By Rev. Torli H. Krua
The Liberian Media landscape and political ecosystem have been dominated by one topic; corruption! From high-ranking American officials across the Atlantic Ocean, including the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, to President Biden’s Special Assistant Dana Banks and U.S. Ambassador McCarthy, on Monrovia’s hilltop U.S. Embassy, as well as wheel barrel boys down Waterside, everyone seems to agree on one thing; the Government of Liberia is corrupt!
The issue of corruption is not new. There was a bloody military coup that cited “rampant corruption” as the reason for the bloodshed-A new constitution was written to stamp out corruption, to no avail.
Then 14 years of a brutal civil war that destroyed our national infrastructures and claimed over 250,000 lives. We thought we found the answer to corruption when we elected a “Harvard-trained” Economist who crusaded against corruption for 40 years as president. We were disappointed when she admitted she didn’t know Liberia’s corruption was “systemic.”
Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield was blunt in her speech celebrating 200 years of Liberia: “Liberia has a serious problem right now,…foremost among them is the issue of corruption.” So, while everyone including Liberians on the streets agrees on the existence of corruption in Liberia, describing it as a “killer” and “cancer”, there seems to be no agreement on the source or origin of Liberia’s “systemic corruption” or its cure until now.
Thirty years of research and lived experience have led us to the discovery of the origin and source of corruption and the simple cure hidden in plain sight; The Government of the United States of America is the source and sustainer of corruption in Liberia.
The cure to Liberia’s corruption woes, TRUTH, is also the panacea for chronic problems of deep division threatening the demise of the world’s only superpower, the USA. Truth is priceless and costs no money, and we have found that embracing TRUTH would bring healing and unity to the United States of America and prevent a catastrophic fall of a great superpower.
A Serious Warning To All Human Beings Everywhere To Help Save America By Demanding Truth From America
The January 6th U.S Capitol riot by a mob aiming to change American election results, after over 60 failed lawsuits shocked many people worldwide. This ominous January 6th event happened in a deeply divided country where every citizen has the right to bear arms and where, as of December 2021, there were 436.4 million guns in a country with a population of 333 million people. Across the United States in 2022, there have been 314 mass shootings and a total of 22,000 deaths thus far. Without unity, the United States is set to fall from implosion.
Considering the high cost of fuel and food worldwide caused by the war in Ukraine, a relatively small European country, the deep division in America is concerning because a degeneration into arms conflict and fighting, would be catastrophic for the whole world for two reasons.
First, the U.S. is a force for good in the world. More than any country, the U.S. pays a lion’s share of contributions for humanitarian activities including the World Health Organization, refugee resettlement, peacekeeping operations, disease prevention, and disaster relief. As a divided America stumbles on the brink of disaster, the world needs to come to America’s aid — its fall is bound to cripple the whole world.
America has been steadily marching toward self-destruction since March 26, 1790, when the U.S. Congress, dominated by slaveholders and white supremacists envisioned, conceived, weaponized and unleashed racial division in American society. They enacted the first Apathied law in modern history, long before the Nazis and even before South Africa. Congress passed a racist law that made the skin color of a human being the requirement for U.S. citizenship and began promoting the immigration of Europeans to the “land of opportunities”, while illegally using the force of the US Military and American taxes to remove and banish non-white Americans to Liberia and Indian Reservations across America.
On March 3, 1819, Congress passed yet another law that effectively created the colony of Liberia, using the US Navy and American taxes. Liberia was created to fulfill U.S. domestic and foreign policy agenda and not as a democracy and therefore cannot automatically become a democracy! Alas, “United we stand. Divided we fall.” Since then, the illegal activity of Apartheid continues to be covered up by successive American regimes through lies and deception. This effort is aimed not only at Liberian corruption but also to save America from falling by demanding the truth to be told!
What Is The Whole Truth?
Despite its role in the colonization of Liberia and the atrocities associated aided and abetted by the US Military from the very beginning of this colony, Liberians still trust the United States and still desire a better relationship with Washington. The US Embassy is the scene for demonstrations and appeals for action from desperate Liberians who no longer trust their government officials. Liberians believe that if the United States government firmly takes action or threatens actions in the interest of American taxpayers, corrupt Liberian officials will do the right thing.
