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/ 10 October 2005
Liberians go to the polls on Tuesday in the country’s first general elections since civil war was brought to a halt in 2003. About 1,3-million registered voters — out of a population of 3,5-million — will queue on October 11 to choose a president from 22 candidates.
If Liberia had a lightbulb for everyone who has promised electricity as part of its reconstruction, the capital Monrovia would be lit up like Las Vegas, and not wreathed in perpetual darkness. As the electoral campaign for October 11 polls winds down, presidential candidates are stepping up their promises, committing to bring current and running water to the roughly one million residents.
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/ 15 September 2005
The candidate aspiring to be Liberia’s first elected woman president is canvassing for votes among a crowd of young men who make their living washing cars. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf wonders aloud why no women or girls are with them. ”Because this is a very hard job,” shouts one man.
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/ 2 September 2005
A wave of often serious crime by former fighters in Liberia has alarmed police and welfare officials, who say the ex-combatants are going back to armed tactics for lack of the post-war psychological help and education they need. Many youthful Liberians have grown up with nothing but violence and often drugs during conflict.
Liberian football legend turned presidential candidate George Weah is enjoying soaring popularity among young people, but this wanes among students trying to get an education. During visits to communities, 38-year-old Weah attracts large crowds of former combatants, peddlers, petty traders and football fans.
Liberia’s justice minister on Friday accused ex-president Charles Taylor of meddling in Liberian politics in violation of an agreement under which he lives in exile in Nigeria. ”We know that Mr Taylor is literally making telephone calls to his cronies in Liberia and other parts of the world daily,” Minister of Justice Kabinneh Janneh said.
Liberia’s interim president warned on Wednesday against ritual murder aimed at securing political posts through black magic, saying he would sign the death warrant of anyone convicted of the practice. ”Those who think they can easily take the life of another person and go free, are making a big mistake,” said Charles Gyude Bryant.
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/ 8 November 2004
A vast effort by the United Nations refugee agency and the Liberian government to return an estimated 500 000 internally displaced people to their home counties was poised to begin on Monday. The operation is seen as a key step in helping Liberia prepare for elections set for October next year.
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/ 29 October 2004
Mobs of angry youths brandishing machetes, sticks and Kalashnikov rifles rampaged through Liberia’s war-shattered capital on Friday in a rare outbreak of Muslim-Christian violence, prompting the country’s leader to order an immediate round-the-clock curfew. At least three churches and two mosques were set ablaze.
<li><a class=’standardtextsmall’ href="http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?cg=BreakingNews-Africa&ao=124621">Riots rock Monrovia</a>
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/ 29 October 2004
Gunshots were heard until early on Friday as angry youths carrying stones and sticks roamed the streets of the Liberian capital, Monrovia, two days before the scheduled end of a United Nations campaign to disarm fighters from the West African state’s civil war. A riot spread throughout the night across the city.
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/ 20 October 2004
United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia used teargas to disperse a demonstration on Wednesday by parents and pupils who want their primary school in the capital reopened. Several parents said the protest embodied larger frustrations both with the Gyude Bryant government and the UN mission in the country.
Six-hundred-and forty-four Liberian children separated from their parents since the Liberian civil war ended in August 2003 have been reunited with their families, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Wednesday. It said 229 children were repatriated from Guinea, 199 from Sierra Leone, 12 from Ivory Coast and 199 were traced in Liberia itself.
West African officials called on Tuesday for a convention to elect a leader for Liberia’s main rebel group, aiming to quell rising dissent within their ranks that could destabilise the nascent peace in the war-torn state. A leadership crisis within the rebel group has hamstrung efforts to extend the Liberian central government into its territory.
Liberia’s security will remain precarious until concentrated efforts are made to disarm next-door Côte d’Ivoire, General Daniel Opande, the Kenyan military commander for the UN mission in the west African state, said. ”I can assure you that at the end of our mission in Liberia, we will have collected all the arms, but the country will remain at risk if in Ivory Coast the guns are still in the hands of the wrong people,” said Opande.
Fourteen years of war have brought about a near-terminal decline of public services in the Liberian capital, Monrovia. As a result, the streets are littered with household waste, shrapnel, carcasses, rubble and scrap that are an eyesore at best — at worst, a dangerous pollutant of underground water sources.
