The Need to Retool Liberia's Relationship With the U.S.
By Robtel Neajai Pailey,
20 January 2012
AllAfrica
Liberian Observer
Two very significant and interconnected events happened this week in Liberia - President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was inaugurated for a second term with a subdued opposition attending the ceremonies, and former Liberian President Charles Taylor was implicated in a Boston Globe article for serving as a CIA informant beginning in the early 1980s and spanning many decades.
Taylor, Taylor, How Did Your Garden Grow?
America's facilitation of Taylor's escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985 - while he was facing extradition to Liberia for allegedly stealing US$1 million from the General Services Agency, which he headed during President Samuel Kanyon Doe's regime - was always rumored but never corroborated. I remember covering the first day of Taylor's trial in the Hague for Pambazuka News, and interviewing Stephen Rapp, the then chief prosecutor, about whether or not his investigations into Taylor's exploits in Libya and Sierra Leone ever unearthed the real causes of his 'escape' from the maximum security prison in Massachusetts.
Rapp was tight-lipped, yet appeared confounded by this mystery as well. When Taylor eventually confessed during the Hague trial that he strolled out of prison after a guard conveniently opened his cell one night, we all knew that something was awry: "I am calling it my release because I didn't break out," Taylor testified. "I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding [afterwards]."
The Taylor-CIA connection has re-inscribed for Liberians an age-old dilemma, what to do with our so-called historical relationship with the United States, which has been fraught with betrayal after betrayal. Liberians who have been commenting on various notice boards are justifiably angry, upset and disappointed, but not surprised. This is the validation we've been wanting for years, and it comes on the heels of the inauguration for a second term of our head of state, who was ironically pictured dedicating the new U.S. Embassy in Liberia this week, with a smiling Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the foreground.
Some Liberians, under anonymity, are arguing that U.S. authorities who courted Taylor for intelligence be brought to justice for crimes against humanity in the Liberian civil war, that the International Criminal Court - now headed by a female Gambian national - should exhibit blind justice, that instead of hauling African and non-Western leaders to the international body for prosecution, they too should face the full weight of the law. I tend to agree with these arguments, however radical and farfetched they may seem.
Inquiring Liberian Minds Deserve to Know
The Globe article recounts that the CIA has said releasing further information could be a national security threat. A threat to whom, might I ask? Liberians deserve to know the nature, duration, scale, and scope of the CIA-Taylor relationship, it is a part of our national history, and must be recounted in the history books for our children, and our children's children to remember that a relationship with the U.S. must be monitored at all times.
Liberians are not gullible, nor are we unsophisticated in realizing that one plus one equals two. We've always known that the dubiousness surrounding Taylor's escape from the Massachusetts maximum-security prison was the beginning of the end for us. And if the implications of the Globe article are true, then the CIA could provide more answers.
It's no wonder that the U.S. didn't intervene in the Liberian civil war, though Liberians begged and pleaded for its "father/mother" to stop us from killing each other. One U.S. diplomat at the time even said that "Liberia is of no strategic interest to the United States." It begs the question, if Liberia was of "no strategic interest" during the war, when we were killing ourselves and each other in the name of liberation, what is Liberia's strategic interest to the U.S. now, when U.S. NGOs and development workers abound, and the Peace Corps has reinserted itself?
This should send a strong signal to Liberians and Liberia once and for all that America cannot be trusted. From Noriega, to Osama, to Saddam, to Samuel Doe, authoritarian leaders who end up in the U.S.'s good graces are never there for long.
Limits of Reciprocity
What Liberians and the Liberian government should be doing is strategizing, devising our own "Liberia Policy for the U.S." which factors in seriously our checkered history with unsentimental bias.
We should also rely on a corpus of intellectual and creative work that has already investigated our 'limits of reciprocity' with the United States. Liberian filmmaker Nancee Oku Bright's film, Liberia: America's Stepchild, explores the torturous relationship between Liberia and the United States, with her thesis being that the U.S. sees Liberia as an 'outside' child, one who is illegitimate upon conception and can be used and abused at will without consequence. And Liberian academic Dr. D. Elwood Dunn also interrogates this relationship in his book, Liberia and the United States During the Cold War: Limits of Reciprocity, showing that the Cold War placed Liberia in a very strategic position to exploit its relationship with the United States, yet with unintended consequences.
In this new political dispensation, it should be clear that Liberia should hold the U.S. at arm's length, that hosting AFRICOM or any U.S. satellite post is out of the question, that we have to use them just as strategically as they have used us. With the geopolitics of China and other emerging nations, Liberia needs to develop a "Look South Policy," not because we have become alienated, as in the case of Zimbabwe, but because we have made a conscious decision to explore other options, remembering that the U.S. will act only in its interest and leave those caught in the crossfire to fend for themselves.
We deserve to know the details of Taylor's relationship with the CIA. It is crucial to our development planning, historical remembrance, healing and nation-building.
Born in Monrovia, Liberia, Robtel Neajai Pailey is currently pursuing a doctorate in Development Studies at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), as a Mo Ibrahim Foundation Ph.D. Scholar.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Liberia: Taylor's CIA Link - Boston Globe retracts story
By Othello B. Garblah,
26 January 2012
The New Dawn (Liberia)
The Boston Globe, a New York Times Company newspaper, has admitted that its report quoting US Defense officials as confirming that ex-President Charles Taylor worked as a hired US spy agent lacks evidence.
"The article was not based on adequate reporting and drew unsupported conclusion...the agency offered no such confirmation," Mr. David McCraw, Vice President and Assistant General Counsel of the New York Times Company said in a letter to Mr. Taylor's lawyer Wednesday.
"The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form," an editor's note published Wednesday along with the letter addressed to Courtenay Griffiths said.
When this paper contacted The Globe's Editor Martin Baron via email Wednesday to confirmed whether his paper had retracted the story, directed this writer to the link where the said editor's note was published, saying "It was published here..."
The Globe in its Tuesday January 17, 2012 edition under the caption ("Former Liberian Dictator Charles Taylor Had US Spy Agency Ties") reported that US Defense Department officials had confirmed "what has long been rumored" that Taylor worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world's most notorious dictators.
Relevant Links
In his letter to Courtenay Griffiths QC, on Wednesday January 25, McCraw said the paper arrived at this conclusion after a careful review of the article by its editors and concluded that the said article was not based on adequate reporting.
In an editor's note published on its website with the letter addressed to Mr. Taylor's lawyer, The Globe admitted that the said article on the Taylor's CIA link drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described Mr. Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a "sought-after source."
"The story, based on a response by the US Defense Intelligence Agency to a long-pending records request from the Globe, described the agency's response as having "confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s."
But the agency offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for - records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them," paper said in its retraction published Wednesday.
The paper adds that "one of the grounds for that refusal was suggestive, citing the need to protect "intelligence sources and methods," but that, by itself, fell well short of a sufficient basis for the published account.
There has long been speculation that Taylor had such a role, speculation fueled in part by Taylor's own suggestion in trial testimony that his 1985 escape from prison in Plymouth, Mass., may have been facilitated by CIA operatives. But Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder, and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for, or worked for, US intelligence."
The Full Text of the Editor's note below:
For the record: Story overreached in calling Taylor intelligence source
Editor's note: A front-page story on Jan. 17 drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described former Liberia president Charles Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a "sought-after source." The story, based on a response by the US Defense Intelligence Agency to a long-pending records request from the Globe, described the agency's response as having "confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s."
But the agency offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for - records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them.
One of the grounds for that refusal was suggestive, citing the need to protect "intelligence sources and methods," but that, by itself, fell well short of a sufficient basis for the published account. There has long been speculation that Taylor had such a role, speculation fueled in part by Taylor's own suggestion in trial testimony that his 1985 escape from prison in Plymouth, Mass., may have been facilitated by CIA operatives. But Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder, and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for, or worked for, US intelligence.
The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form.
_________________________
Original Story
Former Liberian dictator Charles Taylor had US spy agency ties
Boston GlobeJanuary 17, 2012
By Bryan Bender
WASHINGTON - When Charles G. Taylor tied bed sheets together to escape from a second-floor window at the Plymouth House of Correction on Sept. 15, 1985, he was more than a fugitive trying to avoid extradition. He was a sought-after source for American intelligence.
After a quarter-century of silence, the US government has confirmed what has long been rumored: Taylor, who would become president of Liberia and the first African leader tried for war crimes, worked with US spy agencies during his rise as one of the world’s most notorious dictators.
The disclosure on the former president comes in response to a request filed by the Globe six years ago under the Freedom of Information Act. The Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s spy arm, confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.
“They may have stuck with him longer than they should have but maybe he was providing something useful,’’ said Douglas Farah, a senior fellow at the International Assessment and Strategy Center in Washington and an authority on Taylor’s reign and the guns-for-diamonds trade that was a base of his power.The Defense Intelligence Agency refused to reveal any details about the relationship, saying doing so would harm national security.
Taylor, 63, pleaded innocent in 2009 to multiple counts of murder, rape, attacking civilians, and deploying child soldiers during a civil war in neighboring Sierra Leone while he was president of Liberia from 1997 to 2003. After a proceeding that lasted several years, the three-judge panel of the UN Special Court for Sierra Leone is now reviewing tens of thousands of pages of evidence, including the testimony of about 100 victims, former rebels, and Taylor himself, whose testimony lasted seven months.
“We hope the verdict will come in the first quarter of this year,’’ said Solomon Moriba, a spokesman for the court in The Hague.
Moriba said any relationship Taylor had with American intelligence was not related to his case before the court, but those who investigated the atrocities said it might explain why some US officials seemed reluctant to use their influence to bring Taylor to justice sooner.
After Taylor stepped down as Liberian president in 2003 following his indictment, he lived virtually in the open for three years in exile in Nigeria, a US ally. The Bush administration came under intense criticism from members of Congress for not intervening with the Nigerian government until Taylor was finally handed over to the court in 2006.
Allan White, a former Defense Department investigator who helped build the case against Taylor on behalf of the United Nations, said the news reinforced suspicions he had for years.
“I think the intelligence community’s past relationship with Taylor made some in the US government squeamish about a trial, despite knowing what a bad actor he was,’’ White said in an interview.
Taylor’s lawyer in the war crimes trial, Courtenay Griffiths, did not respond to several calls or e-mails seeking comment.
The Pentagon’s response to the Globe states that the details of Taylor’s role on behalf of the spy agencies are contained in dozens of secret reports - at least 48 separate documents - covering several decades. However, the exact duration and scope of the relationship remains hidden. The Defense Intelligence Agency said the details are exempt from public disclosure because of the need to protect “sources and methods,’’ safeguard the inner workings of American spycraft, and shield the identities of government personnel.
Former intelligence officials, who agreed to discuss the covert ties only on the condition of anonymity, and specialists including Farah believe Taylor probably was considered useful for gathering intelligence about the activities of Moammar Khadafy. During the 1980s, the ruler of Libya was blamed for sponsoring such terrorist acts as the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland and for fomenting guerrilla wars across Africa.
Taylor testified that after fleeing Boston he recruited 168 men and women for the National Patriotic Front for Liberia and trained them in Libya.
Over time, the former officials said, Taylor may have also been seen as a source for information on broader issues in Africa, from the illegal arms trade to the activities of the Soviet Union, which, like the United States, was seeking allies on the continent as part of the broader struggle of the Cold War.
