IN LIBERIA

Hokitika Guardian, 12 January 1931, Page 4

IN LIBERIA

TERRIBLE CHARGES, ACAINST NEGRO REPUBLIC, .United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) GENEVA, January 10. Terrible revelations of persecutions, floggings and ill treatment of Liberian tribes were made in a report by the League of Nations commission of inquiry, which was initiated by British representations. Ihe report covers 124 pages, there being 264 witnesses, including three members of the Cabinet, Judges and officials, but the majority are chiefs and natives . The report says that the. forcible recruitment and shipment of natives to Fernandopo, was aided by a frontier force of armed messengers and Government officials, and that it proceeded until the year 1928. The records captives numbering 310 men in the summer of 1927 and another 250 in September. Those refusing to go wore tied up and flogged and they were handed over to the Liberia Consul at Fernandop a ltd distributed on plantations. Out of 70J many others were sent home penniless, -bitiluilshm Was practised on Liberian chiefs by fext'essive fines, intimidation and bribery j till illstniioe of which was in the Wediido (Wintry, whore after a murder committed by the tribesmen there, a demand was blade lor two hundred men, despite the chief declaring that the town did not contain so many. Cattle and rice ueie carried off, and old men were taken as hostage, and forced to work on officials’ ~ farms until two hundred were surrendered and they were shipped to Ifernadopo.

The report records that towns and villages were deva,sted by slave raids, including the town of Sonoken, whilst war reduced 651 inhabitants, the women exceeding the men by 40 per cent. All that remains of the town of Jonatah is a breaclfuit tree. The. remainder became a rice farni but the tribe there were compelled to pay £6O annually for five years “Backswish” upon the huts that were formerly standing.

The report instances a traffic in boys m Fernandopo, when a Paramount Chief protested, pleading that he was building motor roads foodless and payless. The President of Liberia disclaimed ordering deportation, thereupon the chief was seized and carried off, while the Frontier Force arrested forty men, whom they tied with sticks behind their legs, and also flogged men and women indiscriminately many dying from the illtreatment, They also killed domestic ailinials and fired four villages, whose thiefs wtire flogged m the presence of tile tribesineli; *.»e report declares that forced litbout’ was used for porterage coiistrution and for public utilities under systematic intimidation and illtreatment labour recruiting for public purposes was on the private plantations of high officials and private citizens. Some Americo-Libcrians had criminally abused the pawn .system, whereby a member of a family was pledged for debt, they taking women to attract male labour.

The Commission’s recommendations include the replacement of Liberian district officers who are dishonest or corrupt by Europeans and Americans ; the illegalising of domestic slavery the pawn system ; the abolition of shipments of Fernandopo, more strict control of the Frontier Forces; wider education with a view to hi caking down the barrier between civilised and uncivilised.