Liberia’s TRC Begins Work

The beginning of Charles Taylor’s trial before the Special Court for Sierra Leone is obviously big news, and those who are interested in the trial should check out the live-blogging and analysis here. But Taylor’s trial should not overshadow an equally important event related to the civil war in Liberia — the launch of Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission:

The commission was established along similar lines to South Africa’s post-apartheid body.

Since 2003, Liberia has inched forward, helped by the presence of thousands of peacekeeping troops.

The conflict saw the rise and fall of Charles Taylor, who is now on trial for war crimes in The Hague.

[snip]

Opening proceedings, Mrs Johnson-Sirleaf called on Liberians to be honest and truthful to “help the process of healing”.

“We call upon all officials of government; all Liberians, the president included, to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when called to do so, thereby obviating the need for the TRC to use its subpoena powers,” she said.

The seven-member commission does not have the power to try cases but will investigate crimes; and victims, witnesses and alleged perpetrators will tell their version of events at the hearings.

In recent months the commission has taken statements from people around the country – some of them extremely gruesome testimonies of how lives were shattered as men, women and children with guns and crude weapons targeted civilians.

The first of three witnesses that appeared at the opening hearing described how his sister had died in 1995 after being raped by a group of 25 rebel fighters.

A Baptist minister then alleged that rebel forces had destroyed his church when they entered the capital, Monrovia, in 2003, and used other church buildings to store their arms.

The last witness accused rebels in 1990 of killing his father, a Supreme Court judge.

How effective Liberia’s TRC will be remains to be seen. The BBC notes that Liberians disagree about whether it’s a good idea, some believing that memories of the civil war are still too fresh, while others — including Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the President of Liberia — believe that the truth behind the civil war needs to be definitively established.

I’m generally skeptical of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, particularly when they are intended to bring about social reconciliation. The South African TRC, for example, may have played a critical role in ensuring the country’s political stability, but it did little to improve race relations. Indeed, a national poll conducted in 1998 found that nearly 2/3 of South Africans believed that the TRC simply made people angrier and caused relations between the races to actually deteriorate. (Readers who are interested in the problems with South Africa’s TRC should make sure to read Richard Wilson’s 2001 book The Politics of Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa.)

I sincerely hope Liberia’s TRC does better.