Liberia, too, was of special interest to Washington. The country was founded in 1847 by freed American slaves who named its capital, Monrovia, after President James Monroe. The American embassy was among the largest in the world, covering two full city blocks, and US companies had significant investments in the country, including a Firestone tire factory and a Coca-Cola bottling plant.
A former ally of Taylor’s, Prince Johnson, told a government commission in Liberia in 2008 that he believed US intelligence had encouraged Taylor to overthrow the government in Liberia, which had fallen out of favor with Washington for banning all political opposition.
Taylor’s ties to Boston reach back four decades.
He arrived in 1972 and attended Chamberlayne Junior College in Newton and studied economics at Bentley College in Waltham. While in Boston, he emerged as a political force as national chairman of the Union of Liberian Associations. In 1977 he returned to Liberia and joined Samuel Doe’s government after a coup in 1980.
Taylor served as chief of government procurement in the Doe regime but fled Liberia for Boston in 1983 after being accused of embezzling $1 million from the government. He was arrested in Somerville in 1984 and jailed in Plymouth pending extradition.
The acknowledgment now that Taylor worked with US intelligence agencies at the time raises new questions about whether elements within the government orchestrated the Plymouth prison break in 1985 - as Taylor claimed during his trial - or at least helped him flee the United States.
Four other inmates who also escaped that night were soon recaptured.
“Why would someone walk out of a prison that’s never been breached in a 100 years?’’ said David M. Crane, who was the chief prosecutor for the Sierra Leone war crimes court from 2002 to 2005 and now teaches at Syracuse University College of Law. “It begs the question: How do you walk out of a prison? It seems someone looked the other way.’’
Taylor recounted the episode during his trial testimony, insisting that a guard opened his cell for him.
“I am calling it my release because I didn’t break out,’’ Taylor testified. “I did not pay any money. I did not know the guys who picked me up. I was not hiding [afterwards].’’
He said two men - he assumed they were American agents - were waiting for him outside the prison and drove him to New York to meet his wife. Using his own passport, he said, he traveled to Mexico before returning to Africa.
Brian Gillen, the superintendent of the maximum security jail in Plymouth who was director of security at the time of Taylor’s escape, declined to comment when reached last week by the Globe.
Taylor reemerged in Liberia in 1989 as head of a rebel army.
“I assigned an officer to maintain a watch on the Taylor people,’’ recalled James Keough Bishop, US ambassador in Liberia from 1981 to 1989.
Bishop said he was not aware of ties between American intelligence and Taylor.
After a series of bloody civil wars that lasted much of the 1990s, Taylor eventually assumed power. He was elected president in 1997.
Several former officials and specialists believe US intelligence had probably cut ties with Taylor by the time he became president, but Farah said he believes that even in the early years of their associations with Taylor, US intelligence agencies knew what kind of character he was.
“Even at the time, there were atrocities going on,’’ he said. “He wasn’t clean when they hooked up with him. We had a high tolerance for people who were willing to inform on Khadafy. The question is whether he actually provided anything useful.’’
_________________________________________________
See also:
Charles Taylor 'worked' for CIA in Liberia
BBC
US authorities say former Liberian leader Charles Taylor worked for its intelligence agencies, including the CIA, the Boston Globe reports.
The revelation comes in response to a Freedom of Information request by the newspaper.
A Globe reporter told the BBC this is the first official confirmation of long-held reports of a relationship between US intelligence and Mr Taylor.
Mr Taylor is awaiting a verdict on his trial for alleged war crimes.
Rumours of CIA ties were fuelled in July 2009 when Mr Taylor himself told his trial, at the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone in the Hague, that US agents had helped him escape from a maximum security prison in Boston in 1985.
The CIA at the time denied such claims as "completely absurd".
But now the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon's spy arm, has disclosed that its agents - and those of the CIA - did later use Mr Taylor as an informant, the Globe reports.
Globe reporter Bryan Bender told the BBC's Network Africa programme that Pentagon officials refused to give details on exactly what role Mr Taylor played, citing national security.
But they did confirm that Mr Taylor first started working with US intelligence in the 1980s, the period when he rose to become one of the world's most notorious warlords, Mr Bender says.
Mr Taylor was later elected Liberia's president.
He has been accused of arming and controlling the RUF rebels in neighbouring Sierra Leone during a 10-year campaign of terror conducted largely against civilians.
If convicted, Mr Taylor would serve a prison sentence in the UK.
He denies charges of murder, rape and using child soldiers.
_____________________________
Boston Globe: We 'overreached' on Charles Taylor-CIA story
Posted By Joshua Keating
Foreign Policy
January 25, 2012 - 3:17 PM
Last week, I wrote a post linking to a front-page story from the Boston Globe on links between former Liberian President, now-war crimes defendant Charles Taylor and the CIA. The piece reported that, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Globe, the U.S. government had confirmed that Taylor had worked with U.S. spy agencies while he was a rebel leader fighting to overthrow the Liberian government.
Today, the Globe has issued a near-retraction of the story:
A front-page story on Jan. 17 drew unsupported conclusions and significantly overstepped available evidence when it described former Liberia president Charles Taylor as having worked with US spy agencies as a “sought-after source.’’ The story, based on a response by the US Defense Intelligence Agency to a long-pending records request from the Globe, described the agency’s response as having “confirmed its agents and CIA agents worked with Taylor beginning in the early 1980s.’’
But the agency offered no such confirmation; rather, it said only that it possessed 48 documents running to 153 pages that fall in the category of what the Globe asked for - records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence going back to 1982. The agency, however, refused to release the documents and gave no indication of what was in them.
One of the grounds for that refusal was suggestive, citing the need to protect “intelligence sources and methods,’’ but that, by itself, fell well short of a sufficient basis for the published account. There has long been speculation that Taylor had such a role, speculation fueled in part by Taylor’s own suggestion in trial testimony that his 1985 escape from prison in Plymouth, Mass., may have been facilitated by CIA operatives. But Taylor, now standing trial before a UN special court on charges of rape, murder, and other offenses, denies he was ever a source for, or worked for, US intelligence.
The Globe had no adequate basis for asserting otherwise and the story should not have run in this form.
The fact that these "records relating to Taylor and to his relationship, if any, with American intelligence" exist but the CIA won't release them is only going to increase the curiosity about what they contain. The correction is unlikely to stop the rumor mills in Monrovia, Washington, or The Hague.
Welcoming the Liberia-Is-a-Christian-Nation Campaign
Because of the Kind of Liberia We Will Have – Part I
The New Dawn (Liberia)
Monday, 27 February 2012
By Paul Y. Harry
It has been reported that a group of very faithful and we-will-do-anything-for-Jesus Christians, Christians who believe both in the Christian principles and faithfully and sincerely applying those principles in their words and deeds – that is, in the entire lives – have begun a campaign aimed at changing Article 14 of the current Liberian Constitution, which states that “no religious denomination or sect shall have any exclusive privilege or preference over any other, but all shall be treated alike … Consistent with the principle of separation of religion and state, the state shall establish no state religion,” to something like “Liberia is a Christian nation, although other religions will be accommodated and tolerated,” because, according to them, Liberia was founded on Christian principles, interpreted to mean that Liberia is a Christian nation.
Welcoming the Liberia-Is-a-Christian-Nation Campaign - Because of the Kind of Liberia We Will Have – Part I
As indicated earlier, a campaign to arrive at this state has already begun and, to make their drive gain traction or be weightier, those true-Christian-principles believers are seeking at least one million signatures from like-minded Christians.
Like ex-President Charles Taylor and his “Liberia for Jesus” crusade in 2002, when he prostrated at the SKD Sports Complex, saying, “Jesus, you are the President of Liberia; I am not,” these true Bible and we-really-believe-in-and-live-the-Christian-principles believers say they want to return Liberia back to the Christian principles upon which it was built.
Seriously, this is welcome news and development for our country and its people. But who would oppose the idea of making Liberia and its citizens speak and live the Christian principles set out in the Bible? We welcome it, for we know the kind of Liberia we will have.
We await the day on which that declaration will be made. Oh, God, let Liberia be declared a Christian nation sooner than later. We have longed for such a Liberia for years. Let the one million signatures be obtained in the twinkling of an eye.
But who would kick against declaring Liberia a Christian nation, when Liberia and Liberians would no longer be the same, when a complete transformation would take place?
But isn’t declaring Liberia a Christian nation about making the nation and its people practice in their national and individual lives, their public and private lives, the Christian principles set out and promulgated by Jesus and His apostles?
Who would kick against it, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would make Liberia different from what it is now, in terms of its citizens’ desire to shun evil and live a godly life?
But who would reject it, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would cause all politicians and government officials, including the President, to no longer mention the word “zoes” in the expression: “Our chiefs, elders and zoes”? In other words, who would kick against it, when “zoes” would be no more?
Who would oppose it, fellow Liberians, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would make a top female government official who was recently honored by the chiefs, elders and zoes of Bong County, giving her a zoe-related traditional title, would return to the zoes and elders and say, “Liberia is now a Christian nation. Take back the title you gave me; I don’t want it”?
Who would kick against it, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would cause prostitution and prostitutes to disappear from our Christian nation? Isn’t it good news?
Frankly, this is not an idea to oppose, because when Liberia is declared a Christian nation, men and women, boys and girls, will no longer go to motels, hotels or places of that nature for the purpose of having sex secretly, for it would be a new Liberia.
Who would oppose it, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would cause all pieces of worldly music to disappear from the Christian nation that we would have? Let it be declared today, not tomorrow.
But who would frown on such a development, when declaring Liberia a Christian state would stop the operation of night clubs in our new Christian nation?
Would anyone really go against it, when declaring the country a Christian state would cause all men and women, boys and girls, to stop engaging in oral sex, when everyone would realize that no woman is to suck a man and no man is to suck a woman, as the declaration would force them to know instantly that God never made their mouths for their private sex organs? Let Liberia be declared a Christian nation now, not later.
But who would be irritated by it, when the declaration would stop the commission of fornication and adultery in our society, the Christian nation of our day?
Would anybody step on the idea? We don’t think so, as declaring Liberia a Christian country would cause pastors, deacons, bishops and other church leaders to refrain from eating church money or secretly having sex with the members of their church.
But why kick against the idea, when declaring Liberia a Christian state would cause women not to think about or have abortion, a practice that has caused the deaths of thousands of innocent, unborn kids? And why reject the declaration, when it will cause doctors, physician assistants and nurses to stop performing abortion?
But who would want to reject such a campaign, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would cause all politicians and public officers to stop practicing corruption and anything resembling it in our new Christian nation? Who would reject the idea, when in the new Christian Liberia all business deals, including concessions agreements, would be transparently done? Wouldn’t this the kind of Liberia that any citizen would like to have?
Would anyone be that audacious to reject the new Liberia, when the declaration would cause criminal activities to cease, for a Christian Liberia would be a completely different Liberia?
But who would really oppose the declaration, when Liberia would now be a country where no one would sue another person, since the Christian principles talked about also involve loving your enemy, praying for those who hate and ill-treat you and forgiving seventy times seven those who wrong you?
Seriously, my people, it is in the interest of the country and its people for Liberia to be declared a Christian nation, and we pray that the God-fearing Christians, the we-live-only-for-Christ believers that are behind this campaign should not rest their case until they achieve their dream, for we know that they and those affixing their signatures to the one-million-signature petition are sure that the declaration will spiritually transform Liberia and its people.