The United States Embassy does not believe this to be the truth. Instead, US Government officials always claim that pressure from Liberian voters is the only thing that can make Liberian Government officials do the right thing. Recently in her address at SKD Stadium on February 14, Special Assistant to the President of the United States Dana Banks stated that “corruption eats away at the democracy you have worked so hard to build. But ultimately, only the Liberian Government and the Liberian people can tackle corruption, fight for accountability and transparency, and move this country forward.”
America Is Not Embracing The Whole Truth
If what Dana Banks stated were true, Charles Taylor would not have left Liberia when President Bush asked an elected President of a “sovereign” nation to leave office, and President Weah would not have immediately suspended his top officials after the US Treasury imposed sanctions.
The truth is known that most of the top Liberian politicians were not only trained at American universities, many of them are American citizens, and or American persons with permanent residency. The US Government has more leverage in dealing with these politicians but rarely does so because of their “partnership” with Liberian politicians.
From the top opposition presidential asparents to the top ruling party leaders, majority of these individuals have their families living in America, own homes in America, and even bank accounts in the United States. Moreover, a revenue stream fueling their excessive salaries and benefits come from American taxpayers who have no idea of the huge money they earn compared to American public servants. America can’t seriously claim “ultimately” it’s Liberian voters, not the American “partners” with the real leverage.
America designed Liberia to be corrupt; empowering and enriching politicians and serving American interests
The United States of America designed and created the corrupt system of governance in Liberia. Therefore corruption by Liberian Government officials who include American citizens and permanent residents is only a manifestation of the seed that was planted by the United States that has grown and is bearing corrupt fruits. The first ten presidents of Liberia were American citizens disenfranchised by a racist law enacted by the U.S Congress. That unmitigated law continous to cause harm and ravage the lives of countless descendants of Americans. Congress and President Biden are spineless to mitigate the ongoing harm. So, “You reap what you sow.”
And for two hundred years Liberians have been coming to a corrupt tree that grew from a corrupt seed planted by the Government of the United States, hoping to reap good fruits. It has not happened in 200 years because America was and is still committing a crime against humanity by disenfranchising descendants of Americans, including people who fought during the Revolutionary war, only on accounts of their complexion.
The blatent denial of the inalienable rights of Liberians continues unabated, thanks to the American Apartheid Law of March 26, 1790, signed by President George Washington, who owned hundreds of slaves. The corruption continued with the US Government telling lies about who actually created Liberia; falsely claiming Liberia was created by “Freed American slaves” or “The American Colonization Society.” Joseph Jenkins Roberts was not a “freed slave”. Steven Benson was not a “freed slave.”
America has not told the truth after it committed a crime against humanity by making the complexion of a human being a requirement for U.S. citizenship. In 2022, under President Biden, Liberian refugees in America still are being denied work permits but Ukrainians have been supported. The US EMbassy in Liberia unlawfully denied Liberian visa applicants while taking millions of dollars from the Liberians. Liberian politicians and foreigners are granted preferential treatment.
Ambassador Greenfield risks lawsuit for her untruthful statements about Liberia
With all due respect, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield did not tell the truth about the role of the US Government in Liberia. Look, white supremacists who were slave masters and corrupt American politicians who passed racists laws are all dead but the harm they unleashed is ongoing and ravaging the lives of people under American Colonization in Native Americans in Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as well as west Point, Monrovia. Yes, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is right the Liberian Government is corrupt and is stealing money from Liberians.
The truth is that the US Embassy in Liberia is also stealing millions of dollars from Liberian visa applicants by using a classified unlawful visa scheme targeting only Black Liberians when the Embassy takes $160, from Liberian applicants before putting them through a fake visa interview process and unlawfully denying them a visa. Liberian politicians are not denied visas and millions of citizens including former enemies of America have visa waivers to enter the United States.
Worse, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield is not telling the truth, when she blames the defunct American Colonization Society for forcing Blacks to leave the United States for the colony of Liberia. In 1820, it was not the fault of the American Colonization Society, it was the Government of the United States colonizing its own citizens, and killing its own citizens because they were Black and considered inferior because of their color.
It’s a shame that an educated Black woman would repeat a falsehood for no justifiable reason in trying to exonerate the Government of the United States for disenfranchising its own citizens because of the color of their skin.