The man named earlier this week by the executive council of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy to replace Sekou damate Conneh as chairperson is dead. Charyee Doe died in a United States hospital on Wednesday following an operation to remove a tumour from his brain.
Former Liberian soldiers ran riot in Monrovia’s red-light district on Monday, leaving one dead, amid confusion about their timetable for disarming. Hundreds of fighters up-ended market stalls, broke windows and brandished their weapons in the melee, which ended with dozens of injuries. One person was killed.
A group with the rebel organisation Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (Lurd) called for the removal of the country’s Finance Minister, Luseni Kamara, on Thursday. The Lurd splinter group — calling itself the executive committee — comprises the political leadership of the movement.
United Nations peacekeepers in Liberia disarmed more than 200 rebel fighters on Sunday in the territory of Tubmanburg in the north west of the country, according to the UN mission in Liberia (Unmil). Unmil’s regional commander called it the most successful operation so far in the disarmament programme.
The United Nations said this week nearly 1Â 800 former combatants reported for demobilisation during the first week of its relaunched disarmament programme in Liberia, but fewer than half of them handed in a gun. This revived fears that many of the weapons used in Liberia’s civil war have gone to neighbouring countries.
United Nations police and their Liberian counterparts used tear gas on Friday to break up a protest in Monrovia by thousands of students calling for salary arrears to be paid to their teachers, witnesses said. Stores, supermarkets and other businesses in Monrovia shut down as the students began throwing stones.
Prince Yormie Johnson, a former rebel leader, has returned to Liberia from nearly 12 years of exile in Nigeria to carve out a new career for himself in civilian politics. The former army officer has warned Liberia’s transitional government against setting up a war crimes tribunal.
Fighters from Liberia’s largest rebel group have run riot in the town of Tubmanburg, Liberia, to protest at a plan to remove Finance Minister Luseni Kamara from office, reports said on Wednesday. Leaders of the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy decided at the weekend to replace Kamara.
One of Liberia’s most notorious warlords returned home after more than a decade in exile, asking forgiveness on Monday for ”whatever wrong” he may have done. Prince Johnson, a one-time faction leader turned evangelist and political hopeful, is best-known for the 1990 kidnapping, torture and killing of Liberia’s then-president, Samuel Doe.
Liberia’s Supreme Court has authorised a lower court to rule on a claim by exiled former president Charles Taylor that his properties were illegally searched. The decision was made on Tuesday after consultations between the Liberian courts concerned in a legal wrangle that also involves neighbouring Sierra Leone.
The journey back to normal life was never going to be an easy one for the ex-combatants of Liberia’s civil war. But, it could be argued that women fighters face a particularly tough challenge. Many women and girls found themselves caught up in the conflict — both as combatants and victims of sexual abuse by fighting groups.
Côte d’Ivoire refugees living in West African neighbour Liberia stormed their embassy on Monday to protest their treatment by diplomatic representatives, an AFP reporter saw. About 30 Ivorian men, women and children pulled down the orange, white and green Ivorian flag from outside the mission and took an embassy vehicle.
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/ 14 February 2004
Armed militias continue to violate human rights and international humanitarian law, despite the progress being made to end Liberia’s 14-year conflict, a human rights lawyer says. "The rebels are engaged in a new wave of violence, extorting, abducting and harassing the civilians," he said.
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/ 9 February 2004
When former Liberian president Charles Taylor took up Nigeria’s offer of exile last year, he left behind a country where the flow of information had slowed to a trickle — particularly in rural areas. Taylor had withdrawn the frequencies of private radio stations and had subsequently banned them.
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/ 28 January 2004
Liberia’s hopes for peace were rekindled last October when a power-sharing transitional government took office with a mandate to run the country until elections in 2005. But, with just over a 100 days having passed since the inauguration, has the new government lived up to expectations?
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/ 22 January 2004
Liberia’s interim leader warned the country’s main rebel movement on Wednesday not to let its husband-wife leadership split grow into violence, saying United Nations forces would respond. ”Jungle justice” would not be allowed to take hold in Liberia, Gyude Bryant, chairman of the internationally brokered power-sharing government, declared.
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/ 10 December 2003
At least eight people have died in three days of riots in the Liberian capital sparked by former combatants angered by the conditions of a United Nations campaign to disarm them after 14 years of war. A civilian was shot eight times at point-blank range after refusing to hand over her vehicle to rioting fighters.