But, seriously, folks, if declaring Liberia a Christian nation would have no impact on the spiritual lives and attitudes and behavior of the people of this land, especially those calling themselves Christians and supporting this Liberia-should-be-declared-a-Christian nation campaign, then why waste resources on the campaign, and why start such a campaign, in the first place? Is it because some pastors want to sit in studio at a radio station for callers to say to them, “Men of God, we support you for what you are doing; may God bless you and your families for standing up for Jesus”?
Because of the Kind of Liberia We Will Have – Part 2
The New Dawn
Tuesday, 06 March 2012
By Paul Y. Harry
It is now well-known that a group of very faithful and we-will-do-anything-for-Jesus Christians, Christian who are faithfully and sincerely applying in their words and deeds the Christian principles set out in the Bible, has begun a campaign aimed at changing Article 14 of the current Liberian Constitution, which states that “no religious denomination or sect shall have any exclusive privilege or preference over any other, but all shall be treated alike … Consistent with the principle of separation of religion and state, the state shall establish no state religion,” to something like “Liberia is a Christian nation, although other religions will be accommodated and tolerated,” because, according to them, Liberia was founded on Christian principles, interpreted to mean that Liberia is a Christian nation.
Like ex-President Charles Taylor and his “Liberia for Jesus” crusade in 2002, when he prostrated at the SKD Sports Complex, saying, “Jesus, you are the President of Liberia; I am not,” these we-really-believe-in-and-live-the-Christian-principles believers say they want to return Liberia back to the Christian principles upon which it was built.
Let it be borne in mind that whether Liberia was founded on Christian principles or not, we all, I suppose, welcome the idea of making the people of Liberia live their lives based on the Christian principles as we know it to be recorded in the Bible. We all welcome the idea and the campaign.
Seriously, fellow Liberians, who would oppose this we-want-Liberians-to-live-according-to-Christian-principles campaign, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would cause our government officials to stop misusing gas slips?
We welcome the idea because declaring Liberia a Christ-like nation means that people will stop committing sins and the land will be a God-fearing place. The declaration is welcome because it will cause our government to stop dealing in secrecy and operating diabolically.
But who would oppose it, when declaring Liberia a Christian state would make the revenue to be generated from the oil that has been discovered not to be marred in corruption? We will now have a new nation – a Christian nation.
Could the declaration be made today? We want for Liberians to live their lives based on the Christian principles. For instance, if Liberia is declared a Christian nation, it will be hard, if not impossible, for anyone to use profane language, as the Bible says that our words should be seasoned with salt. The declaration will cause all to refrain from using bad language. Isn’t this good news?
But who would be brave to kick against a campaign aimed at making Liberians love their neighbors as they love themselves? Declaring Liberia a Christ-like nation will ensure this, as those behind the campaign are sure that the “Liberia is a Christian nation” declaration will not only be on paper, but will be manifested in the lives of the people? Who wouldn’t be happy about this?
Who would really kick against it, when declaring Liberia a Christian nation would not only cause all to believe in Jesus Christ, but to also go to church every Sunday?
There is no way that anyone would be brave to oppose making Liberia and its people operate on Christian principles because when Liberia is declared a Christian state, all Christians will instantly follow I Corinthians 1:10, which tells Christians: “Now, I beg you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you: but that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment.” There will no longer be Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Independent Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Later Day’s Saints, Pentecostals, and so forth, for the desire to follow he Christian principles will cause all to shun division and be of the same mind and of the same judgment. Isn’t this great news for the land and its people? Let Liberia be declared a Christian nation today!
But who would oppose the campaign, when living by the Christian principles would cause unfaithfulness or cheating in relationships or marriages to stop completely?
But who would refuse to let Liberia become a Christian nation, when declaring it a Christian state would cause all of our politicians and political leaders to be honest people, when politicians will no longer make empty and vague promises during any political season?
Look! Let Liberia follow the Christian principles that those behind the we-want-Liberia-to-be-declared-a-Christian-nation campaign want Liberians to live by. It is a great endeavor because declaring Liberia a Christian state will cause all the chiefs, elders, zoes and others practicing polygamy in the interior and other places in our land to stop immediately. The practice of polygamy is not part of the Christian principles we’re talking about, so there will no longer be polygamy in the new Liberia.
Making Liberians live by Christian principles is a good thing, as it will make our country the talk of the world in terms of moral uprightness, as we will be completely different from all other nations with declared state religions because unlike theirs, which is only paper-oriented, Liberians, especially the Christians that are behind the campaign, will show it in their daily lives.
We can only welcome the campaign to declare Liberia a Christian state with open arms because the declaration will cause teachers to stop accepting bribes and for students to stop offering bribes for grades. It will also cause teachers to stop having sex with students for grades. We are talking about the new Liberia, which will be based on Christian principles. We can’t wait to have that new Liberia.
We don’t see why anybody would oppose the campaign, when it is clear that returning Liberia to the Christian principles upon which it was built would cause us to live like the people who established Liberia on the principles talked about? For example, part of the Christian principles introduced by those who established the country on Christian principles was to exclude the natives they met here from the citizenry. Indeed, there is a need for us to return to such a Christian principle. Es, Liberia was built on Christian principles.
Let Liberia be declared a Christina nation. Let the one-million signatures make us return to those Christian principles upon which the country was founded. We need that because we, especially those behind this campaign, are convinced that Liberia will be spiritually and morally resuscitated, and Liberia and its citizens will experience a new era of moral uprightness. We can’t wait to see the arrival of that new Liberia, a Liberia whose people will speak and act based on the Christian principles set out in the Bible.
Christian principles-based Liberia, we await you!
Liberia: A Country Founded on Imperialist Principles
The New Dawn (Liberia)
Thursday, 08 March 2012
By Mohamed Dukuly (Sydney)
The present debate about returning Liberia to a Christian state is not only a malicious effort for destabilization but also a sign of how the colonial churches succeeded in their role as facilitators of Americo-black imperialism in the place now called Liberia.
The quest for Christian statehood is based on the misconception that Liberia was founded on Christian principles. This idea has been around for a while and mainly shared and promoted by some uncritical Liberian Christians who are seeking to continue the ideological imperialism in Liberia. The fact is, Liberia was NOT founded on Christian principles. Especially if Christian principles mean the “principles of living that Jesus Christ taught about our general behaviour and relationship with one another as human beings and creations of God”.
This paper is aimed to shed light on the idea that Liberia was founded on colonial imperialist principles to serve as dumping place for former American black slaves, primarily for the interest of those who once enslaved them. It was a situation whereby the imperialists American Government, through the American Colonization Society (ACS) imposed themselves on a foreign land and people for the purpose of enhancing their economy, political and social interest, as well as enforcing their imperialist culture and religion on the native population.
We are all aware that prior to the formation of the private organization that led the colonization of Liberia, the question of what to do with the black population in America was always alive in the minds of the American people. Amongst the various debates and discussions going on then, the popular solution most people leaned towards was the idea to remove free black slaves to some sort of territory beyond the border of the United States of America (see Sherwood, 1916).
Some of the well-known arguments advanced then were that: Politically, the two races could not live in harmony with equal political power because there will be prejudices and recollection of injuries between them. Physically, one race could oppose to the other on the bases of “color, form and beauty”. Morally, it was argued that blacks were inferior to whites in intelligence and moral ideals. The only solution therefore was “to transfer the blacks to another country” (ibid, p.493).
By the late end of the 18th Century, advocates for the deportation of blacks to Africa project had gained higher momentum and well known individuals like Thornton who was ready to sacrifice his entire fortune for the project and Hopkins who introduced the idea of the need to salvage Africa. However, Efforts made then were mainly through individuals but paved the way for the formation of the American Colonization Society (ACS) (ibid, p. 507)
The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in1816 as collective effort aimed to facilitate the colonization of free blacks of the United States (Poe, 1970).Key people behind the ACS were both “religious” and secular. There were individuals like Reverend Finley who believed in the idea of divine mission to colonize free blacks into Africa and slave holders from the South who supported the ACS because it meant to remove dangerous elements from their society. There was Paul Cuffe a philanthropist and rich businessman of the Quakers community whose interest was to just do something about the plight of black slaves. The interesting thing was that both religious and socio-political arguments were constantly used for different audience just to gain support for the ACS at all cost (see Sherwood 1970). The ACS later won the support of the American government under the leadership of James Monroe and no need to mention here that this was done purely for the interest of America.
Colonizing Africa was not an idea supported at all quarters of the black leadership. Some blacks truly argued that “colonization was an attempt to mask the ongoing problem of slavery, and in the process provided white colonizationists an opportunity to mollify their consciences without genuinely addressing the larger issues”. On the other hand, others saw it as once in a life time opportunity to obtain a full flesh freedom and sense of dignity in a land they can call theirs. While the religious patrons saw it as a God given opportunity to plan their form of Christianity in Africa in disguise of something else (see Stepp, 2007).
One year after what some called “dodgy procurement of land” by the ACS in Cape Mesurado of present Liberia; the first colonist ship arrived in March 1822. Despite intense resistance from the indigenous people the colonists occupied the Island, named it as Christopolis and began building dwellings (Holsoe 1971). Historians recorded that from March up till December that year (1822) indigenous people put up series of resistance against the colonists but failed in their efforts to prevent them from settling.
Even the questionable account of King Kamara’s (Sao Boso) intervention at the time did not help to prevent attacks against the colonist. As the indigenous leaders around the coastal areas of the Island who are mostly known by their imperialists imposed names including “Kings Bromley, Todo, Governor, Konko, Jimmy, Gray, Long Peter, George, Willey, and Ben, as well as all of King Peter's and King Bristol's…” (ibid, p .338); put their warriors together and executed a massive attack on the colonist in November of 1822 but failed to get them out.
Few months after the arrival of the first ship, ACS brought in Reverend Jehudi Ashmun, to administer the colony on their behalf. A Reverend that the black colonist led by Reverend Lott Carey revolted against due to what they called “Ashmum’s unfair attitude” towards them. Internal revolts plus perceived threat of encroachment from imperialist Britain and France were too real to be taken for granted. By 1847, the colony was declared Independent from ACS (White control) and named Liberia with its capital as Monrovia.
The story of Christianity on pre-Liberian soil can not be told without mention of Reverend Lott Cary. He and Teague led the first Baptist Mission into West Africa. The key source of the claim that Liberia was founded on Christian principles is principally premised on the works of those two men and later by activity of Reverend Day of the Southern Baptist Mission. Lott Cary established the first church in Liberia and became vice governor of the colony; while Teague became part of the team that drafted the 1847 Liberian Constitution. However, it is important to be aware of the following salient points about early Christianity in pre-Liberia.
Firstly, Lott Carey and Teague were never official delegates of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to Africa. They were sent by the Triennial Convention upon the recommendation of William Crane to spread Christianity in Africa. The two Christian missionaries plus their families first settled in Sierra Leone and later joined the colonist in 1822 for Liberia. In fact it was recorded that Lott Carey had Sierra Leone in mind as destination while his contract was being arranged by the Church group (see Poe 197 p. 51).
Secondly, prior to setting off for Africa, both Lott Carey and Teague were seriously urged to keep away from politics of the colony as much as they could and to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s...” (See Stoughton to Carey and Teague in Seventh Annual Report of Baptist Board for Foreign Missions, 1821,p. 397) as cited by (Poe19 p. 55).
