A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

The men made my father stare at the sun…The men took me and my father
to an unfinished block house. The men continued beating and torturing
both of us. They beat us with wire and the butts of their guns. The men
told us we had spoiled the country and ate the money. I was on the ground,
hurt and crying hard. Another rebel came and said that my father was Doe’s
campaign manager and that they needed to kill him. They forced my father
to drink urine from a cup and said it was wine. My father tried to spit it out
and they continued to beat him by hitting him on the back of his neck with
the butts of their guns. Another man hit me because I was crying and I
passed out. When I came to, others told me that the men had shot and killed
my father… 140
AFL soldiers were equally ruthless in their
attempts to defeat the rebels. The atrocities
were often misdirected or senseless and they
resulted in the loss of numerous innocent
lives. For example, one statement giver
described how the AFL shot indiscriminately,
opening fire on everyone at the supermarket
in July 1990. 141 As the INPFL approached, the
AFL retreated, slaughtering many people as
it did so. 142 One statement giver summarized
how a group of AFL soldiers transporting a
wounded man ordered him and his family into
the bush:
The entire family (my birth mother, stepfather, sister and me) ran into the
bush where we were followed by some of the soldiers that were on the trucks.
The wounded man was now being held up by two of the soldiers. A soldier
pointed to the wounded man and angrily said to me and my family, “You are
responsible for this. We are going to kill all of you.” I was frightened as the
man put shot in the rifle and was pointing it at my mother. The bullet went
in between my mother and sister and hit a man standing slightly behind and
in between the two of them. The man fell and died instantly. As the man
reloaded the gun my family and I were frozen in terror. Once he reloaded
the gun, he raised it towards me and said, “You, I am going to kill YOU.”
I shook as the soldier kept trying to squeeze the trigger but the trigger or
something on the gun had become jammed. The soldiers then took all of
our food. 143
145
Chapter Seven