Word: trc
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...That image has now taken a hit. In its final report, released yesterday, Liberia's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), a body modeled on South Africa's historic truth commission, says Johnson Sirleaf should be banned from government for 30 years for her early support of former Liberian President Charles Taylor. Taylor, who played a central role in Liberia's conflict, is on trial in the Hague for crimes against humanity that stem from his part in the civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone. (See pictures of death and life in Sierra Leone...
...traumatized. Johnson Sirleaf is among 50 people the Commission recommends should not be allowed to hold public office. The Commission also says that dozens of individuals should face further investigation and prosecution, though does not include Johnson Sirleaf on those lists. Still, to name the president as the TRC does, is tough censure for someone so widely respected. "To exclude someone from the right of running for political office is a very serious position to take that has to be extremely grounded in facts," says Corrine Dufka, a senior research with Human Rights Watch's Africa division who focuses...
...Perhaps. But in a conflict that went on for nearly two decades, it's hard to find any Liberian officials whose hands are completely clean. When she testified at the TRC, Johnson Sirleaf admitted that during the early years of the war she had brought food, supplies and financial assistance to Taylor. At the time, she said, she wanted to see an end to the repressive and tyrannical regime of President Samuel Doe. If she cast her lot with a war criminal, she said, she did so unwittingly. (Read a Q&A with Johnson Sirleaf...
...TRC says Johnson Sirleaf didn't go far enough. One of the ideas behind a truth commission is that people responsible for past errors show remorse. By not apologizing or showing more remorse, the TRC says, Johnson Sirleaf denied both her own responsibility and undermined the TRC process. Those who disclosed their misdeeds in greater detail and showed remorse were not recommended for further censure or prosecution. Milton Blayi, whose nomme de guerre was General Butt Naked because he entered the battlefield completely naked but for his boots, admitted culpability for as many as 20,000 deaths, for example...
...preaching liberation with forgiveness. But personally forgiving someone who has killed your loved one is one of the hardest things we can ever do. "Forgiveness doesn't come easily," says Piet Meiring, a professor of theology who was part of South Africa's postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission (trc). "You can't organize forgiveness and you can't force someone to forgive. Microwave-oven forgiveness - where you just pop something in and bing! - that will never last." Just take a look at the South African experience. The trc, a courtlike body open to victims and perpetrators of apartheid-era violence...