in order to apply for political asylum in the future, stressing that he does not need any kind of asylum whatsoever.
According to him, his departure could create a vacuum in advocacy for massacre victims and survivors.
The leader of the group of Liberia’s massacre victims wondered: “if he seeks political asylum, “who’s going to advocate for massacre survivors and victims in this country”?
He has meanwhile reiterated the need to hold people accountable for their deeds during Liberia’s years of instability (12 April 1979 -August 3, 2003.
It is appalling that perpetrators I Liberia are rewarded with lucrative jobs, while their victims languish in abject poverty.
The TRC report shows that hundreds of massacres were recorded in Liberia between December 1989-August 2003.