Story By Boima J.V.Boima

Photo on Flickr by kippster

Though the official activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission ended months ago, the implementation of its controversial reports or  recommendations remain a major concern in post-war Liberia .

The ‘unedited report’ as it is referred to within many quarters in the country, which is believed to have been crafted by a few commissioners of the now-defunct TRC, indicts top government officials, including Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, with the facilitation of war and crimes against humanity. It also recommended that the president and other top politicians indicted should be barred from participating in politics for 30 years.

This writer, who has been following the controversies against the implementation of  the reports, recently contacted Cllr. Pearl Brown-Bull, one of the commissioners who did not agree with the report, to ask her to explain her reasons for her decision.

Dressed in her legal outfit at her Randall Street law firm, during an exclusive interview with this writer, Cllr. Bull who preferred to be called a former commissioner of the defunct Truth and Reconciliation Commission, said that one of the main reasons why she is opposed to the report is because of the international conspiracy that had earlier occurred in crafting the report.

“I want this generation to know that it was based on the instrumentalities and recommendations of the Minnesota Advocates, which is comprised of white criminal lawyers, that the current unedited TRC report came into being. Therefore, being a renowned lawyer in this country for years I will not and never will support such an act of conspiracy that resulted in the crafting of the TRC report,” Cllr. Bull said.

The controversial commissioner alleged that the international community wants to use the people of Liberia and the ‘Unedited TRC final report’ in prosecuting their brothers in an international court of law. She said the majority of those ‘big countries’ have refused to join the International Criminal Court, including the U.S.

The long time legal luminary of the Republic of Liberia, whose late husband served as a chief justice in the country, said that the she stands for justice and peace adding that she will not therefore support any law or recommendations that will seek to divide the minds of people against each other in the country.

“In fact as I speak to you, the chairman of the commission has not given me a copy of the official file of their unedited report or recommendation . This was given to me by Chief Kafumba and having perused through it, I will not therefore affix my signature to a report that seeks to disunite the people of this country,” averred the former TRC commissioner, while showing the Ceasefire Liberia team a copy of the unedited TRC report.

The former commissioner, whose son was brutally killed by the NPFL rebel faction during the war, said that the majority of the people that she earlier interviewed within the counties as part of the TRC called for forgiveness instead of retributive justice. “But the Jerome Verdier-led commission, after conspiring with international communities, went ahead to  publish and recommend punishment for people in the country,” she asserted.

Former Commissioner Bull also said that she and Commissioner Sheik Kafumba were disenfranchised at the Commission, adding that they were not given a copy of the report to peruse and make their recommendations.

“When they paid off all workers at the Commission, they decided to go to Ghana for the editing and publishing of the final edited report. Why should this occur? Are there not printing presses in Liberia?,” she asked.

Highlighting other reasons for her refusal in signing the final unedited report, Cllr. Bull said it was agreed at the inception of the Commission that victims and perpetrators should be brought face to face to testify and reconcile.

“But instead of doing this, they brought the victims and perpetrators in separate forums to testify and debunk each others claims. That was an abuse of their right and we will not therefore sign an illegal report of a partial forum,” Cllr. Bull indicated.

“Let me also disclose that Jerome Verdier and Massa Washington conspired to pay agents so as to enable them to come and testify as victims against perpetrators in the then TRC hearings, therefore don’t take the whole stuff seriously,” she noted.

The former commissioner who has been touring various quarters with her message, which calls for the granting of amnesty to all those referred to as perpetrators in the unedited TRC recommendations, also told some students of the Baptist Seminary in Paynesville outside Monrovia that the TRC recommendations, if implemented, will bring chaos to the country.

Standing like a bishop clergy in the pulpit of the Baptist Church on the seminary, Cllr. Bull, who is noted for making thorough and frank comments on critical issues in the country, also said that those who think that they are innocent in the country’s civil war must be the first to call for prosecution of those alleged perpetrators.

“He who is without sin must throw the first stone. All those who think that they didn’t in one way or the other participate in the 14-year civil war must jump on the street and demonstrate for the implementation of the TRC report.”

Commissioner Bull is therefore calling on all Liberians to be focused on developing their country, adding that they should neither despair nor allow any ‘set of conspirators’ to fool them against their own brothers.