Stone throwing ex-soldiers paralyse capital

Shops pulled down shutters and residents emptied the streets of the seafront Liberian capital Monrovia on Tuesday after more than 100 former soldiers burned tyres and set up road blocks to angrily protest the non-payment of their demobilisation pay. UN peacekeepers fired in the air to disperse the stone-throwing men who hurled stones and metal objects at the Ministry of Defence, smashing office windows. “We want to assure the public to remain calm,” said Minister of Defence Brownie Samukai. “The government will take appropriate measures to ensure that such acts are not repeated,” he told reporters after some of the protestors had been hauled off by UN troops. In 2004, the US government pledged US $35 million for the recruitment and training of a new post-war Liberian army on the provision that existing soldiers were paid salary arrears and outstanding entitlements first. Late last year, the outgoing transitional government completed the payment of soldiers’ benefits with each receiving US $540 to over US $1000, a substantial sum in post-war Liberia where over 80 percent of the population is unemployed. Some of Tuesday’s protesters told IRIN that they had not received their benefits as they had been out of the country. Many said they had been in refugee camps. “If they have settled up with our colleagues who were here, why does the government not want to pay us too? We were all the same soldiers! But because of the war some of us had to flee into exile for refuge,” said one protestor, Lieutenant Jimmy Barclay. He added, “Our action today is to show the government and the international community how serious we are about our money”. The government of President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf is pressing ahead with a programme to bring tens of thousands of Liberian refugees home. Liberia's 14 years of on-off civil war ended in 2003 when president Charles Taylor, besieged by rebel forces, accepted exile in Nigeria making way for the signing of a peace accord. This is second street protest by the returnee soldiers this month. Two weeks ago, the soldiers staged similar protests before the Defence Ministry and attempted to take the Minister of Defence and his deputies hostage until a contingent from the 15,000-strong UN peacekeeping force stepped in. Under Taylor militia fighters were brought in as uniformed government soldiers and the army swelled to a fighting force of more than 6,000 men and women. A nation-wide recruitment drive by the private US military company DynCorp is currently underway. Former government soldiers have not been excluded from applying, though all successful candidates must have a clean human rights record and have completed a secondary school education.