President’s threats worry overseas-based opposition

Overseas-based opposition politicians say they are being cautious following threats by President Charles Taylor to arrest them if they return to Liberia. “I now have to reassess the situation,” former presidential candidate Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf told IRIN. “I had plans to go there and spend all of the last two weeks of September.”

Johnson-Sirleaf runs a venture capital fund in Abidjan, where she has lived for more than two years. She was defeated by Taylor in 1997 elections that ended seven years of civil war. Most people saw the ballot more as a vote for the end of the war than a test of political popularity. Since then, several of Taylor’s opponents have left the country and it appears as though few will attempt to return any time soon.

However, Johnson-Sirleaf said she refused “to be intimidated” by Taylor. “Liberia does not belong to him,” she said. “I know I have done absolutely nothing to qualify for an arrest or even an accusation, so he has no right to keep me out of the country.”

Taylor’s government is apparently under pressure from an armed rebellion in northern Lofa county, which borders Sierra Leone and Guinea. Access to the area has been limited so it is difficult to assess the scale of the fighting. ‘The News’ in Monrovia reported on Wednesday that at least five government soldiers with bullet wounds were at the Defense Ministry. Taylor’s opponents suspect the rebellion is a ruse by the government to mask its involvement in neighbouring, diamond-rich Sierra Leone.

Taylor has alleged that opposition politicians could be supporting the Lofa rebellion. In addition to Johnson-Sirleaf, he has named former faction leader Alhaji Kromah, former justice minister Laveli Supuwood and late president Samuel Doe’s younger brother, Cheyee Doe, among others. “Part of Mr. Taylor’s shortcoming is he has not reached out to these people to engage in a dialogue,” said Johnson-Sirleaf. “He sees them as enemies.”

Taylor also said supporters of dissidents were in Monrovia, raising fears that more opponents of the government would be detained or forced to flee the country. A number of people, including ruling party members, have been investigated for alleged links to the rebellion while scores of others have gone abroad.
Human rights groups in Liberia reported last year that ethnic Mandingos were arbitrarily detained and tortured for allegedly backing the rebels, who took up arms in Lofa in March and August of last year. Four Mandingos have been detained for over two weeks for their purported link the dissidents, PANA reported.

Taylor issued the arrest threat while responding on Monday to a statement by the National Muslim Council of Liberia pledging support for the government. Mandingos and Muslims are often considered synonymous in Liberia and many live in the country’s north. The council’s statement cautioned the government against “collective guilt”.
Taylor said dissidents were gathering funds in the United States to finance the fighting in Lofa. The government announced in July that dissident forces coming from neighbouring Guinea had attacked Liberia, charges that Guinea has denied.

An umbrella organization of Liberians living in the United States, the Union of Liberian Associations in the Americas, called on Monday for Taylor to be removed peacefully from office.
The group, quoted by the Georgia-based opposition publication ‘The Perspective,’ accused Taylor of violations against press freedom, the right of assembly and the right to free and impartial trials.