I dunno, but if I had those abs I'd be tempted to walk around naked too. But eating the children's hearts, not so much.
Posted on 01/21/2008 8:53:32 AM PST by 300magnum
MONROVIA, Liberia - One of Liberia's most notorious rebel commanders, known as Gen. Butt Naked for charging into battle wearing only boots, has returned to confess his role in terrorizing the nation, saying he is responsible for 20,000 deaths.
Joshua Milton Blahyi, who now lives in Ghana, returned last week to face his homeland's truth and reconciliation commission, this time wearing a suit and tie. His nom de guerre is derived from his platoon's practice of charging naked into battle, a technique meant to terrify the enemy.
Other former warlords, though, have refused to ask forgiveness, dismissing a commission many in Liberia see as toothless. Blahyi is urging other former killers to come forward as the country founded by freed American slaves in 1847 struggles to recover from past horrors.
"I could be electrocuted. I could be hanged. I could be given any other punishment," the 37-year-old Blahyi said in a weekend interview following his truth commission appearance last week. "But I think forgiveness and reconciliation is the right way to go.
"I have been looking for an opportunity to tell the true story about my life — and every time I tell people my story, I feel relieved."
The civil war, which killed an estimated 250,000 people in this nation of 3 million, was characterized by the eating of human hearts and soccer matches played with human skulls. Drugged fighters waltzed into battle wearing women's wigs, flowing gowns and carrying dainty purses stolen from civilians.
Before he led his fighters into battle, wearing only a pair of lace-up boots, Blahyi said he made a human sacrifice to the devil.
The sacrifice was typically "the killing of an innocent child and plucking out the heart which was divided into pieces for us to eat," he told The Associated Press on Saturday. He appeared before the commission Jan. 15 — and put a figure to his killing spree for the first time.
"More than 20,000 people fell victim (to me and my men). They were killed," said Blahyi, who dated the beginning of his murders to 1982, when he was ordained as a ritual priest responsible for making human sacrifices before battle. He said when he later led his fighters against the insurgency launched by Charles Taylor, he commanded them to embrace this tradition.
Some say Blahyi's confession is proof Liberia needs a war crimes court, not a commission.
The commission, modeled on the one in post-apartheid South Africa, has been taking testimony from victims and former rebels for two years, urging a full accounting of wartime atrocities. While the commission cannot charge killers with a crime, it can recommend charges be brought.
Meanwhile, several notorious killers have refashioned themselves as influential politicians in Liberia.
"If you have an individual admitting that he and his group killed over 20,000 people, certainly there should be a mechanism put in place for such people to face justice," said Mulbah Morlue, who heads the Forum for the Establishment of a War Crimes Court in Liberia.
Yet some praise Blahyi.
"You can't have true reconciliation without knowing the truth," said Johnny Lamine, a Monrovia resident. "Blahyi's story is alarming, but ... let's know who did what in Liberia during the war."
Others in a country where some feel everyone is tainted said they would rather not dig up the past. Because the violence was so widespread it's not uncommon to find Liberian families that have both victim and perpetrator under the same roof — a daughter who was raped and a son who took up a gun and went on to rape the daughters of other families.
"Liberians have tried to forget these stories," Mary Kollie said Sunday as she waited for a taxi home from church.
In the interview, Blahyi told the AP: "Some people see me and congratulate me. Others see me and say I should not be walking down the streets of Monrovia posing proud. But I continue to tell such people I am not proud, I am ashamed."
In 1996, he said in a 1997 interview with the AP, God appeared to him as he charged naked into a battle and told him he was a slave to Satan, not the hero he considered himself to be.
He became a born-again Christian and for a while, traversed the war-wracked streets of Monrovia selling cassettes of his sermons.
Liberia's violence began in 1979 when security forces killed dozens of people during massive riots. The following year, President William Tolbert was ousted in a coup by Samuel K. Doe, an illiterate master sergeant, who ordered Tolbert's Cabinet members tied to poles on a beach and executed.
Rebels led by Taylor invaded in 1989, plunging the country into another civil war. The war went into a momentary lull after 1997 when Taylor was elected president and again surged, ending only when Taylor was forced into exile in Nigeria in 2003. He is now facing charges of crimes against humanity at a tribunal in the Hague for atrocities committed by a rebel movement he allegedly supported in neighboring Sierra Leone.
___
Associated Press writer Rukmini Callimachi contributed to this report from Dakar, Senegal.
Mrs. Costanza: Every day it’s something else with you. I don’t know anything about you any more. Who are you? What kind of life are you leading? Who knows what you’re doing? Maybe you’re making porno films.
GEORGE: Yeah. I’m Buck Naked.
Terrify? I think doubled over and laughing hysterically is more like it.
I think this guy just emailed me about transferring 80 MILLION DOLLARS TO A WILLING PARTNER IN THE NAME OF GOD AMEN.
Is “battlefield naked” considered “bad naked”?
It’s possible.
In expatriate nigerian former jujuman now-convert, Isah Oke’s 1988 classic “Blood Secrets” he states he was 13 when he was initiated.
I did a google image search on the phrase butt naked, I have not seen him yet.
I dunno, but if I had those abs I'd be tempted to walk around naked too. But eating the children's hearts, not so much.
Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, boom!
IIRC his dog was chasing pigeons, and the pigeon popcorn person took exception to this.
One thing lead to another, and the pigeon poop promoter shot him dead.
Uhhhh, what was that guy's name again?
Let's go Beavis, we're unlisting in that dude's army.
I know some folks who were US embassy officials in Liberia went it went from in-the-toilet to total Hell. They don’t talk about it at all.
*sigh* That was Buck Naked (Of Buck Naked and the Bare Bottom Boys):
The band came to an abrupt end in 1992 when Buck Naked was murdered while walking his dog in Golden Gate Park’s “Panhandle” by a man named Michael Kagan, said to be an obsessive pigeon feeder. Kagan had threatened to kill anyone who disturbed his beloved pigeons; Buck Naked and his dog provoked him enough to murder.
Any kin of the Soggy Bottom Boys?
I have to admit that I got a chuckle out of this initially. But, after actually reading the story, I shuddered. The devil sure has a lot of power....
bump
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.