PHOTO: TENEBU MASS GRAVE & OLDMAN KOLOBAH TELGO WHO LOST HIS DAUGHTER
By William Selmah with New Narratives and Karsor Gbelewala of LINA -Lofa
TENEBU, LOFA COUNTY, Liberia – For Korpo Tennie and other survivors of the Tenebu massacre, the establishment of a war crimes court for Liberia doesn’t matter. The leader of the Lofa Defense Force (LDF), who they blame for killing their neighbors, will never have his day in court.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) recommended in its report in 2009 that Francois Massaquoi and all of the leaders of warring factions of the Liberian Civil War face the court. But Massaquoi—who founded the group in Guinea between 1993 and 1994— was killed in Kornia about 50 miles from Tenebu in 2001, around two years before the end of the war.
Residents of the community claim Massaquoi is responsible for killing100 people.
“If God was going to make it for me to see that man one day, I was really going to ask him what we did to him,” says Tennie in the Lorma vernacular, while sitting alone on the porch of her house in Baykpay-ta, just a stone’s throw from Tenebu.“If I tell you how they treated my sister; like real animal, split her stomach,” she recalls how her sister’s stomach was opened before her intestines gushed out.
The TRC report did not capture the Tenebu Massacre but recorded that LDF committed 271 war crimes during the war. Those crimes, the report said, include the July 1994 killing of 70 civilians in a town called Rusie near Zorzor.
The TRC report found Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) collaborated with vigilantes to “watch its back”, and pitted communities against one another.
“If they want to bring it let them bring it, but I think it will not do anything for us now. Who they will hold now? [Francois] Massaquoi is dead, most of the main men not around,” says Chief ZayzayKpakolo of nearby Kolliemai Town, who helped bury the dead after the predawn raid on Tuesday, September 19, 1995.
“Like that, if they laid hand on the chief, like in Sierra Leone, it was going to be good,” Chief Kpakolo tells www.newspublictrust.com.
Advocates for the court are urging Tenebu not to be frustrated. Aaron Weah of the Secretariat for the Establishment of a War Crimes Court in Liberia (SEWACCOL) says there are other LDF ex-combatants still around today that survivors still recognize. “They [victims] could take advantage of the domestic courts to seek redress for those atrocities,” Weah says. “The next in line should be made to account for the actions of their men.”
Fellow SEWACCOL campaigner Adama Dempster shares Weah’s view. Dempster says even if some of LDF ex-combatants are living abroad they cannot escape justice, referencing cases against ex-warlords Tom Woewiyu and Mohammed Jabbateh in America, and Alieu Kosiah in Switzerland.
“I am calling on them not to lose hope on justice,” Dempster says. “They need to do it for their dead relatives who were brutally killed that day. The court is not for Francois Massaquoi. The Court is to uproot impunity and recognize thousands of Liberians who lost their lives to the senseless civil war.”
Hassan Bility, the Director of the Global Justice and Research Project (GJRP), that is helping to prosecute Liberians abroad for their alleged roles in the civil war, said it is understandable that the people in Tenebu are disappointed the late Massaquoi is dead and can’t account for his alleged crimes.
Bility warns that if Liberia doesn’t set up a war crimes court soon enough, more victims of the war will become frustrated like the people of Tenebu. Some warlords, including former heads of warring factions listed in the TRC report, have died. Roosevelt Johnson United Liberation Movement for Democracy-Johnson ULIMO-J, former President Samuel K. Doe and General Charles Julu of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL), just to name a few.
“You don’t want to end up with a scenario in which by the time the court is created, there is no one to prosecute,” Bility tells News Public Trust.
Some inhabitants of Tenebu are in support of the court, however. One is KolubahTelgo, an elderly man in his 70s and resident who lost a daughter and a sister in the massacre.
“For total reconciliation to take place here, those people must be punished,” Telgo says, visibly fighting back the tears and staring up into the sky.
“For most of us, the satisfaction we will get from justice being instituted will cover any form of reparation and surpass anything aimed at healing our wounds or appeasing us,” says Richard T. Singbe of Kolliemai, of the Voinjama District Youth for Development and Agriculture.
The TRC placed LDF in the “less significant violators” category and they were said to be smaller than other factions. But survivors claim some members of the group still live in Tenebu and towns and villages nearby such as a man only identified as Tarnue, of Kolliemai.
Tarnue calls off a scheduled interview with me on his farm where I meet him weeding grass alongside other farmers. He walks over, shakes my hand and walks away. He is very dark in complexion, muscular and middle height.
Another person, survivors say, was a member of LDF is Prince Mulbah, a former student of the Voinjama Multilateral High School. However, no one knows his whereabouts.
Twenty-four years after the massacre, its dreadful memories are still fresh here, its scars so much visible.
“It’s only now that I have begun eating fresh meat since then because of what I saw with my eyes,” says Chief Kpakolo. He explains that most of the victims were internally displaced people from towns and villages faraway and nearby.
Tennie remembers exactly what happened on the morning of the massacre.
There were huge explosions that early morning around 3:45, followed by heavy firing, she recalls.
After the shooting, she said her uncle and few other men decided to go and find out what was happening. As they approached while it was still dark, she explains tearfully, they heard no more gunshots, but saw what appeared like clothes scattered all around the town and in front of the houses.
Those things that appeared to her like clothes in the distance turned out to be dead bodies.
“We began crying along with some of those who escaped the killings. They were partially naked and were rolling on the ground and telling us what they saw. There were sounds of groaning in nearby coffee farms of those who had either been shot or gashed. Everyone was crying and confused.”
She says she can still see the image of her sister lying on the ground with her intestines shooting outside.
Lofa was fierce battleground throughout Liberia’s 14-year civil conflict. The TRC report found 32 massacres took place in Lofa, the most recorded of any other county. The fighting primarily took place between the National Patriotic Front of Liberia and the United Liberation Movement for Democracy (ULIMO).
It is unclear why LDF attacked Tenebu, as Lorma towns and villages were not its target. The group was founded to rival theULIMO after the latter allegedly killed huge number of people in Lorma towns and villages. In fact, Mandingoes were said to be the ones who first called the group the “Lorma Defense Force,” according to the TRC. ULIMO, predominantly made of Mandingoes, targeted Lormas whom they accused of being supporters of the NPFL.
At the time of the massacre, Tenebu was controlled by ULIMO, according to Chief Kpakolo. He says LDF fighters had tipped off some women they met at a creek that they had planned to attack the town, but their tipoff fell on deaf ears. “You couldn’t blame anyone because during that time, there was always news that some group wanted to attack from this way and that way and most of the time it never happened,” Kpakolo says.
Not far from Tennie’s house lies a mass grave with inscription on its tombstone:
“In loving memory of over 100 persons massacred in Tenebu during the civil war…May their soul rest in peace.”
This story was collaboration with New Narratives as part of the West Africa Justice Reporting Project.