CHOOSE LIFE: REFLECTIONS TEN YEARS AFTER FIVE DEATHS

by Regina Siegfried, ASC

(Reproduced with permission from the September/October, 2002, issue of Review for Religious.)

Ten years ago five Adorers of the Blood of Christ were murdered in Liberia, where the congregation had had missionaries for twenty-two years. It seemed then that the deaths ended what the sisters had worked hard to build. God, though, told us long ago: "I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live" (Dt 30:19). Now, ten years later, some of the picture does not look nearly as bleak as it did in 1992.

Three things are more obvious now than they were when the five Adorers were killed on 20 and 23 October 1992. One is that Liberia is still in the grip of a life-and-death struggle; another is that the paschal-mystery charism of the ASC's is in clearer focus for many members. The third is that the ASC mission in Liberia has not ended with the deaths of the five missionaries. Commemorating the tenth anniversary and celebrating the lives of the five murdered ASC's, this article focuses not on their deaths but on the situation in Liberia and on the valiant spirits of people there who continue their legacy.

The community's mission in Liberia began in 1970 in the coastal village of Grand Cess, in the Cape Palmas diocese. By 1984 the Adorers had eleven sisters ministering in Gardnersville (a suburb of the capital city, Monrovia), in Kle, and in Grand Cess. In 1989 civil war broke out, with Charles Taylor leading the rebel forces. Allegedly, rebel soldiers shot Joel Kolmer ASC and Barbara Ann Muttra ASC on a Tuesday, while they were on a short automobile journey away from their Gardnersville convent, and three days later other rebels came to their convent and shot Kathleen McGuire, Agnes Mueller, and Shirley Kolmer. My community has had ten years to assimilate those stark facts, to grieve intensely, to remember lovingly, and now to celebrate gratefully those lives generously poured out.

To keep these five deaths in perspective, it is necessary to realize that, since 1989, 200,000 Liberians have died; 800,000 more are refugees in neighboring countries and elsewhere. More than 1 million Liberians are internally displaced within the country. All of the country's infrastructure lies in ruins and the economy has collapsed. However, leaders of the seven warring factions in Liberia are engaged in a lucrative underground economy. In June 1996, deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs . . . Ambassador William Twaddle testified before Congress that the National Patriotic Front of Liberia alone may have made $75 million a year from the sales of Liberia's timber, iron ore, rubber, gold, and diamonds.1

The murder of Liberian President Samuel Doe in 1990 brought intense civil war. The seven Adorers then in Liberia fled the country. By March 1991 Sisters Shirley Kolmer and Joel Kolmer returned and were followed in August by Sisters Barbara Ann and Agnes and by newcomer Sister Kathleen. The sisters worked with youth to help them refocus their lives after fighting at too young an age.

After the sisters' deaths in 1992, fighting continued to devastate the country. In September 1996 Ruth Sando Perry headed the Liberian New Transitional Government. During that same year armed conflict once again erupted in Monrovia, but by August the warring factions signed the Abuja ii Peace Accord. Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf opposed Charles Taylor, leader of one of the factions; he defeated her for the presidency in May 1997. On 14 March 2001, testifying before the House International Relations Subcommittee on Africa, Senator Russ Feingold unequivocally labeled him a war criminal: "We have all read the appalling accounts of atrocities committed in the region. I believe that some of the responsibility for these terrible abuses rests upon Charles Taylor's shoulders. In fact, I believe that Liberian President Charles Taylor is a war criminal."

Jeffrey Bartholet's in-depth article and analysis of Taylor in the 14 May 2001 issue of Newsweek argues that Taylor is "a dictator adrift. . . . He maintains the façade of democracy, while ensuring that no one threatens his power" (p. 31). In May 2002 the International Herald Tribune reported that fighting had once again broken out in Monrovia. Taylor's government troops attempted to quell a rebel offensive.

Adding to Taylor's self-serving indifference to the plight of the people of Liberia are other grim conditions that compound the misery: child soldiers, illegal diamond trade, crumbling and destroyed country-wide infrastructures, and deforestation of a once breathtakingly beautiful and fertile land.

Boys orphaned by the war joined factions that offered promises of booty, power, and the glamour of guns. Girls became the mistresses and servants of older soldiers, with rape and resulting pregnancies for girls too young to be mothers. Some children were forced to kill as part of an initiation rite and to ensure their complicity and loyalty to a faction.2

With the theoretical peace of August 1996, many of the child soldiers were disarmed. But taking guns from children does not mean they are educated, prepared with skills, or rehabilitated for society. Often with no parents, no home, and no school to return to, these child soldiers were well on the way to becoming today's lost young adults. In assessing the plight of the child soldiers, Stephen G. Price, of the office of justice and peace for the Society of African Missions, has written: