Liberia News: ‘Remember PYJ As Savior, He Was God Sent’

Liberia-The death of onetime warlord and leader of one of the warring factions of the civil war, Senator Prince Yormie Johnson, aliased PYJ, continue to ignite reactions and confusion across the social and political landscape, as Liberians are divided on different political and ideological lines as to his role in the conflict and the deaths of thousands of Liberians, including the brutal killing of then President Samuel Doe on camera.

The warlord-turned politician elected as Senator of his native Nimba County in 2005 died last week following a brief sickness, leaving many unanswered questions, but the people of Nimba County continue to anchor their admiration in Senator Johnson’s role and contribution as soldier and politician over the past many decades.

Nimbaians, during the joint visit on Sunday of President Joseph Boakai and Vice President Jeremiah Koung, expressed disappointment over the mischaracterization of their son, whom they regarded as their hero who came to their rescue when they and ordinary Liberians were being butchered during the reign of late President Doe, whose activities in Nimba reportedly ignited circumstances that led to the conflict.

Speaking on behalf of Nimbaians, an Elder of the county recounted the horrific crimes melted against Nimbaians and Liberians in general as sufficient reasons that spawned late Senator Johnson’s reaction and involvement in the war.

“There was a war here and that war did not come out of the blue sky. The people of Nimba were very mistreated and that is how the war started, and people just think that Prince Johnson just came of out of the sky to start jumping on people, killing them,” the Elder said to the approbation of the attendees of the gathering with President Boakai and VP Koung.

The Senator Johnson argued that his involvement in the war was to defend his people, who he claimed were being slaughtered like goats by former President Doe and his tribalized army, as a reaction to calls for the establishment of a war crimes court to try those who bear the greatest responsibility of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The late Johnson was one of several Liberians, former warlords and fighters listed in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report as people having the greatest responsibilities of war crimes and crimes against humanity for the individual roles in the decimation visited upon the country between 1989 and 2003.

According to the people of Nimba, their son should just not be remembered for the wrong side of things during the war, because he Johnson rose to the plate to save a dying people from the hands of an autocratic leader in the late Samuel Doe, whom they claimed carried on mass killings of Nimbaians and other maltreatments.

Nimbaians are insisting that PYJ, as the deceased long-serving Senator was affectionately called, must not be remembered wrongly because they viewed him as “someone sent by God when our children were put in wells, when we saw dead bodies littered the streets with no heads to recognize them.”

The Elder on behalf of his people bemoaned the fact that Liberians are either forgetting or ignoring what happened in the country, not aware of what PYJ was reacting to.

He thanked the deceased Senator and “liberator” of Nimba for the incredible role he played to free Nimbaians from the clutches of deaths and destruction at the hands of Doe and his army.

At the same time, the people of Nimba have praised President Boakai’s decision to give the late Senator Johnson a befitting state burial irrespective of the ongoing polarization regarding his role in Liberia’s war history.

Facebook is awash with mixed-reactions of disturbing proportions since news of Senator Johnson’s passing emerged last Thursday, with some expressing celebratory feelings that his death is nothing important compared to the mass killings of Liberians for unjustifiable reasons.

Johnson commanded the Independent National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), a splinter gorilla group of the main rebel organization, the National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL) commanded by Charles Taylor who later became President, resigned in 2003, exiled in Nigeria and later arrested in 2006 in connection to his role in the Sierra Leonean war.