Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, an opposition politician in Liberia who was cleared of charges of complicity in a coup attempt last year, said she fled to the United States this month after the chairman of the ruling party threatened her life.
In her first public statement since she arrived in New York on Sept. 1, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said last week that she decided to leave the West African country after being denied an exit visa and after her home was ransacked. She said the chairman of the ruling National Democratic Party of Liberia, Keikura B. Kpoto, who is also a senator in the national legislature, told her on Aug. 16 that "something might happen to you, and no one would be responsible." She said he also warned her not to take part in protests against the Government's arrest of three other opposition leaders.
Two days later, she said, her home was broken into by people in civilian clothes who wrecked it while she hid nearby. The men told neighbors they were looking for her, Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said. "I took the threat seriously," she said of Mr. Kpoto's warning. "I think I could be more effective there, but because I wanted to be alive, I had to leave."
Mr. Kpoto, reached by telephone in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, denied that he had threatened Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf and said she had used "cheap politics" to advance her political standing. Mr. Kpoto said he had asked her "as a neighbor" to call off a demonstration that the Government had prohibited. "I told her that if you put people in the streets, you never know what might happen, and you cannot hold anyone responsible," he said. "If I wanted to threaten her why would I have done it in front of witnesses?"
Mr. Kpoto said Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf's home was ransacked by disgruntled demonstrators who were angered when she failed to attend a rally. J. Emmanuel Bowier, a spokesman for the Liberian Embassy in Washington, said his Government did not know Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf had left the country. He said 12 men had been arrested in the attack on her house.
Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said she would continue to speak out from the United States against the Government of Gen. Samuel K. Doe and would work with a coalition of opposition political parties to get new presidential elections. She said she would like to "take her chances" as a candidate for President.
General Doe won an election last October in which it was reported he received 50.1 percent of the vote. Opposition leaders say the count was rigged.
Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf, a Liberian who became a vice president of Citibank while working for the bank in Kenya, has been an outspoken critic of General Doe and his aides despite a military decree making it a crime to spread "lies, rumors or disinformation." She was jailed in 1985 for calling Government officials "idiots." Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf was again jailed, for seven months, after the coup attempt last November. The Government failed to present evidence of her involvement, and she was released from prison on June 6. On June 8, she said, she applied for a travel visa but was refused. She said she was told her possible connection to the coup attempt was still being investigated.
Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf refused to disclose how she was able to leave Liberia, but denied breaking any laws. "I was not charged with anything," she said. "I was just exercising a right of travel that should not have been denied."
In July, a Monrovia newspaper erroneously reported that Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf fled arrest after staging an illegal rally in Buchanan, a coastal town. It was later learned that there was no rally but that she had been surrounded by well-wishers. She said she returned to Monrovia oblivious of an attempt by a local senator to have her arrested.
Mrs. Johnson-Sirleaf said national reconciliation, which General Doe has advocated since Government troops thwarted the overthrow attempt, was now just a "fleeting possibility."
Source: New York Times
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