It was not the American Colonization Society but the Congress of the United States on March 26, 1790, that passed the law that “only white persons” could be citizens, after the American Declaration of Independence stated unequivocally: “We hold these Truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…”
It was the U.S Congress on March 3, 1819, that pass a law creating logistics for a colony in Africa, authorized the use of the US Navy, and appropriated $100000 of American taxes to fund the colonization of Americans decades before Blacks were freed. Again, the “Free People of Color” were not all “Freed Slaves.” There was no functional ACS with the capacity to colonize Americans in Africa. The Government of the United States committed this crime and Americans need to mitigate the harm, not cover up.
Thomas-Greenfield’s statement appears to be a hate crime for which I am prepared to take her to court. “It was a hard journey. And we should not romanticize it. People died on this trip. Others perished after arriving. And yet the ACS kept sending more free Black people away. When they arrived, they encountered the indigenous people of the land which sometimes led to more conflicts, with some new arrivals even inflicting some of the racist attitudes they had learned in the United States onto the indigenous population that they met.
But racism wasn’t the only reason they left America, nor the only driver of their new life,” she said. By justifying officially sanctioned racism committed by the United States Government at a time when the American Colonization Society was not even registered and chartered, she is sanctioning the suffering of Liberians who are “entitled to all rights of Americans”. Upon arrival in the colony, the white Americans continued to control and rule over the Blacks in Africa for the next two decades. This was consistent with the racist laws enacted by Congress.
Amb. Thomas-Greenfield: “Liberia has a serious problem right now, and that’s taking on a number of issues, foremost among them is the issue of corruption. And this is an issue that we are seeing across the board, not just in Liberia, but in other places. And for me, corruption is an act of robbery, plain and simple. It’s cancer in our societies. It is the government stealing from the people of Liberia, from the mouths of children. It takes away access to health care.
It denies citizens their right to public safety. It stops the young people of Liberia from getting the education they deserve. It takes the future away from them. It prevents the country from having the healthy business environment that it needs to lift Liberians out of poverty. It has denied Liberia its place in history, a successful and prosperous country with so many resources to contribute to its people’s well-being.” She went on to describe corruption as a “democracy killer” which is the most pressing and forward-looking challenge Liberia faces.
Finally, after funding corrupt government officials, many of whom are Americans with American bank accounts and passports and green cards and hiding it from American taxpayers, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield puts the responsibility for transparency on the shoulders of Liberian voters with no powers to recall elected officials and with no powers of veto over politicians actions and laws. “Only Liberia’s leaders, with the backing of and pressure from the people of Liberia, can create the environment of transparency and accountability the country needs,” she said. If the Biden Administration fails to declassify the racist and discriminatory cable of 1990 that orders the visa refusal of Liberians, I will have no alr=ternatives but to add Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield to the lawsuit for hate crimes.
Maybury’s statement
In a similar statement, Deputy Chief of Mission, Maybury, speaking on the Bicentennial said he was humbled that he was at the historic Providence Baptist, a “hallowed” place where the first generation of freed Black Americans who came to “these shores on January 7, 1822 gathered to worship.”
“Those men, women, and children arrived in the land that came to be known as Liberia almost a full 41 years before the Emancipation Proclamation,” Maybury said, adding, that Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of enslaved people in the United States at the end of the civil war. I hope the ongoing harm unleashed against Liberians will be resolved through concrete actions from the US Government. Citizens from 516 sovereign nations with ties to America are allowed to enjoy privileges of United States citizens. Citizens from 40 countries enter the USA without visa yearly. Liberia is the only country in the world established by the USA Government unlawfully and the only country with a Constitution of 1824 Article 1: “All persons born in Liberia are entitled to all privileges enjoyed by citizens of the United States.”
According to Chief Maybury, “Desiree Cormier Smith was sworn in last week as the State Department’s first Special Representative for Racial Inequality and Justice. She will lead our work worldwide to protect and advance the human rights of people belonging to marginalized social and ethnic communities and combat systemic racism, discrimination and xenophobia.” Unless the Government of the United States mitigates the ongoing harm of racism and atrocities of American Colonization against Liberians and pay damages and reparations, America is shying away from the truth and still heading in the direction of self-destruction. “And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John 8:22.
Sincerely Yours,
Rev. Torli H. Krua