Thirdly, Lott Carey involvement into politics was not favoured by everyone in the Triennial Convention. This is why the first report sent to the six Triennial General Missionary Convention one year after his death included the remark that “.... could he (Lott Carey) had devoted his whole time to (the work of the church) much good might have been expected to have resulted from his labours....” (See Fisher, 1922, p. 416). This is one of the reasons why some writers argue that Lott Carey and his Christian team had plans different than that of the American Colonization Society. Unfortunately, their Christian work was somehow an encoded imperialism.
In spite all of these; indigenous Liberians will always remember Reverend Lott Carey as the great colonial missionary who died from injury sustained while preparing ammunition to be used for killing our people (Stepp, 2007, p. 51).
It should therefore be noted that reference made to Christianity and God in the 1847 Constitution should not seen as a genuine attempt to seeking goodness for all (indigenous inclusive). The reality then proved that this was not the case. Ironically, every social injustice issues they experienced as mentioned in the preamble of the 1847 constitution were the exact issues native people were to later be faced with from the so-called “Christian country” (see Liberian 1847 constitution). This is why it is important to raise the question of which Christianity were they talking about? Was it a Christianity that suited their understanding of “freedom”- a concept they understood as the acquisition of property, Black control of churches and their own destiny with their own “distinctive political culture”(Denise 2011). Or was it Christianity without Jesus Christ (Burrowes, 2011) that was being used as cover for imperialism and subjugation of the natives?
What is clear among scholars and at least echoed by Dunn (1997, p.712) is that once established in the place now called Liberia, these former slaves, and their descendents proceeded to enslave the ethnicities among whom they settled in the I820S in an exactly similar fashion which characterised European colonial rule over Africans in other parts of Africa .
These black colonists or settlers were filled with combination of anger about their past experience, extreme desperation and desires to get out of the control of their former slave masters. Their sole focus was on themselves and their plight. So they could do anything to get what they wanted. An example of their mindset then is illustrated by Burrowes (2001), when he recorded that once in 1841 when the president of the American Colonization Society (ACS) wrote Teage to complain about an offensive article in the Liberian newspaper against the whites, Teage (one of the Christian leaders then) responded that as in common with all colored men, he had certain sentiment.... and it was his indefeasible rights to hold those opinions against their former slave masters. What sort of Christianity then that the country is said to be founded on when everything that transpired since their presence on our soil were based on injustice, exploitation and unfair sufferings of native people?
Truly, Christianity filled with unfairness and injustice should not be equated with the Christianity connected to Jesus Christ. The latter is true Christianity while the former is imperialism in disguise. Against this background, it can be said that the founding of Liberia is nothing other than an exercise of imperialism.
In the first place the land was taken by treachery and presented to us as normal transaction. Fisher (1922) listed gunpowder; rum tobacco iron pots, looking glasses and other items not more than $ 300 as the exchange articles for the “valuable track of land which was the nucleus of Liberia”. The claim about signing treaty with native chiefs is a bit of mockery. How could they possibly do a fair deal with chiefs that were not literate in English language and did not speak English? No wonder the natives refused to allow them settle and put up fight to the best of their abilities.
Native people who out-numbered the imperialist at almost 100 to one ratio were denied every form of political participation in the so called “Christian country”. The 1847 constitution that is said to have set the Christian principle basis of Liberia did not assign any citizenship to the native people yet still they later introduced and imposed compulsory hut-tax on them. Not only that land was forcefully taken but natives were more or less a defector subjects to those colonial imperialists. A good “imperialist Christianity” – I guess!
They also practiced a very harsh form of assimilation policy in Liberia whereby natives were forced to undergo a “brainwashed education” to become “Christians” for several reasons. One of those reasons was to make religion an antidote to critical consciousness towards any attempt to question their hegemony. Another was to make their form of Christianity as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the cultural and moral value system existed in pre- Liberia (see Akpan, 1973, pp. 226-227). Not surprising that even in this day and age, one still sess the impact of the decade long brainwashed education in Liberia.
When it was clear that the assimilation policy was not working due to resistance from the Poro and Sande societies on one hand and Islam on the other, the colonial imperialists instituted an indirect rule system that subjected the natives to some of the harshest forms of maltreatments and exploitations. Like other colonial imperial powers, Liberia colonial imperialists placed natives against each other. They formed the Liberian Frontier Force, an on record notorious force to implement the indirect rule policy. Through this Frontier force, the Liberian colonial imperialists created the right atmosphere that allowed them to do to the natives what they experienced from their slave masters (see ibid pp. 229-231)
In conclusion, it is save to state that any claim that links the founding of Liberia to “Imperialist Christian principle” is not only demeaning to real Christianity but also an expression of concocted fallacy based on “brainwashed education”. In view of the historical situation explained earlier plus the realities seen on the ground in present day Liberia, the most rational position on the matter is the view that Liberia was founded on imperialist principles- those that advance domination, exploitation, institutional discrimination and social inequality.
Reference
Akpan, M. B. (1973). Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over African Peoples of Liberia, 1841-1964. In Canadian Journal of African studies, Vol. 7, No. 2.
Burrowes, C.P. (2001) Black Christian republicanism: a southern ideology in early Liberia, 1822 to 1847. In the Journal of Negro History. Vol. 86, No. 1.
Dunn, D. E. (1987). Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland by Yekutiel Gershoni; African and American Values: Liberia and West Africa by Katherine Harris; Big Powers and Small Nations: A Case Study of United States-Liberian Relations by Hassan B. Sisay. Review work in: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4. pp. 712-715
Dennis, D. A. (2011) the Mississippi Colonial Experience in Liberia, 1829-1860 (Doctorate Desertation). Retrieved from ProQuest. UMI 3466928
Fisher, M. M. (1922). Lott Carey. The Colonizing Missionary. In the Journal of Negro History, Vol.7, No.4
Flowers, E. H. (2008). “A Man, a Christian... and Gentlemen?” John Day , Southern Baptists, and the Nineteenth Century Mission to Liberia. In Baptist History and Heritage, Vol.43, No.2
Holsoe, S.V. (1971). A Study of Relation between Settlers and Indigenous People in Western Liberia, 1821-1847. In African Historical studies, Vol. 4, No. 2
Poe, W. A. (1970). Lott Cary: Man of Purchases Freedom. In Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol.39, No. 1 [Peer Reviewed Journal].
Sherwood, H. N. (1916). Early Negro Deportation Projects .In The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol.2, No. 4
Sherwood, H. N. (1917). The Formation of American Colonization Society .In The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 2, No.3
About the Author
The Author is a trainer and facilitator with several years of group work experience with families and individuals from CALD background. He holds a BA (ED) History from Bayero University in Nigeria and postgraduate qualifications in Social Science and Family Mediation from Australia. He is presently pursuing his Master degree in Social Work at the Charles Sturt University in Australia.
Thursday, 08 March 2012
By Mohamed Dukuly (Sydney)
The present debate about returning Liberia to a Christian state is not only a malicious effort for destabilization but also a sign of how the colonial churches succeeded in their role as facilitators of Americo-black imperialism in the place now called Liberia.
The quest for Christian statehood is based on the misconception that Liberia was founded on Christian principles. This idea has been around for a while and mainly shared and promoted by some uncritical Liberian Christians who are seeking to continue the ideological imperialism in Liberia. The fact is, Liberia was NOT founded on Christian principles. Especially if Christian principles mean the “principles of living that Jesus Christ taught about our general behaviour and relationship with one another as human beings and creations of God”.
This paper is aimed to shed light on the idea that Liberia was founded on colonial imperialist principles to serve as dumping place for former American black slaves, primarily for the interest of those who once enslaved them. It was a situation whereby the imperialists American Government, through the American Colonization Society (ACS) imposed themselves on a foreign land and people for the purpose of enhancing their economy, political and social interest, as well as enforcing their imperialist culture and religion on the native population.
We are all aware that prior to the formation of the private organization that led the colonization of Liberia, the question of what to do with the black population in America was always alive in the minds of the American people. Amongst the various debates and discussions going on then, the popular solution most people leaned towards was the idea to remove free black slaves to some sort of territory beyond the border of the United States of America (see Sherwood, 1916).
Some of the well-known arguments advanced then were that: Politically, the two races could not live in harmony with equal political power because there will be prejudices and recollection of injuries between them. Physically, one race could oppose to the other on the bases of “color, form and beauty”. Morally, it was argued that blacks were inferior to whites in intelligence and moral ideals. The only solution therefore was “to transfer the blacks to another country” (ibid, p.493).
By the late end of the 18th Century, advocates for the deportation of blacks to Africa project had gained higher momentum and well known individuals like Thornton who was ready to sacrifice his entire fortune for the project and Hopkins who introduced the idea of the need to salvage Africa. However, Efforts made then were mainly through individuals but paved the way for the formation of the American Colonization Society (ACS) (ibid, p. 507)
The American Colonization Society (ACS) was formed in1816 as collective effort aimed to facilitate the colonization of free blacks of the United States (Poe, 1970).Key people behind the ACS were both “religious” and secular. There were individuals like Reverend Finley who believed in the idea of divine mission to colonize free blacks into Africa and slave holders from the South who supported the ACS because it meant to remove dangerous elements from their society. There was Paul Cuffe a philanthropist and rich businessman of the Quakers community whose interest was to just do something about the plight of black slaves. The interesting thing was that both religious and socio-political arguments were constantly used for different audience just to gain support for the ACS at all cost (see Sherwood 1970). The ACS later won the support of the American government under the leadership of James Monroe and no need to mention here that this was done purely for the interest of America.
Colonizing Africa was not an idea supported at all quarters of the black leadership. Some blacks truly argued that “colonization was an attempt to mask the ongoing problem of slavery, and in the process provided white colonizationists an opportunity to mollify their consciences without genuinely addressing the larger issues”. On the other hand, others saw it as once in a life time opportunity to obtain a full flesh freedom and sense of dignity in a land they can call theirs. While the religious patrons saw it as a God given opportunity to plan their form of Christianity in Africa in disguise of something else (see Stepp, 2007).
One year after what some called “dodgy procurement of land” by the ACS in Cape Mesurado of present Liberia; the first colonist ship arrived in March 1822. Despite intense resistance from the indigenous people the colonists occupied the Island, named it as Christopolis and began building dwellings (Holsoe 1971). Historians recorded that from March up till December that year (1822) indigenous people put up series of resistance against the colonists but failed in their efforts to prevent them from settling.
Even the questionable account of King Kamara’s (Sao Boso) intervention at the time did not help to prevent attacks against the colonist. As the indigenous leaders around the coastal areas of the Island who are mostly known by their imperialists imposed names including “Kings Bromley, Todo, Governor, Konko, Jimmy, Gray, Long Peter, George, Willey, and Ben, as well as all of King Peter's and King Bristol's…” (ibid, p .338); put their warriors together and executed a massive attack on the colonist in November of 1822 but failed to get them out.
Few months after the arrival of the first ship, ACS brought in Reverend Jehudi Ashmun, to administer the colony on their behalf. A Reverend that the black colonist led by Reverend Lott Carey revolted against due to what they called “Ashmum’s unfair attitude” towards them. Internal revolts plus perceived threat of encroachment from imperialist Britain and France were too real to be taken for granted. By 1847, the colony was declared Independent from ACS (White control) and named Liberia with its capital as Monrovia.
