Freedom in the World 1998 - Liberia

1998 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 4.5
Civil Liberties: 5
Political Rights: 4

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Liberia receives a downward trend arrow due to increasingly authoritarian tendencies demonstrated by President Taylor, including human rights abuses by state security services.

Overview

In September, Liberia's tenuous calm was shattered by an outbreak of fighting that killed at least 50 people. More generally, long-term peace was threatened by President Charles Taylor's effort to consolidate his own power rather than reconcile the factions that fought a bloody civil war from 1990 to 1996. Taylor and his National Patriotic Party won convincing victories in July 1997 elections that independent observers judged generally free and fair. Taylor's partisan tactics, however, could again enflame the ethnic divisions that helped to make the civil war so intractable. In December, Roman Catholic Archbishop Michael Francis warned that human rights violations, including killings and arbitrary arrests, were continuing with impunity. Harassment of former faction leaders, journalists, and human rights activists increased in 1998. While relative peace now prevails throughout the country, banditry continues in some areas, and a lack of discipline prevails among security forces.

The recent civil war was marked by a savagery unusual even for the ethnic conflict into which it degenerated. It was sparked on the last day of 1989, when Charles Taylor led a small guerrilla force into Liberia in an effort to overthrow the country's military-dominated dictatorship. Ultimately, the war became a multisided ethnic conflict that claimed more than 150,000 lives and forced approximately half of Liberia's nearly three million people to flee their homes. Several peace plans brokered by West African leaders failed. The war's fourteenth and final peace accord, reached in May 1996, provided for the demobilization of more than 20,000 fighters from nine rival ethnic militias under the supervision of Nigerian and other West African peacekeepers, approximately 12,000 of which remain in Liberia.

Liberia was established as an independent republic in 1847 after its settlement by freed American slaves in 1821. For more than a century the country was dominated by the slaves' "Americo-Liberian" descendants. In 1980, army Sergeant Samuel Doe led a bloody coup and murdered President William Tolbert. His regime concentrated power among members of his Kranh ethnic group and suppressed others. Forces led by Charles Taylor, a former government minister, and backed by Gia and Mano ethnic groups that had been subject to severe repression, launched a guerrilla war against the Doe regime at the end of 1989. In 1990, Nigeria, under the aegis of the Economic Community of West African States, led an armed intervention force, established an interim government, and twice blocked Taylor's victory against the government's Armed Forces of Liberia. In 1991, fighting ravaged Monrovia, and President Doe was captured and tortured to death.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Charles Taylor and his National Patriotic Party assumed power after 1997 elections that were generally free and fair and that constituted Liberia's most genuine electoral exercise in decades. The votes for the presidency and a national assembly on the basis of proportional representation were held under provisions of the 1986 constitution. Veteran UN official and Unity Party leader Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who campaigned on a platform of clean governance, was Taylor's closest challenger and remains the voice of the official opposition. Taylor's victory transcended bitter ethnic divisions and reflected a popular consensus for peace.

Liberia's independent media have survived despite years of war, assaults, and harassment at the cost of extensive self-censorship. The pillaging of Monrovia in 1996 destroyed news offices, presses, and broadcasting stations. Like the rest of the country, the media are continuing to rebuild. Several private radio stations have been used as mouthpieces for various political factions. Charles Taylor owns Kiss-FM, the only countrywide FM radio station. The Roman Catholic Church also operates a radio station. With U.S. funding, the Swiss Hirondelle foundation's Star Radio broadcasts civic education programming. It was closed for a month early in the year, however, and remains the target of official harassment. State television and one private station broadcast only irregularly. In October, the government engaged in cyber-censorship by ordering all local media to stop posting any information on the Internet, thus eliminating a major source of international news on developments in Liberia. A highly restrictive Media Law enacted under the Doe regime gives the Ministry of Information broad power to control the media.

Numerous civil society groups, including human rights organizations such as the Catholic Peace and Justice Commission, operate in Monrovia and in the countryside. Rehabilitation of the more than 10,000 child soldiers recruited as fighters by various factions remains an important priority. 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. Several women's organizations have sought to assist the estimated 25,000 women raped during the civil war. Union activity is permitted by law, but was greatly curtailed during the war. Efforts to reestablish union activity at the Firestone rubber plantations are underway.

Liberians refugees continued to return home through 1998, but face dismal economic prospects as well as insecurity in the countryside. Attacks on mosques in several areas of the country have raised tensions among Mandingoe Muslims and other groups.

Liberia's economic recovery was burdened by its $3 billion external debt. Arrears on loan repayments disqualify the country from IMF assistance and deter private lending. Corruption is a major obstacle to economic growth, and much of the output of Liberia's diamond mines is smuggled untaxed from the country.