Act on deteriorating rights situation, HRW urges Security Council

Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on UN Security Council members to take a comprehensive approach to ending the bloodshed and repression in Liberia, the US-based watchdog reported on Friday. "Security Council sanctions to end the arms-for-diamonds trade in West Africa contributed to the emerging peace in Sierra Leone," said Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch’s Africa division. "Now the Council needs to condemn human rights abuses by the Liberian government and the rebels, take steps to end Guinea’s support for the Liberian rebels, and ensure that the Liberian conflict does not destabilize the fragile peace in Sierra Leone." It also asked the Council to strengthen the mandate of the UN Peace-Building Support Office in Liberia (UNOL) and increase its staffing and funding to enable the placement of human rights monitors to investigate abuses. The Council should request UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to fill the vacant position of representative in Liberia, with a mandate to report to the Council and make recommendations to resolve the conflict, it said. The suggestions came in a nine-page letter to the Security Council, in which HRW said Liberian government forces committed scores of war crimes and other serious abuses against civilians between April and June 2002 in the northwest of Liberia, plagued by fighting since the start of a rebel incursion in mid-2000. It said victims described to HRW how members of the government army and pro-government militias executed numerous civilians, shot and beat to death males of all ages for resisting conscription, raped many women and girls as young as twelve, subjected hundreds of civilians to forced labour, and restricted the movement of hundreds of people intending to flee to neighbouring Sierra Leone and Guinea. Another disturbing development was the renewed use of child combatants by members of the Liberian security forces, it said, charging that children were being recruited into the army and pro-government militias. It also said it had been receiving credible reports of continued forced conscription of civilians, including children, by the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD). The human rights watchdog said the government of Liberian President Charles Taylor had become increasingly intolerant of dissent in the face of renewed rebel activity, and that since imposing a state of emergency in February 2002, it had steadily imprisoned, harassed, and beaten individuals critical of its policies. Human Rights Watch also expressed concern about the fate of five nurses from the Liberian humanitarian organization, Merci, who were abducted on June 20, 2002 by LURD. It said LURD had admitted holding the nurses in its northern Liberian stronghold of Voinjama. The full text of the letter can be found at http://hrw.org/