Abidjan | Tuesday
LIBERIAN security forces have committed torture and rape since the government imposed emergency rule two months ago, ostensibly to stop a rebel advance, Amnesty International charged on Tuesday.
The London-based human rights watchdog said in a statement that “international bodies must take concrete steps to address human rights protection as a matter of urgency.”
It said the state of emergency, imposed by President Charles Taylor on February 8 following reports of a rebel advance on Monrovia, was actually a cover for imposing more draconian measures and a “crackdown on freedom of expression.”
It reported an “increase in human rights violations, including torture and rape, by Liberian security forces… during raids in local communities, crowded shopping areas and in camps for internally displaced people in Monrovia.”
It said Taylor’s regime had “failed to protect civilians from harassment and torture, including rape, from its own security forces and the LRD,” or Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy rebel group.
Amnesty said large portions of the embattled population were still fleeing to adjoining Sierra Leone, Ghana and Ivory Coast but they were made more vulnerable with their “property looted and fines imposed” on both sides of the borders.
Forces loyal to Taylor have since 1999 been fighting rebel factions in the north which opposed the president during the bloody civil war that ravaged Liberia from 1989 to 1997.
Amnesty said Taylor’s government had cracked down on the press during the period, citing the February 12 closure of a newspaper and the arrest of three staff members over an anti-government article. The three people were freed later without charge.
It said after that the head of the Justice and Peace Commission, the most prominent human rights body, was arrested for criticising the state of emergency.
The latest arrests occurred on March 28 when five members of the National Human Rights Centre of Liberia, an umbrella grouping on nine rights bodies, were “arbitrarily arrested and held without charge for 48 hours.”
Amnesty urged the United Nations to immediately “strengthen the human rights component of the UN office and the immediate deployment of international observers with gender and child protection expertise.”
The Liberian government rejects any accusation of rights violations and blames rebels for terrorising the local populations. – AFP