In hospital wards here, a bedraggled and stunned group of refugees from Liberia are struggling to sort out the reasons behind the outburst of violence that has led to hundreds of deaths there. "I heard gunshots, and I thought they were still celebrating Christmas," recalled Peter L. Zayzay, a 36-year old shop owner from Butuo, Liberia. "Then the next thing I knew, several men were running after me, trying to cut off my head." The men, wielding machetes, struck him repeatedly on the head and neck. Trying to fend off their blows, Mr. Zayzay lost three fingers on his right hand. "I don't know why this happened," he said. "They didn't even know me."
The killings began late in December when guerrillas opposed to Liberia's leader, Gen. Samuel K. Doe, entered the Liberian border town of Butuo in Nimba County. The Liberian Government then sent troops and provincial policemen to oust them. "The army started shooting and hacking at anyone they thought was a rebel," a Western diplomat said. "They didn't care if they were civilians or not. From all accounts, they were committing real atrocities." Two American military officers were sent to the Nimba region as observers this week after reports of the attacks on civilians. It was not clear whether they were there at the request of the Liberian Government.
A few miles from here, in Selleu, anguished and grisly reports were given by families huddled in a cluster in the cluttered courtyard of a village near the Liberian frontier. Some had been beaten and allowed to escape with only the clothes on their backs. They talked in frightened whispers of seeing friends and relatives clubbed or hacked to death by mobs. Mindo Paye said she, her husband and four children were asleep last Monday when the shooting began. Her oldest son ran to the door and was shot to death, as was her husband. Her 11-year-old daughter was badly wounded in the leg. "They just shot us like animals," she kept saying, hugging herself and shaking from side to side.
Another Liberian refugee, Samuel Paye, 22 years old, was hit with a hand grenade, which tore a wound in his thigh. He said his father, mother and grandfather were among at least 40 people killed during an attack in the border town of Loguato. In interviews on the Ivory Coast side of the border, many refugees reported that the border villages from which they fled - notably Kahnplay, Butuo and Lepulah - had been destroyed in the fighting. Soldiers were said to have burned and looted the dwellings.
The refugees said the shooting had been carried out by men dressed in Liberian Army uniforms. None of the victims was able to explain why he was being targeted for persecution. But human rights observers, among them people from Amnesty International and Africa Watch, based in London and Washington respectively, said they had received reports of an indiscrimate shoot-to-kill policy ordered by General Doe against anyone "engaged in suspicious activities."
The rebels, according to some reports, then went on an avenging rampage south into Krahn territory, General Doe's tribal and political base, attacking soldiers and slaughtering unarmed civilians there. The guerrillas, mostly members of the Gio tribe, were said to be led by Charles Taylor, a former Doe Cabinet minister who fell into disfavor and fled the country after being charged with corruption.
The dimensions of the violence by both sides may never be known, in part because Liberia has sought to sever contacts with reporters and with outside groups that are not likely to favor the Government. Diplomats and international relief workers, however, estimate that at least 500 civilians have been killed. More ominously, African and Western diplomats say, the Liberian Government has yet to clamp down hard on soldiers involved in the campaign of killing and terror. Reports of continued fighting along the border have touched off fears that the region is on the brink of prolonged civil strife.
So far, at least 70,000 Liberians have fled across the eastern frontier to escape the bloodshed and most of them have settled in the heavily forested hills of this remote corner of the Ivory Coast. The thinly populated ridges of green bush are lush with coconut palms, bamboo and wild banana trees, and the mist that settles in the valleys makes the mornings serene and idyllic. For now, however, the region's tranquillity has been vanquished by the grim influx of Liberian refugees, many of whom need food and immediate medical help. Relief workers say that some of the small villages near the border, like Binta and Selleu, have increased in population more than tenfold since the beginning of the year.
The Liberian nation is, in a sense, the result of an earlier attempt to accommodate ethnic rivalries. Modern Liberia was founded in 1822 by slaves freed in the United States with the aid of President James Monroe and money from Congress to buy land from local chiefs for the settlers. In 1847, the country became Africa's first independent republic. Soon afterward, a glaring gap opened between the former slaves and the original residents of the country they created. The black settlers evolved into colonists who classified the indigenous African majority as "aborigines" and disenfranchised them, making the right to vote contingent on property ownership. Resentment against the American-Liberian elite simmered for decades, and in 1980, it boiled over when Master Sargeant Doe, a member of the Krahn tribe, seized power. A few days later, 13 former Government officials were tied to telephone poles on a beach and executed by a firing squad.
In recent years, sporadic violence has erupted, particularly in the eastern region. In 1985, opposition leaders charged that Government troops, many of them from the Krahn tribe, killed more than 1,000 Liberians mostly from the Gio and Mano tribes, in reprisal for suspected involvement in a coup attempt or for sympathy with rebel forces. The Government denied that there had been any executions. Earlier this week, President Doe warned that soldiers who harmed unarmed civilians would face firing squads. He said, however, that it has been difficult for soldiers to identify rebels because they were dressed in civilian clothes.
For refugees like Mr. Zayzay, who fled with only the clothes on his back and little prospect that he can return soon, there is little consolation in such promises. "I lost everything," he said. "I don't even know where to begin to pick up my life."
Source: New York Times
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