Rising To The Occasion
A colossal litany of horrendous human rights abuses. Whatever grotesque and gruesome atrocities human imagination can think of, appears to have been committed under former Liberian president Charles Taylor. A quarter million people died during seven years in Liberia when civil war tore the country apart after Mr. Taylor took power in 1996.
That was for starters, an equal number died, while uncountable others were de-limbed in the following decade in Sierra Leone.
Charles Taylor certainly distinguished himself from other capriciously ruthless dictators in Africa. Quite like other tyrants he took great care to amass wealth said to be in the billions, while he outdistanced them by preying on West Africa, turning it into a bleak place of corruption, poverty and mass death.
He had his soldiers hack off peoples' limbs, ears, noses and lips. They were instructed to rape, pillage and abduct children to induct them into the military as child soldiers, and to force them to perform atrocious acts of human degradation.
A three-judge panel of judges at a special court in The Hague concluded a five-year legal determination to deliver their verdict of guilty as charged. There were eleven charges, including mutilation, rape, murder, sexual enslavement and recruitment of child soldiers.
Mr. Taylor plundered Sierra Leone's diamond mines, destabilised the country and its government.
He led the Revolutionary United Front rebels who celebrated their prowess by hacking off civilian limbs. He supplied the 'rebels' with weapons, ammunition and supplies, in exchange for diamonds. All the charges, according to Mr. Taylor represent "diabolical lies".
Irrespective of the presence of dozens of witnesses who identified Mr. Taylor as the source of the unspeakable mayhem, ordering systematic rape, murder and mutilation of tens of thousands of people.
One of the witnesses described himself as Mr. Taylor's death squad commander. He felt no compulsion to hide the fact that he murdered and maimed hundreds of people; including pregnant women, children and old women.
The troops were expressly ordered to rape and loot. Severed heads were posted on sticks along highways and human intestines strung across roads to frighten people. "He [Taylor] made us understand that as guerrillas you have to play with human blood, so that the enemy forces would be afraid of you."
This trial assumed its official operation in 2007, then took a full year to begin to hear evidence. The Special Court for Sierra Leone organized by the United Nations and Sierra Leone was criticized by Mr. Taylor for allocating a mere $2-million for his defence. Over a two-year period 115 witnesses were heard. It has taken over a year for the judges to consider their verdict.
Testimony amounted to 50,000 pages and 1,520 exhibits had to be perused, discussed and analyzed. Mr. Taylor will serve his sentence in a British jail. Since there is no death penalty he will not suffer cessation of life, but remain incarcerated.
The evil one man is capable of sullying the world with could not be accomplished without other men sacrificing their consciences to believe in what they do.
Paradoxically, this is a man whom then-South-African-president Nelson Mandela invited to a formal dinner, where he was introduced to supermodel Naomi Campbell, gifting her with "dirty stones", aka blood diamonds.
It is difficult to absorb the horrors that human beings can deliver in destroying other peoples' lives in the most inhuman ways possible. But human beings prove time and again that they are more than capable of rising to the occasion.
Labels: Africa, Chaos, Conflict, Corruption, Crime, Human Fallibility, Justice, Political Realities
posted by Pieface @ Friday, April 27, 2012
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