The story of Christianity on pre-Liberian soil can not be told without mention of Reverend Lott Cary. He and Teague led the first Baptist Mission into West Africa. The key source of the claim that Liberia was founded on Christian principles is principally premised on the works of those two men and later by activity of Reverend Day of the Southern Baptist Mission. Lott Cary established the first church in Liberia and became vice governor of the colony; while Teague became part of the team that drafted the 1847 Liberian Constitution. However, it is important to be aware of the following salient points about early Christianity in pre-Liberia.
Firstly, Lott Carey and Teague were never official delegates of the American Colonization Society (ACS) to Africa. They were sent by the Triennial Convention upon the recommendation of William Crane to spread Christianity in Africa. The two Christian missionaries plus their families first settled in Sierra Leone and later joined the colonist in 1822 for Liberia. In fact it was recorded that Lott Carey had Sierra Leone in mind as destination while his contract was being arranged by the Church group (see Poe 197 p. 51).
Secondly, prior to setting off for Africa, both Lott Carey and Teague were seriously urged to keep away from politics of the colony as much as they could and to “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s...” (See Stoughton to Carey and Teague in Seventh Annual Report of Baptist Board for Foreign Missions, 1821,p. 397) as cited by (Poe19 p. 55).
Thirdly, Lott Carey involvement into politics was not favoured by everyone in the Triennial Convention. This is why the first report sent to the six Triennial General Missionary Convention one year after his death included the remark that “.... could he (Lott Carey) had devoted his whole time to (the work of the church) much good might have been expected to have resulted from his labours....” (See Fisher, 1922, p. 416). This is one of the reasons why some writers argue that Lott Carey and his Christian team had plans different than that of the American Colonization Society. Unfortunately, their Christian work was somehow an encoded imperialism.
In spite all of these; indigenous Liberians will always remember Reverend Lott Carey as the great colonial missionary who died from injury sustained while preparing ammunition to be used for killing our people (Stepp, 2007, p. 51).
It should therefore be noted that reference made to Christianity and God in the 1847 Constitution should not seen as a genuine attempt to seeking goodness for all (indigenous inclusive). The reality then proved that this was not the case. Ironically, every social injustice issues they experienced as mentioned in the preamble of the 1847 constitution were the exact issues native people were to later be faced with from the so-called “Christian country” (see Liberian 1847 constitution). This is why it is important to raise the question of which Christianity were they talking about? Was it a Christianity that suited their understanding of “freedom”- a concept they understood as the acquisition of property, Black control of churches and their own destiny with their own “distinctive political culture”(Denise 2011). Or was it Christianity without Jesus Christ (Burrowes, 2011) that was being used as cover for imperialism and subjugation of the natives?
What is clear among scholars and at least echoed by Dunn (1997, p.712) is that once established in the place now called Liberia, these former slaves, and their descendents proceeded to enslave the ethnicities among whom they settled in the I820S in an exactly similar fashion which characterised European colonial rule over Africans in other parts of Africa .
These black colonists or settlers were filled with combination of anger about their past experience, extreme desperation and desires to get out of the control of their former slave masters. Their sole focus was on themselves and their plight. So they could do anything to get what they wanted. An example of their mindset then is illustrated by Burrowes (2001), when he recorded that once in 1841 when the president of the American Colonization Society (ACS) wrote Teage to complain about an offensive article in the Liberian newspaper against the whites, Teage (one of the Christian leaders then) responded that as in common with all colored men, he had certain sentiment.... and it was his indefeasible rights to hold those opinions against their former slave masters. What sort of Christianity then that the country is said to be founded on when everything that transpired since their presence on our soil were based on injustice, exploitation and unfair sufferings of native people?
Truly, Christianity filled with unfairness and injustice should not be equated with the Christianity connected to Jesus Christ. The latter is true Christianity while the former is imperialism in disguise. Against this background, it can be said that the founding of Liberia is nothing other than an exercise of imperialism.
In the first place the land was taken by treachery and presented to us as normal transaction. Fisher (1922) listed gunpowder; rum tobacco iron pots, looking glasses and other items not more than $ 300 as the exchange articles for the “valuable track of land which was the nucleus of Liberia”. The claim about signing treaty with native chiefs is a bit of mockery. How could they possibly do a fair deal with chiefs that were not literate in English language and did not speak English? No wonder the natives refused to allow them settle and put up fight to the best of their abilities.
Native people who out-numbered the imperialist at almost 100 to one ratio were denied every form of political participation in the so called “Christian country”. The 1847 constitution that is said to have set the Christian principle basis of Liberia did not assign any citizenship to the native people yet still they later introduced and imposed compulsory hut-tax on them. Not only that land was forcefully taken but natives were more or less a defector subjects to those colonial imperialists. A good “imperialist Christianity” – I guess!
They also practiced a very harsh form of assimilation policy in Liberia whereby natives were forced to undergo a “brainwashed education” to become “Christians” for several reasons. One of those reasons was to make religion an antidote to critical consciousness towards any attempt to question their hegemony. Another was to make their form of Christianity as a deliberate attempt to disrupt the cultural and moral value system existed in pre- Liberia (see Akpan, 1973, pp. 226-227). Not surprising that even in this day and age, one still sess the impact of the decade long brainwashed education in Liberia.
When it was clear that the assimilation policy was not working due to resistance from the Poro and Sande societies on one hand and Islam on the other, the colonial imperialists instituted an indirect rule system that subjected the natives to some of the harshest forms of maltreatments and exploitations. Like other colonial imperial powers, Liberia colonial imperialists placed natives against each other. They formed the Liberian Frontier Force, an on record notorious force to implement the indirect rule policy. Through this Frontier force, the Liberian colonial imperialists created the right atmosphere that allowed them to do to the natives what they experienced from their slave masters (see ibid pp. 229-231)
In conclusion, it is save to state that any claim that links the founding of Liberia to “Imperialist Christian principle” is not only demeaning to real Christianity but also an expression of concocted fallacy based on “brainwashed education”. In view of the historical situation explained earlier plus the realities seen on the ground in present day Liberia, the most rational position on the matter is the view that Liberia was founded on imperialist principles- those that advance domination, exploitation, institutional discrimination and social inequality.
Reference
Akpan, M. B. (1973). Black Imperialism: Americo-Liberian Rule over African Peoples of Liberia, 1841-1964. In Canadian Journal of African studies, Vol. 7, No. 2.
Burrowes, C.P. (2001) Black Christian republicanism: a southern ideology in early Liberia, 1822 to 1847. In the Journal of Negro History. Vol. 86, No. 1.
Dunn, D. E. (1987). Black Colonialism: The Americo-Liberian Scramble for the Hinterland by Yekutiel Gershoni; African and American Values: Liberia and West Africa by Katherine Harris; Big Powers and Small Nations: A Case Study of United States-Liberian Relations by Hassan B. Sisay. Review work in: The Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol. 25, No. 4. pp. 712-715
Dennis, D. A. (2011) the Mississippi Colonial Experience in Liberia, 1829-1860 (Doctorate Desertation). Retrieved from ProQuest. UMI 3466928
Fisher, M. M. (1922). Lott Carey. The Colonizing Missionary. In the Journal of Negro History, Vol.7, No.4
Flowers, E. H. (2008). “A Man, a Christian... and Gentlemen?” John Day , Southern Baptists, and the Nineteenth Century Mission to Liberia. In Baptist History and Heritage, Vol.43, No.2
Holsoe, S.V. (1971). A Study of Relation between Settlers and Indigenous People in Western Liberia, 1821-1847. In African Historical studies, Vol. 4, No. 2
Poe, W. A. (1970). Lott Cary: Man of Purchases Freedom. In Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, Vol.39, No. 1 [Peer Reviewed Journal].
Sherwood, H. N. (1916). Early Negro Deportation Projects .In The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol.2, No. 4
Sherwood, H. N. (1917). The Formation of American Colonization Society .In The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 2, No.3
About the Author
The Author is a trainer and facilitator with several years of group work experience with families and individuals from CALD background. He holds a BA (ED) History from Bayero University in Nigeria and postgraduate qualifications in Social Science and Family Mediation from Australia. He is presently pursuing his Master degree in Social Work at the Charles Sturt University in Australia.
Lesson for Warlords - U.S. Finally Dumps Boley
The New Dawn Liberia
Monday, 02 April 2012 01:00 E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor
Fate and time have a way of dealing with every man no matter his past or current roles so it has been with former Liberian rebel leader Dr. George Boley, who has been held at a federal detention facility outside Buffalo since 2010, under a U.S. ‘Child Soldiers Accountability Act’. Boley has been finally deported to Liberia after spending two years in federal custody.
He arrived at the Roberts International Airport on Friday onboard a Delta Airlines flight and was immediately handed over to officers of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization (BIN).
Boley had been living in upstate New York near Rochester until his arrest two years ago and subsequent deportation. He was brought to Monrovia for a brief appearance at the BIN Headquarters on Broad Street, Monrovia and subsequently handed over to family members.
The 62-year-old leader of the defunct Liberia Peace Council is reported to have presided over authorizing executions, massacres and rapes during counterattacks against Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia rebels between 1993 and 96.
But appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia in 2009 Boley, like all other Liberian ex-rebel leaders, denied any wrongdoing. Many ordinary Liberians say the Bolry’s fate should sound a warning bell to other former warlords still evading justice that one day; they meet their end in whatever form or shape.
“George Boley’s [deportation] is a major step in addressing the serious human rights abuses he perpetrated in Liberia in the 1990s,” said one of the bystanders, who attended the arrival of Dr. Boley at the headquarters of Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization on Broad Street.
Boley, who has been in U.S. federal custody since 2010, is the first former Liberian warlord to be deported under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act, a four-year-old law that allows for the deportation of people linked to the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
“The United States has always welcomed refugees and those fleeing oppression, and at the same time accept human rights violators and war criminals in their country; but with the deportation of Mr. Boley today for his role in our civil conflict is a warning shout for those who may want to create problems for us here and think that they will run to America for protection,” said, Wendell Miller, a student of the University of Liberia.
A State Department report on Human Rights Practices in Liberia documented reports that Boley, as former leader of the Liberian Peace Council, authorized the executions of seven of his soldiers in 1995, according to ICE. The agency said witnesses also testified before the Liberian Truth Commission investigating war crimes that the LPC burned alive dozens of captives in 1994.
Boley first served as Education Minister in the military regime of the late Samuel Doe in the 1980s. Later, as leader of the anti-Charles Taylor rebel group, Liberian Peace Council (LPC), he served as member of the defunct transitional collective presidency, Council of State in 1996. U.S. Immigration and Customs officials accused Boley of leading a rebel faction responsible for human rights abuses, during the Liberian civil war, which ended in 2003.
An immigration judge last month ordered Boley removed under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, which added the recruitment and use of child soldiers as grounds for deportation.
Boley's wife and children, who still reside in the United States, have reportedly denied the allegations, arguing that none of the charges against their husband and father were corroborated by credible evidence.
George Boley Jr, claims the government’s effort of deporting his father is rooted in his lawsuit against federal agents. The lawsuit charges those agents with “reckless” and “malicious” violations of his civil rights.
In an interview with The News, he said his father came to America to attend college and, while there raised seven children with his wife, Kathryn. He also said his father was a former administrator with the Rochester public school system.
