A House with Two Rooms - The Advocates for Human Rights

The few individuals who did survive were saved by chance or by their ethnicity. One person survived
only because another body had fallen on top of her, shielding her from the soldiers’ view. 157 During
public hearings, one witness testified how the aforementioned Liberian survived. When the soldiers
began shooting, she screamed in Grebo, “Please don’t kill me among these dogs tonight, please don’t
kill me.” 158 When the soldiers heard her, they stopped shooting and asked, “What are you doing
among these dogs? We’re going to kill up the whole church and you are among them?” 159 The witness
summarized what happened next:
And so they told her they were going to kill everybody, but because these –
the two of them were Grebo, according to her, they wouldn’t kill them. But
they had to figure out a way. So she said the Krahn soldiers said they needed
to slash her, because they needed to spill blood from everybody that night.
That was the rule. So they slash her. And they slash her friend. And she had
two kids. And they said, “We’re going to take some bodies and lay them
around you. Lie flat, and we’ll put some dead bodies around you so it looks
like you [sic] dead and because all through the night there will be inspections
to make sure everybody is dead.” 160
Like so many other horrific events, the St. Peter Lutheran Church massacre was a trigger that
compelled many Liberians to flee the country. 161
Statements reveal that combatants from all factions, besides targeting and killing groups, abused their
power to loot and to seek revenge during the battle for Monrovia. As in the preceding months, soldiers
and rebels demanded food, money, or other goods. One statement giver described how, in early July
1990, he witnessed NPFL soldiers confiscate food and the clothes off of people’s backs. 162 Another
described how rebels dressed as women and wearing weave caps came to his home and ordered him
to catch his family’s chickens for them to eat. 163 The rebels
ordered him and his family to leave while they prepared
a meal for themselves and took “everything they wanted
from the property.” 164 When victims could not meet
fighters’ demands, they were often punished. AFL soldiers
asked one statement giver’s father for food and money, then
killed him because he could not give them either. 165 One
statement giver summarized an INPFL fighter’s retaliatory
treatment of him over his father’s failure to pay him:
It was July 1990. It happened in Jimmycar Road, Bushrod Island, Monrovia.
It was a Prince Johnson boy [who] identified [himself] as Henry. He was
dressed in an INPFL rebel uniform. He first slapped me in [my] mouth with
147
Chapter Seven
“It is prohibited to order that there
shall be no survivors.” Art. 4(1), Protocol
Additional to the Geneva Conventions
of 12 August 1949, and relating to
the Protection of Victims of Non-
International Armed Conflicts (Protocol
II) (1977).