A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

We didn’t want to leave Monrovia. We hoped that they would just go away,
but it soon became obvious that there would be no school and no work in
Monrovia. Like everyone else, we decided to leave. It was June 1990. 134
In July 1990, the NPFL launched what would be the first of three major battles for Monrovia. Some
Liberians simply could not believe the rebels would ever advance to Monrovia and the attack took
them by surprise. 135 One statement giver, a charcoal seller in the market, described the unexpected
alarm and chaos that ensued:
The NPFL war came in 1990. I was at the market and didn’t even know
it was coming. People came and started beating people. I hid behind coal.
They grabbed M. and killed her right there and then they started looking for
me. I went to my house to find my husband but he had been killed. I started
running when someone grabbed and beat me. I was wounded in the stomach
and fainted in a gutter. 136
Parties to the conflict are prohibited at
all times and places from committing
“outrages upon personal dignity, in particular
humiliating and degrading treatment” against
persons taking no part in the hostilities.
Art. 3(1)(c), Convention (IV) relative to the
Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
Numerous statement givers gave eyewitness
accounts of atrocities committed by both rebels and
government soldiers as they fought for control of
the capital. The statements again reveal the multiple
forms of violence and the targeting of certain
groups and ethnicities. An NDPL youth wing leader
summarized an INPFL attack based on NPFL and
Mandingo affiliations in Duala:
They (INPFL) started going on a house to house…[W]ithin that instant,
my boss lady, M.M., whom I was assistant to, was arrested, tortured, beaten,
raped and she was subsequently executed (beheaded). My husband, M.K., a
Mandingo by nationality, was a businessman. He was arrested and executed.
Realizing that my life was at stake, I decided to run away with my two kids,
but I was caught by the rebel. They started to beat me with the gun butt. I
was stabbed with the soldier knife in my stomach and lost consciousness. So
they thought I was dead, so they left me. 137
Another statement giver, whose father worked for President Doe, described how rebels broke into
their house in July 1990. 138 The men tied the statement giver’s father’s wrists behind his back and
told him he was enjoying money from President Doe and always drinking wine with Doe. A fighter
threatened to hit the statement giver for crying and then stabbed him in the stomach with a knife and
rammed the butt of a gun on his foot. 139
144