At the time of his arrest in 2010, federal authorities compared his case to the high-profile investigation of Chuckie Taylor, who is currently serving a 97-year imprisonment after he was convicted in connection with beatings, torture and executions in Liberia during his father’s rule.
Chuckie’s case is believed to be the first prosecution under a federal law that allows U.S. courts to hear cases involving torture in other nations, if the accused is living in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen.
Monday, 02 April 2012 01:00 E. J. Nathaniel Daygbor
Fate and time have a way of dealing with every man no matter his past or current roles so it has been with former Liberian rebel leader Dr. George Boley, who has been held at a federal detention facility outside Buffalo since 2010, under a U.S. ‘Child Soldiers Accountability Act’. Boley has been finally deported to Liberia after spending two years in federal custody.
He arrived at the Roberts International Airport on Friday onboard a Delta Airlines flight and was immediately handed over to officers of the Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization (BIN).
Boley had been living in upstate New York near Rochester until his arrest two years ago and subsequent deportation. He was brought to Monrovia for a brief appearance at the BIN Headquarters on Broad Street, Monrovia and subsequently handed over to family members.
The 62-year-old leader of the defunct Liberia Peace Council is reported to have presided over authorizing executions, massacres and rapes during counterattacks against Charles Taylor’s National Patriotic Front of Liberia rebels between 1993 and 96.
But appearing before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia in 2009 Boley, like all other Liberian ex-rebel leaders, denied any wrongdoing. Many ordinary Liberians say the Bolry’s fate should sound a warning bell to other former warlords still evading justice that one day; they meet their end in whatever form or shape.
“George Boley’s [deportation] is a major step in addressing the serious human rights abuses he perpetrated in Liberia in the 1990s,” said one of the bystanders, who attended the arrival of Dr. Boley at the headquarters of Bureau of Immigration and Naturalization on Broad Street.
Boley, who has been in U.S. federal custody since 2010, is the first former Liberian warlord to be deported under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act, a four-year-old law that allows for the deportation of people linked to the recruitment and use of child soldiers.
“The United States has always welcomed refugees and those fleeing oppression, and at the same time accept human rights violators and war criminals in their country; but with the deportation of Mr. Boley today for his role in our civil conflict is a warning shout for those who may want to create problems for us here and think that they will run to America for protection,” said, Wendell Miller, a student of the University of Liberia.
A State Department report on Human Rights Practices in Liberia documented reports that Boley, as former leader of the Liberian Peace Council, authorized the executions of seven of his soldiers in 1995, according to ICE. The agency said witnesses also testified before the Liberian Truth Commission investigating war crimes that the LPC burned alive dozens of captives in 1994.
Boley first served as Education Minister in the military regime of the late Samuel Doe in the 1980s. Later, as leader of the anti-Charles Taylor rebel group, Liberian Peace Council (LPC), he served as member of the defunct transitional collective presidency, Council of State in 1996. U.S. Immigration and Customs officials accused Boley of leading a rebel faction responsible for human rights abuses, during the Liberian civil war, which ended in 2003.
An immigration judge last month ordered Boley removed under the Child Soldiers Accountability Act of 2008, which added the recruitment and use of child soldiers as grounds for deportation.
Boley's wife and children, who still reside in the United States, have reportedly denied the allegations, arguing that none of the charges against their husband and father were corroborated by credible evidence.
George Boley Jr, claims the government’s effort of deporting his father is rooted in his lawsuit against federal agents. The lawsuit charges those agents with “reckless” and “malicious” violations of his civil rights.
In an interview with The News, he said his father came to America to attend college and, while there raised seven children with his wife, Kathryn. He also said his father was a former administrator with the Rochester public school system.
At the time of his arrest in 2010, federal authorities compared his case to the high-profile investigation of Chuckie Taylor, who is currently serving a 97-year imprisonment after he was convicted in connection with beatings, torture and executions in Liberia during his father’s rule.
Chuckie’s case is believed to be the first prosecution under a federal law that allows U.S. courts to hear cases involving torture in other nations, if the accused is living in the U.S. or is a U.S. citizen.
Yes, I’m the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia
Tuesday, 08 May
By Paul Yeenie Harry
The New Dawn (Liberia)
After re-working on “Is This the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia?” and publishing it last Wednesday, I went home and lay on my bed prone. Soon, I was arrested; neither by officers of the Criminal Investigation Division (CID) of Liberia nor by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, but by that natural, invisible arresting officer we call sleep.
After my arrest, I found myself in a dreamy world. It looked like the court setting in The Hague. I saw Taylor reading my article. Then he paused the reading, laid the New Dawn newspaper on the desk before him and started a monologic presentation – his response to my article.
Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia. I went to college in the United States. I have a master’s degree in economics. You could call me a pro-democracy advocate. Remember I was once the President of the Union of Liberia Associations in America (ULAA). I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
If you will recall, I returned to Liberia in the 1970’s, and when the 1980 coup occurred, I found myself as Director General of the General Services Agency (GSA). You remember? I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Following some allegation from the Samuel Doe government that I stole about US$1m under the pretext that I was purchasing some machines/equipment from some non-existent Earth Removing Equipment Company in the US. Doe and his government started some extradition litigation against me. In the process, I was imprisoned at a correction center in Massachusetts, Boston, USA. I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I was in my little cell in Boston when some arrangement – arrangement made by powerful and well-connected individuals and institutions – was put in place for me to be released for some scheme they wanted me to execute for them. This is what such individuals and institutions have done all the time, causing setbacks, suffering and death for scores of people – sometimes a whole nation.
Of course, they will tell you that I broke jail. Do you believe that? Anyway, what I wish to point out is that I am the same Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor was gesticulating as he spoke, causing the eyeglasses on his face to drop to the edge of his nose, almost falling from there. He paused, repositioned his glasses and stared at the New Dawn newspaper before continuing his monologic presentation.]
They sent me to Africa with the sole purpose of deposing the Doe government, thereby destabilizing the country in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
To consummate the process, I passed through a few countries, including Ghana and Sierra Leone. I also temporarily settled in, or befriended the military and the political leaders of, some countries, including Libya, Burkina Faso and the Ivory Coast. Yes, I am the Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I am the one under whose leadership the NPFL war was launched in Liberia, by way of the Liberian border town called Butuo. It was on December 24, 1989. Remember? Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Believe me. Launching that war was a very difficult undertaking. Two things helped me. Generally speaking, the Liberian people were tired of Doe and his government. Second, I had the support of many powerful individuals and institutions, individuals and institutions that had interest in what I was doing or had interest in something they had seen in Liberia. I even got military and political advice, trained fighters, arms and ammunition and some other logistical support from either those individuals or their countries. That’s why there were Ivoirians, Burkinbes and other nationals fighting for the NPFL during the war. Let me restate. I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
Look, when I agreed to head the NPFL, when I bravely accepted to lead that difficult venture of overthrowing President Doe and his government by way of arms, I did it because I, too, had some interest in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay of Liberia.
Now, hear this. There were some other Liberians who had political interest in the undertaking – they wanted to be this and be that in any government formed after the overthrow of Doe, with some presenting and positioning themselves as the president-in-waiting, but they were scared to lead the most difficult aspect – the military part. They wanted me to risk my life and my future, while they sat in their cozy homes in the United States and other places, and just come after everything and be given authority. Like the late Gaddafi, I call them cockroaches. They thought they had seen a fool to use. I knew them well. I knew their games and tricks and how they had played them over the years. I was prepared for them and their games. I said to myself, “Do these people think I am stupid?” I, too, was interested in becoming president in the process. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor paused for a few seconds, looked at the audience and looked at the newspaper article. He was furious, and the furiousness was not hidden. But it also seemed he was not using his anger to scribe the elimination of real and perceived enemies, but to tell a true story.]
I waged the rebel war against Doe and his government, determined to depose him and end his ten-year despotic rule. Yes, I am the one who said “The only good Doe is a dead Doe.” Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I controlled the largest and strongest rebel group in Liberia. I had the most strategized rebel operation in Liberia. I had the most popular rebel group in Liberia. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor who vehemently opposed the intervention of the military men and women of the Economic Community of West African Monitoring Group (ECOMOG), militarily attacking them on the high sea, even before their landing on the soil of Liberia. I fought them for years. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
When the news about the formation of an interim government was heard in 1990, especially considering the games and tricks of the Liberian politicians who wanted me to fight in the jungle of Liberia while they discuss and divide political positions, I declared that there would be no interim government that I, Charles Gahankay Taylor, would not be the head of. Yes, I am the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia.
[Taylor paused again, blew his nose in the white handkerchief in his left hand and glanced at the new Dawn newspaper article, “Is This the Charles Ghankay Taylor of Liberia?”]
To be continued…
Sunday, March 18, 2012
The Conceit of Nicholas Kristof: Rescuing sex slaves as saintliness
22 November 2011
by Laura Agustin
from the Naked Anthropologist
Some people find commercial sex or prostitution vulgar. I find Nicholas Kristof vulgar: preening, in love with himself, interfering, condescending, happy to pose grinning with brown people and claim to be saving them. A true colonial character – give me tight dresses and flashy colours any day! Since I find him nauseating, I mostly ignore him, though his Wikipedia entry makes him sound a saint (in the Rich White Man category), with prizes for ‘powerful columns that portrayed suffering among the developing world’s often forgotten people and stirred action’ and for ‘giving voice to the voiceless’. Gag. Ashton Kutcher is way preferable.
Lately Kristof live-tweeted a brothel raid alongside Somaly Mam, supposedly blow-by-blow. I am not going to complain about twitter, but the 140-character limit does foster reductionism and clichés. But more important is his claim later that thanks to him and Mam:
In Anlong Veng, Cambodia, 6 more brothels have closed since the raid I live-tweeted there that rescued a seventh-grader.
Great balls of fire, what colossal nerve to make such a claim. I know he is trying to reach the mainstream but it is so offensive he would refer to a young person in Cambodia with a made-in-USA label like seventh grader. His next claim was:
In part, that’s the power of Twitter. And the fear of traffickers that they could be next to face wrath of @*SomalyMam*
Wrath? A journalist who fosters the notion of a black and white world of bad people punished by good is not a journalist at all but a man selling his own virtue – which by the way is what prostitutes were said to be doing, in the olden days.
But vulgarity and childishness are not so important in the end. The real disorder in Kristof’s blithe chirping about brothels closing is the absence of responsibility towards the people working in them: where did they go? how will they live? do they have a roof over their heads now? How can he not understand that this is just how trafficking can happen, in his own sense of the word?
Not only women who sell sex earn their livelihoods through brothels: barmen, waiters, guards, laundresses, food vendors and others are integrated into these businesses. Those who want to abolish them might at least suggest alternatives if this source of income dries up. As for actual brothel workers, whether they were happy or coerced, the stigma attached to their previous employment could make it difficult to fend for themselves afterwards without turning to unscrupulous characters unless they are very lucky. But in the fairytale land of Rescue, uncomfortable consequences don’t exist and Rescuers are always Doing Good.
A critical perspective is commoner amongst those concerned about so-called Development and Aid. I used the satirical representation at the right on a post about Rescue Tourism, and Africa is a Country also makes fun of him. If you want to read a recent smarmy article by Kristof, try Fighting Back, One Brothel Raid at a Time from 12 November at The New York Times, where he boasts of his own heroism:
But riding beside Somaly in her car toward a brothel bristling with AK-47 assault rifles, it was scary. This town of Anlong Veng is in northern Cambodia near the Thai border, with a large military presence; it feels like something out of the Wild West.
