OWN CORRESPONDENT, Abidjan | Wednesday
AMNESTY International called on Liberia and the international community on Tuesday to halt what it said were abductions, gang rape, torture and murder of unarmed innocents in the west African state.
The human rights group claimed an anti-terrorist unit had raped a pregnant woman and stamped on her stomach, causing her to lose the child.
An Amnesty report detailed findings of an investigation in Liberia’s northern Lofa county, where government forces have clashed with rebels, and called on armed opposition groups in neighbouring Guinea to end abductions of civilians and other abuses in Liberia.
It urged the Liberian government “to ensure that widespread torture, including rape and killings by the security forces of unarmed citizens suspected of supporting Liberian armed opposition groups are immediately stopped.”
The international community “must act urgently to stop these abuses, including by interceding with the Liberian government and requesting the Guinean government to use its influence over Liberian armed opposition groups based in its territory,” it warned.
Liberia’s government, headed by President Charles Taylor, has already drawn international condemnation for alleged rights abuses.
Since the renewal of armed incursions from Guinea into Lofa County in 2000, Amnesty said, the human rights situation had progressively deteriorated.
“Women and girls fleeing the outbreak of hostilities since February 2001 have been arrested at checkpoints and gang-raped by Liberian government forces,” it said.
Last month, a pregnant woman had been grabbed by an officer of Liberia’s Anti-Terrorist Unit (ATU). “She was repeatedly raped until being released a few days later. ATU officers beat her and stamped on her stomach, as a result of which she lost her baby,” the document charged.
According to testimony and other evidence gathered during a three-week visit in February, civilians suspected of backing dissidents were held in holes – some filled with dirty water – dug in the ground, at the military base in Gbatala.
“Prisoners are kicked and beaten including with gun butts; some have had plastic melted on their bodies or cigarettes extinguished on their skin and others have been forced to roll in mud, walk on broken glass with their bare feet or eat hot pepper.
“Suspects are regularly tabied, which means that their arms are tied together so tightly behind their backs that their elbows touch. The victims met by Amnesty International delegates still bore scars and marks of torture and were visibly traumatised,” the report said.
Since mid-2000, dozens of civilians had allegedly been deliberately killed on suspicion of backing armed incursions from Guinea, and more than 100 civilians, mostly of the Mandingo tribe, had been tortured by the ATU and other government forces, Amnesty continued.
“Unofficial detention centres include the military base in Gbatala, central Liberia, recently investigated by the UN as a training base for the Sierra Leonean armed opposition Revolutionary United Front (RUF), responsible for widespread killings, abductions, mutilations and other abuses in Sierra Leone,” it said.
“Other suspected dissidents have been held and tortured at the ATU cells behind the Executive Mansion, the office of the presidency in Monrovia, the capital,” the report added. – AFP
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