Glenna Gordon and Jina Moore are working on a project called Justice Renewed: Liberia After the War, looking at Liberia’s efforts to restore law and justice.
Photo by Glenna Gordon. "An old woman holds up an animal called a doo at a village market in central Liberia."
There likely will be articles stemming from this project, but for now their blog posts on the topic are original and awesome. An excerpt from a post by Jina Moore about a chat with a former feared fighter who now charges cell phones near Taylor’s old house in Congo Town — an especially daring venture as I remember most Liberians believing this home to cause very bad luck:
A reformed man, my Liberian colleagues and I expected him to be a bit more confessional than he ended up being. Sure, Taylor committed crimes, and Akar says it would be better if Taylor confessed, made “people understand why, and say ‘I’m sorry.’” But justice? “Man can prosecute him,” Akar said, but “wherever Taylor is at now, no man can free him from that.”
And what of Akar, a man whose name once made people run with fear? Does conversion lead to confession?
Not so much.
Herein lies the problem. Akar wants to blame Charles Taylor for what he Akar did to his fellow Liberians. Even if Charles Taylor told people like Akar or Zigzag Marzah to carry out atrocities ( Which I don’t believe he did ). Don’t these people have the right and ability to disobey orders which constitute war crimes ? This is what makes the case against him in Sierra Leone so rediculous. Here was a sitting Liberian president supposedly ordering rebels in Sierra Leone to hack off limbs in exchange for diamonds.
Ditto Aki,
And I don’t know how this aids the discourse on this website or aids international justice by every Tom, Dick and Harry not taking responsibility for their own actions.