There it is: Rescue as cowboy thrills, a way to live out conceited notions of importance by riding rough-shod through other people’s lives.
–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist
_____Comments____________
Cristina on 22 November 2011 at 20:00
Nick Kristoff is really despicable.I have worked with some “former slaves” he has interviewed and featured and they shared their trafficking stories with me. Interestingly, Mr. Kristoff’s own articles and stories about these girls exaggerate and sometimes alter parts of the story, as if it its some sort of oral history or myth.
One of these girls did not want to be “the face” of trafficking. However, with some pressure that she would “share” the story of trafficking and this would help prevent others from enduring what she did pushed her to agree. However, she does not get paid for her story being rewritten and re-imagined. Meanwhile Mr. Kristoff is praised for his “daring” and “heart wrenching” journalism and he is getting PAID for this work. Shame on him.
Reply
Laura Agustín on 22 November 2011 at 20:23
Cristina, I have heard other such rumours about those supposedly saved by both Kristof and Mam. It’s a shame we can’t find a way to present this as ‘evidence’ of exploitative practices by Helpers and Saviours.
Reply
kato on 22 November 2011 at 21:58
Unfortunately these so called rescuers are using cases of people who are held against their will, as a weapon in an attempt to remove the rights of sex workers, thus endangering them, some of those sex workers say that they do not have any real better alternative than sex work, that they would choose to be a sex worker instead of other options that they don’t want to do.
It is extremely dangerous to use a few cases of trafficked victims as justification for society to remove sex workers rights, thus making them more endangered and discriminated against and marginalised, thus affecting their mental health and mind, body and spirit.
If a female or male wants to be a sex worker then they should at least feel comfortable and protected by rights and by the police, even if sex workers are not always liked, they still are human beings who deserve rights and they should have every right to feel safe and protected in their own chosen consentual adult sexual relationships, just like wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and husbands etc have rights in their relationships and sexual relations, then sex workers must also have equal rights to equality in consensual adult sexual relationships.
The people who want to remove sex workers in society, are not listening to sex workers wants, opinions and needs, cause they just do not care, and do not respect them for their relationship choices, farley and bindel with their judgemental attitude are two such examples of people who discriminate against sex workers.
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Kris on 22 November 2011 at 22:59
I find his stories very interesting. He also reports about the DMSC in India. It turns out to be the largest human trafficking ring in the world! They have tens of thousands of sex slaves in their grasp!! That’s more than the total number of prostitutes in the Netherlands. Saban B looks like a wimp compared to these criminals, his gang only occupied 40 women during one moment. But 40 women is a lot obviously.
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Laura Agustín on 23 November 2011 at 16:41
You may find his stories interesting, but that is the second time you have mentioned his slanderous comments about DMSC on this website. They are not true, he did not understand that organisation, as how would he? He finds what he has preconceived notions about. I will appreciate your not repeating this again. Thank you.
Reply
Tracey Tully on 28 November 2011 at 03:20
Kristof is dangerous because he is so widely-read in the English-speaking world and because he propagates memes like the one you describe. It is an absolute lie. I know workers from DMSC and they are doing some incredible grass-roots work. I feel you have to be emotionally invested in his heroic narrative to miss the clues about the toxic ideas he is presenting. His jounalismy activismy jaunt to Cambodia was a voyeuristic perversion, as are many stories about sex trafficking, not just Kristof. Though he is already a long-time offender. Would you want him near your daughter?
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kato on 23 November 2011 at 00:48
Unfortunately those so called rescuers are using cases of trafficked victims as an excuse and as a weapon in an attempt to remove sex workers rights to equality in society, they try to remove those rights by using stigma and spreading misinformation.
There has been a lot of sex workers who have stated that they want to remain doing sex work, as other alternatives are just not that appealing to them, so instead of trying to take away their livelihood and using stigma and discrimination against them, why not just give them rights and better protection in society?
Many sex workers have been murdered cause of bad stigma in society and lack of rights to equality and safety.
Most sex workers agree, it is not the work itself that is dangerous, but the lack of rights to safer conditions, thats the real danger, its hard to get safer conditions with so much disinformation and hatred being spread against sex workers, by people who do not like their chosen profession.
Wives, husbands, adult boyfriend and girlfriends have equal rights to adult consensual sexual relations, sex workers should also have their equal rights to their own adult consensual sexual relations and promotion of safety and better conditions.
It is unfair to hold a huge portion of sex workers as being responsible for any cases of trafficked victims, both are seperate issues that need to be addressed in a fair, cohesive and precise way, much education also needs to be done on both issues for improving the situations of the sex worker and any trafficked victim.
Its surely not impossible to create safer environments for both issues.
But first people should realise that yes they are women and even men in society who want to be sex workers and have a livelihood out of it, and during their time as sex workers they need fair treatment.
Reply
Laura Agustín on 23 November 2011 at 16:44
Well-put summary of the sex worker rights position. I don’t promote the idea that there are two clearly separable groups, though, myself – it’s far more complicated than that!
Reply
kato on 23 November 2011 at 18:36
Laura the USA recently recognised that sex workers have different rights and needs to trafficked victims.
Do you have an opinion on this, curious to know?
It is true though that both issues are a bit complex
Reply
Adeyemi on 23 November 2011 at 21:20
At this time I have no critique of the work of Nicholas Kristoff as I believe the truth will emerge if actually he is exploiting the victims. However, while I agree the society must find alternative source of livelihood for the sex worker, I completely object to the notion of giving rights to commercial sex workers to continue what they do for a living. The question is how do we protect children used for sex by adults who visit brothels to solicit sex? By giving them such rights, the society would be legalizing commercial sex; it is time to abolish prostitution in it’s entirety I do not favor the mistreatment of a woman’s body in any form therefore, while the society must find an alternative form of survival for people involved, the abolitionists are right we must end prostitution and sex trafficking.
Reply
kato on 24 November 2011 at 02:43
Some sex workers have said they do not want some other alternative source of livelihood cause the alternatives do not pay as much as sex work.
If sex workers want rights, they are entitled to rights.
You are most naive if you ever think that you can abolish human exchanges where sexual services are offered in exchange for material wealth, such activity has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years stretching back to some of the earliest known civilisations, get real.
Trafficking with held victims most definetly should be fought, but not to the level where it creates trouble and danger for sex workers like in sweden where they are forced cause of restrictions into dangerous situations.
Reply
Johnpaul on 28 November 2011 at 19:32
“Some sex workers have said…”
Really, Kato? Than that ends that debate. If “some have said” than clearly we should let them go on undisturbed.
Oh, by the way, “some” of these sex workers are little children…I wonder what they have to say.
Reply
McDuff on 30 November 2011 at 07:15
We wouldn’t find out by asking Nick Kristoff. He’s never very interested in what prostitutes have to say, regardless of their age. Well, apart from prostitutes called Nick Kristoff.
Reply
marc on 28 November 2011 at 20:48
laura
i don’t want to get into the sex worker issue…but the issue of trafficking pre-adolescent girls simply has no defense.
you may be right that Nick Kristof is using an ‘Geraldo’ approach but at least he is getting the message out to millions of people…
your problem is that right or wrong, and not withstanding a short guest appearance on BBC and hanging out with Julian Assange’s legal team, no one knows who you are..
As far as Nick Kriston the Rich, White, Straight, male…I would give that issue a rest…Since, to judge from your photos you are a Rich-World, White, Woman …you fit the neo-colonalist profile too.
Reply
Laura Agustín on 29 November 2011 at 01:57
What problem are you talking about, marc? It doesn’t matter if I am important, it’s a blog, these are my opinions as a researcher in the field for many years. Freedom of speech, remember? And whiteness is not about skin colour, I guess I will have to write about that soon.
Also I never mentioned Geraldo, that was someone else.
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Bittermuch on 6 December 2011 at 21:39
You take criticism well, Laura.
Maybe what Marc was simply stating is that he disagrees with your bashing because, unlike you, Nick is well known and is doing a really good job with the awareness factor. Freedom of speech….remember?
Reply
Gregory A. Butler on 29 November 2011 at 01:51
Marc –
It’s easy to make cheap shots at Dr Agustin.
How about we keep this story focused on the main theme.
That is, a glory-seeking affluent White man from America comes to Cambodia to impose his morality on adult Cambodian sex workers. Many of these sex workers have ended up in Cambodia’s hellish prison system thanks to Kristof’s “rescue efforts”.
That’s the bottom line, no matter what you think of Dr Agustin.
Reply
Pingback from Reality Tour of Human Trafficking in Cambodia: Yes, This Actually Exists | Faine Opines on 29 November 2011 at 18:01
Johnpaul on 29 November 2011 at 23:09
Mr. Butler,
How about we keep this story focused on the important theme.
Children are being forcibly raped.
Somebody needs to do something and Kristof is doing more to raise awareness than anyone else (yes, including you Ashton).
That’s the bottom line, no matter what you think of Mr. Kristof.
Reply
Gregory A. Butler on 30 November 2011 at 05:56
John Paul,
The issue is, Kristof’s raids are leading to adult sex workers, voluntarily employed in the trade, being arrested, beaten, robbed and raped by the Cambodian Police.
That’s the real issue here, as the vast majority of sex workers rounded up in Kristof’s raids (about a 200 to 1) ratio, are adult sex workers.
As for Nick Kristof, he’s a rich White man from the west with a messiah complex, an unhealthy obsession with young women having sex and more money than brains.
Reply
Tracey Tully on 30 November 2011 at 05:52
John Paul, we do not know if or when and where children are being forcibly raped. In case you haven’t noticed, Kristof is a liar. It’s all part of the neocolonialist mindset. If sex work was vested with labour rights, it would prevent trafficking. It is the best safeguard against it, as well as against HIV, STIs and violence. Especially state violence.
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Johnpaul on 30 November 2011 at 22:27
Thanks Greg and Tracey, where do you get your statistics from and Tracey why do you say Kristof is a liar?
I heard from a lot of people that don’t like Nick Kristof but I don’t really understand where the anger comes from. Surely it can’t be for refering to one of the Cambodian children as a “Seventh grader” (which, in my opinion, is the pettiest criticism I’ve ever heard).
Reply
Gregory A. Butler on 1 December 2011 at 22:23
Kristof sets himself up as this “great White father” out to “save” the dirty fallen girls of Cambodia.
His raids lead to Cambodian women being herded into prison camps, where, according to Human Rights Watch, they are subject to beatings, rape and robbery by Cambodian police officers.
Incidentally, most of these women are ADULTS who are VOLUNTARILY working as sex workers.
That’s my beef with Kristof.
Reply
Tracey Tully on 2 December 2011 at 05:24
I am opposed to western neocolonialism in the developing world.
Reply
Casey Nelson on 30 November 2011 at 22:30
“Great balls of fire, what colossal nerve to make such a claim. I know he is trying to reach the mainstream but it is so offensive he would refer to a young person in Cambodia with a made-in-USA label like seventh grader.”
