Freedom in the World 2004 - Liberia

Political Rights: 6
Civil Liberties: 6
Status: Not Free
Population: 3,300,000
GNI/Capita: $140
Life Expectancy: 49
Religious Groups: Indigenous beliefs (40 percent), Christian (40 percent), Muslim (20 percent)
Ethnic Groups: Indigenous tribes (95 percent), other [including Americo-Liberians] (5 percent)
Capital: Monrovia

Overview

As rebel troops struck Monrovia in July 2003, President Charles Taylor abandoned the presidency and sought asylum in Nigeria. West African leaders negotiated an end to the fighting and Nigerian-led peacekeepers arrived in Liberia ahead of the installation of a transitional government. Before seeking asylum, Taylor was indicted by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone for war crimes.

Liberia was settled in 1821 by freed slaves from the United States and became an independent republic in 1847. Americo-Liberians, descendants of the freed slaves, dominated the country until 1980, when army Sergeant Samuel Doe led a bloody coup and murdered President William Tolbert. Doe's regime concentrated power among members of his Krahn ethnic group and suppressed others. Forces led by Taylor, a former government minister, and backed by Gio and Mano ethnic groups that had been subjected to severe repression, launched a guerrilla war from neighboring Cote d'Ivoire against the Doe regime on Christmas Eve 1989. In 1990, Nigeria, under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), led an armed intervention force, preventing Taylor from seizing the capital but failing to protect Doe from being captured and tortured to death by a splinter rebel group. A peace accord in 1996 led to elections in 1997 that Taylor won.

The peace accord, however, was not entirely effective. Long-standing grievances were not resolved, and Taylor made little effort to seek genuine reconciliation. Many of his rivals were forced to flee the country. Some used neighboring Guinea as a staging ground from which to launch their rebellion against Taylor. New York-based Human Rights Watch reported in November 2003 that Guinea had imported arms that were used by the rebel Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD).

In 2003, as Liberians placed their dead in front of the U.S. Embassy in the capital, Monrovia, international pressure mounted for Washington to intervene militarily to stop the rebel assault on the city that began in March. A handful of U.S. marines eventually arrived to support West African peacekeepers with logistics, but the most significant step the United States made was calling for President Taylor to step down. Spurred on by his indictment for war crimes in neighboring Sierra Leone, he resigned, handing over power to Vice President Moses Blah and accepting Nigeria's offer of asylum.

Taylor's departure from Liberia in August 2003 almost immediately stopped the war. ECOWAS helped negotiate an end to the fighting between Taylor's forces, LURD, and the rebel Movement for Democracy in Liberia (MODEL). The West African peacekeepers were to be part of an eventual 15,000-strong UN-led force that is to oversee disarmament and demobilization. Human rights abuses abated following the ceasefire, but violations continued, especially in the countryside, where peacekeepers continued to have problems gaining access.

Delegates to the peace talks in 2003 chose businessman Gyude Bryant as Liberia's interim president after Taylor fled to Nigeria. The delegates allocated posts in the transitional parliament to the former ruling National Patriotic Party (NPP), LURD, MODEL, other political parties, and civil society groups. Under the terms of the peace deal, the NPP and the two rebel groups can each name five ministers to the 21-member cabinet.

The task of rebuilding Liberia is enormous. The country lacks electricity, running water, a functioning educational system, and proper medical facilities. A generation has been scarred by war. An estimated 38,000 combatants are to be disarmed, including some 15,000 child soldiers. More than 300,000 Liberians have fled the country, and about 500,000 are internally displaced.

Fourteen years of intermittent civil war in Liberia have brought fighting to three neighboring countries and claimed 200,000 lives in Liberia alone. The best chance for lasting peace is to find a regional solution. Peacekeeping troops have been deployed to neighboring Sierra Leone and Cote d'Ivoire as well. Fighters have routinely crossed the borders of those two countries, as well as into Guinea. Taylor reportedly was still pulling strings in Liberia from Nigeria, and a UN panel monitoring sanctions against Liberia said that Taylor had tried to take government revenues while in exile. The panel said it would maintain a diamonds and timber exporting embargo on Liberia, as well as an arms purchasing embargo.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Charles Taylor and his party assumed power after the 1997 elections, which were generally free and fair. The votes for the presidency and the National Assembly, on the basis of proportional representation, were held under provisions of the 1986 constitution. The polls constituted Liberia's most genuine electoral exercise in decades but were conducted in an atmosphere of intimidation. Taylor's victory reflected more of a vote for peace than for a particular ideology, as many people believed that the only way to stop the war was to make him president. After Taylor fled to Nigeria in August 2003, a transitional government was installed to lead the country to elections in 2005.

Liberia's independent media have survived at the cost of extensive self-censorship. Employees have suffered from constant surveillance, harassment, threats, detentions, and beatings. Taylor owned KISS-FM, the only countrywide FM radio station. State television and one private station broadcast only irregularly.

Independent radio stations broadcast religious programming, but the Roman Catholic radio station, Veritas, has had programming on human rights issues. Its offices suffered a mortar attack during the fighting in Monrovia in July, and it was off the air for a month. Talking Drum Studios, which is run by Search for Common Ground and broadcasts programs promoting peace, was looted. Taylor closed down six rural radio stations in March. Internet access was not specifically restricted under the Taylor government, but many Liberians believed e-mail was monitored.

Liberian journalists were targeted by government forces and rebel soldiers during the fighting in and around Monrovia in 2003. Two foreign journalists were injured. The Ghana-based Media Foundation of West Africa in February urged the Taylor government to stop "the unending spate of physical assault, cruel torture, and sheer impunity" perpetrated against journalists and human rights activists. The foundation said journalist Throble Suah of the independent Inquirer newspaper had been beaten into a coma by forces of the government's Anti-Terrorist Unit.

Religious freedom is respected in practice, but Muslims have been targeted because many Mandingos follow Islam. Academic freedom was restricted under the Taylor government. Students feared expressing political views opposed to the government. Exiled student leaders returned to the country after the transitional government was installed.

Numerous civil society groups, including human rights organizations, operate in the country, but their employees are subject to repeated harassment by security forces. Human rights workers have been allowed access to prisons, where conditions are harsh and torture is used to extract confessions. The right to strike, organize, and bargain collectively is permitted by law, but there is little union activity because of the lack of economic activity. Two umbrella unions cover some 60,000 workers, but most of them are unemployed. There is forced labor in rural areas, and child labor is widespread.

The judiciary is subject to executive influence, corruption, and intimidation by security forces, which operate with impunity. International human rights groups have urged Nigeria to hand Taylor over to the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, which has indicted him for war crimes linked to his alleged involvement in the arms-for-diamonds trade that helped sustain Sierra Leone's civil war.

Civilians were often the casualties during the civil war, suffering at the hands of both rebel groups and government troops. Abuses included torture of captives while in incommunicado detention, rape of women and girls, forced labor, forced military recruitment of men and boys, and extrajudicial killings.

Societal ethnic discrimination is rife, and the Taylor government discriminated against indigenous ethnic groups that opposed Taylor during the civil war, especially the Mandingo and Krahn ethnic groups.

Treatment of women varies by ethnic group, religion, and social status. Many women continue to suffer from physical abuse and traditional societal discrimination, despite constitutionally guaranteed equality. Rape, including gang rape, was rampant during the civil war. Women and girls were often abducted as laborers and sex slaves, while others joined rebel groups or militias to protect themselves.

Trend Arrow

Liberia received an upward trend arrow due to a cease-fire and the departure of President Charles Taylor that led to an easing of violence and repression.