Top: Illegal occupants leave the Sapo National Park in August. Filed picture/Joint Security Team
By James Harding Giahyue
KORJAYEE, Sinoe County – Six video clips The DayLight has obtained reveal illegal occupants of the Sapo National Park torturing their colleagues.
The videos, likely shot by an illegal miner, emerge as joint security forces have begun removing illegal occupants from the park. They show several men, accused of theft and stripped naked, being tortured.
“Mama, oh! I don’t know what I come for in [Sapo] National Park. Y’all feel sorry for me, oh. Y’all will kill me, oh,” cries one of the two men accused of stealing a cell phone in one of the videos. Two miners tie the pair’s hands and legs on their backs, like in the Liberian civil wars.
“That’s stealing you come for,” replies a man, while other men videotape the terrified, naked victims.
Another torturer steps on one of the victims’ backs. He lifts the victim whose chest faces downward and drops him to the ground, while the other victim calls an elder, only identified as Papay Ogunti, for help.
A torturer nicknamed Dembélé, likely after the Paris Saint-Germain forward, said they would have killed the two torture victims if it were in an isolated area.
The video ends with the two victims on the ground like ducks, resigned to their fate.
The surroundings in the video and five others match pictures from an unpublished official report, seen by The DayLight. The amateur, cell phone-shot videos, corroborate the report’s findings of “immoral and cruel acts far away from human civilization.”
Joint security forces have removed about 2,000 people from the so-called “Camp America,” one of the park’s illegal settlements. The operations, comprising the army, the police, the Forestry Development Authority, and other agencies, are aimed at clamping down on cross-border crimes and sub-regional insecurity.
Human rights abuses are common in illicit mines across Liberia due to their remote location. However, the videos lay that fact bare.
‘Rule of tradition’
Another video shows two men accused of stealing L$80,000 (US$450) bleeding from a head wound. One of the men was forced to drink alcohol and admit to the offense.
“Is it good to steal?” One of his tormentors asks.
“No, it is not good,” the naked man replies. “Nobody must steal, oh!”
“The time you were supposed to use your head passed,” a torturer says in disagreement with the victim’s plea.
Any angry torturer burns one of the victims with a blazing plastic sack. Seconds later, another kicked the victim’s face.
Videotaping men can be heard threatening to kill the second victim, while another miner pours liquor on his bleeding head.
Two videos reveal slightly different torture techniques. While the torturers refrain from beating or bounding the victims, their punishments are equally ruthless.
In one of the videos, a shirtless man is made to carry rocks in a bag attached to a twine rope, tearing into his skin. One of the torturers insists the victim must carry the rock-filled bag for 10 hours.
The next video features a shirtless, exhausted victim lying on the ground after carrying a log for several hours.
A bystander argues against the treatment but faces fierce opposition from the torturers.
“We are not under the rule of the government,” an illegal occupant says. “We are under the rule of tradition.”
But sometimes the tide turns in favor of the victim. In one video, a miner is being saved from drowning after falling into a deep mining pit. He had been chasing a man suspected of stealing something.
“He was going to leave in the water,” an illicit miner commentates on the ordeal, as the man hangs on to a stick.
“You can make it with the man?” The commentary continues. “You go to arrest someone, but you can make it. Now they are hauling him.”
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