This does seem something of a pedantic point, but taking it a bit further, one of the things I find odd about this characterization of the girl as a “seventh-grader” is that if she is imprisoned in a brothel, she’s not going to school, regardless of the grade. And if she is a 14-year-old that’s been trafficked from Vietnam and debt-bonded into a brothel in Cambodia, most likely by her parents, it is highly unlikely that she is from a background in which she has received any significant schooling, let alone 7 years of it. While being, as I said, a rather pedantic point, it hints, in part, that Kristof is not acting as a journalist reporting on a brothel raid and the people involved, but as a dramatist of sorts, spinning a narrative in which the details of the real-world individuals are not as important as painting a particular picture. The messy particulars of actual individuals are smoothed into characters in a narrative (which do in fact fit neatly into Twitter-size blurbs.) We are not supposed to think about the complex and difficult real world circumstances leading to girls (and women) like this ending up in brothels or as some other sort of CSW, but merely have a visceral reaction that demands simple, immediate, uncomplicated solutions.
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Frank on 7 December 2011 at 16:52
I guess I came to the party a little late, but since Kristof has a movie coming out soon, this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.
marc – When you say, “I don’t want to get into the sex worker issue here…”, either you are uninformed or you are following the tack of Kristof and his cohorts who, because they cannot debate the issue of sex work straight up, have to hide behind the relatively rare 10 year old forced into prostitution to promulgate a global ban on sex work. This issue is about sex work (and imperialism) and little else.
Furthermore, taking cheap shots at Laura proves that:
1) You are losing the argument.
2) You have nothing else to add.
If you can’t handle the truth, go back to reading and listening to people like Sorvino, Hunt, and Kutcher; they have a far bigger presence on the web than people like Laura.
Lastly, regarding your “give it a rest” remark, it is pretty difficult to “give it a rest” when you have all this White ***** (in the thousands, with millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies behind them) floating around Asia trying to impose those good ‘ole superior “Western Values” on people who never asked for or want it. Saying that Laura is some sort of neo-colonialist is ridiculous.
Frank
by Laura Agustin
from the Naked Anthropologist
Some people find commercial sex or prostitution vulgar. I find Nicholas Kristof vulgar: preening, in love with himself, interfering, condescending, happy to pose grinning with brown people and claim to be saving them. A true colonial character – give me tight dresses and flashy colours any day! Since I find him nauseating, I mostly ignore him, though his Wikipedia entry makes him sound a saint (in the Rich White Man category), with prizes for ‘powerful columns that portrayed suffering among the developing world’s often forgotten people and stirred action’ and for ‘giving voice to the voiceless’. Gag. Ashton Kutcher is way preferable.
Lately Kristof live-tweeted a brothel raid alongside Somaly Mam, supposedly blow-by-blow. I am not going to complain about twitter, but the 140-character limit does foster reductionism and clichés. But more important is his claim later that thanks to him and Mam:
In Anlong Veng, Cambodia, 6 more brothels have closed since the raid I live-tweeted there that rescued a seventh-grader.
Great balls of fire, what colossal nerve to make such a claim. I know he is trying to reach the mainstream but it is so offensive he would refer to a young person in Cambodia with a made-in-USA label like seventh grader. His next claim was:
In part, that’s the power of Twitter. And the fear of traffickers that they could be next to face wrath of @*SomalyMam*
Wrath? A journalist who fosters the notion of a black and white world of bad people punished by good is not a journalist at all but a man selling his own virtue – which by the way is what prostitutes were said to be doing, in the olden days.
But vulgarity and childishness are not so important in the end. The real disorder in Kristof’s blithe chirping about brothels closing is the absence of responsibility towards the people working in them: where did they go? how will they live? do they have a roof over their heads now? How can he not understand that this is just how trafficking can happen, in his own sense of the word?
Not only women who sell sex earn their livelihoods through brothels: barmen, waiters, guards, laundresses, food vendors and others are integrated into these businesses. Those who want to abolish them might at least suggest alternatives if this source of income dries up. As for actual brothel workers, whether they were happy or coerced, the stigma attached to their previous employment could make it difficult to fend for themselves afterwards without turning to unscrupulous characters unless they are very lucky. But in the fairytale land of Rescue, uncomfortable consequences don’t exist and Rescuers are always Doing Good.
A critical perspective is commoner amongst those concerned about so-called Development and Aid. I used the satirical representation at the right on a post about Rescue Tourism, and Africa is a Country also makes fun of him. If you want to read a recent smarmy article by Kristof, try Fighting Back, One Brothel Raid at a Time from 12 November at The New York Times, where he boasts of his own heroism:
But riding beside Somaly in her car toward a brothel bristling with AK-47 assault rifles, it was scary. This town of Anlong Veng is in northern Cambodia near the Thai border, with a large military presence; it feels like something out of the Wild West.
There it is: Rescue as cowboy thrills, a way to live out conceited notions of importance by riding rough-shod through other people’s lives.
–Laura Agustín, the Naked Anthropologist
_____Comments____________
Cristina on 22 November 2011 at 20:00
Nick Kristoff is really despicable.I have worked with some “former slaves” he has interviewed and featured and they shared their trafficking stories with me. Interestingly, Mr. Kristoff’s own articles and stories about these girls exaggerate and sometimes alter parts of the story, as if it its some sort of oral history or myth.
One of these girls did not want to be “the face” of trafficking. However, with some pressure that she would “share” the story of trafficking and this would help prevent others from enduring what she did pushed her to agree. However, she does not get paid for her story being rewritten and re-imagined. Meanwhile Mr. Kristoff is praised for his “daring” and “heart wrenching” journalism and he is getting PAID for this work. Shame on him.
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Laura Agustín on 22 November 2011 at 20:23
Cristina, I have heard other such rumours about those supposedly saved by both Kristof and Mam. It’s a shame we can’t find a way to present this as ‘evidence’ of exploitative practices by Helpers and Saviours.
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kato on 22 November 2011 at 21:58
Unfortunately these so called rescuers are using cases of people who are held against their will, as a weapon in an attempt to remove the rights of sex workers, thus endangering them, some of those sex workers say that they do not have any real better alternative than sex work, that they would choose to be a sex worker instead of other options that they don’t want to do.
It is extremely dangerous to use a few cases of trafficked victims as justification for society to remove sex workers rights, thus making them more endangered and discriminated against and marginalised, thus affecting their mental health and mind, body and spirit.
If a female or male wants to be a sex worker then they should at least feel comfortable and protected by rights and by the police, even if sex workers are not always liked, they still are human beings who deserve rights and they should have every right to feel safe and protected in their own chosen consentual adult sexual relationships, just like wives, girlfriends, boyfriends and husbands etc have rights in their relationships and sexual relations, then sex workers must also have equal rights to equality in consensual adult sexual relationships.
The people who want to remove sex workers in society, are not listening to sex workers wants, opinions and needs, cause they just do not care, and do not respect them for their relationship choices, farley and bindel with their judgemental attitude are two such examples of people who discriminate against sex workers.
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Kris on 22 November 2011 at 22:59
I find his stories very interesting. He also reports about the DMSC in India. It turns out to be the largest human trafficking ring in the world! They have tens of thousands of sex slaves in their grasp!! That’s more than the total number of prostitutes in the Netherlands. Saban B looks like a wimp compared to these criminals, his gang only occupied 40 women during one moment. But 40 women is a lot obviously.
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Laura Agustín on 23 November 2011 at 16:41
You may find his stories interesting, but that is the second time you have mentioned his slanderous comments about DMSC on this website. They are not true, he did not understand that organisation, as how would he? He finds what he has preconceived notions about. I will appreciate your not repeating this again. Thank you.
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Tracey Tully on 28 November 2011 at 03:20
Kristof is dangerous because he is so widely-read in the English-speaking world and because he propagates memes like the one you describe. It is an absolute lie. I know workers from DMSC and they are doing some incredible grass-roots work. I feel you have to be emotionally invested in his heroic narrative to miss the clues about the toxic ideas he is presenting. His jounalismy activismy jaunt to Cambodia was a voyeuristic perversion, as are many stories about sex trafficking, not just Kristof. Though he is already a long-time offender. Would you want him near your daughter?
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kato on 23 November 2011 at 00:48
Unfortunately those so called rescuers are using cases of trafficked victims as an excuse and as a weapon in an attempt to remove sex workers rights to equality in society, they try to remove those rights by using stigma and spreading misinformation.
There has been a lot of sex workers who have stated that they want to remain doing sex work, as other alternatives are just not that appealing to them, so instead of trying to take away their livelihood and using stigma and discrimination against them, why not just give them rights and better protection in society?
Many sex workers have been murdered cause of bad stigma in society and lack of rights to equality and safety.
Most sex workers agree, it is not the work itself that is dangerous, but the lack of rights to safer conditions, thats the real danger, its hard to get safer conditions with so much disinformation and hatred being spread against sex workers, by people who do not like their chosen profession.
Wives, husbands, adult boyfriend and girlfriends have equal rights to adult consensual sexual relations, sex workers should also have their equal rights to their own adult consensual sexual relations and promotion of safety and better conditions.
It is unfair to hold a huge portion of sex workers as being responsible for any cases of trafficked victims, both are seperate issues that need to be addressed in a fair, cohesive and precise way, much education also needs to be done on both issues for improving the situations of the sex worker and any trafficked victim.
Its surely not impossible to create safer environments for both issues.
But first people should realise that yes they are women and even men in society who want to be sex workers and have a livelihood out of it, and during their time as sex workers they need fair treatment.
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Laura Agustín on 23 November 2011 at 16:44
Well-put summary of the sex worker rights position. I don’t promote the idea that there are two clearly separable groups, though, myself – it’s far more complicated than that!
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kato on 23 November 2011 at 18:36
Laura the USA recently recognised that sex workers have different rights and needs to trafficked victims.
Do you have an opinion on this, curious to know?
It is true though that both issues are a bit complex
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Adeyemi on 23 November 2011 at 21:20
At this time I have no critique of the work of Nicholas Kristoff as I believe the truth will emerge if actually he is exploiting the victims. However, while I agree the society must find alternative source of livelihood for the sex worker, I completely object to the notion of giving rights to commercial sex workers to continue what they do for a living. The question is how do we protect children used for sex by adults who visit brothels to solicit sex? By giving them such rights, the society would be legalizing commercial sex; it is time to abolish prostitution in it’s entirety I do not favor the mistreatment of a woman’s body in any form therefore, while the society must find an alternative form of survival for people involved, the abolitionists are right we must end prostitution and sex trafficking.
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kato on 24 November 2011 at 02:43
Some sex workers have said they do not want some other alternative source of livelihood cause the alternatives do not pay as much as sex work.
If sex workers want rights, they are entitled to rights.
You are most naive if you ever think that you can abolish human exchanges where sexual services are offered in exchange for material wealth, such activity has been there for hundreds and hundreds of years stretching back to some of the earliest known civilisations, get real.
Trafficking with held victims most definetly should be fought, but not to the level where it creates trouble and danger for sex workers like in sweden where they are forced cause of restrictions into dangerous situations.
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Johnpaul on 28 November 2011 at 19:32
“Some sex workers have said…”
Really, Kato? Than that ends that debate. If “some have said” than clearly we should let them go on undisturbed.
Oh, by the way, “some” of these sex workers are little children…I wonder what they have to say.
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McDuff on 30 November 2011 at 07:15
We wouldn’t find out by asking Nick Kristoff. He’s never very interested in what prostitutes have to say, regardless of their age. Well, apart from prostitutes called Nick Kristoff.
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marc on 28 November 2011 at 20:48
laura
i don’t want to get into the sex worker issue…but the issue of trafficking pre-adolescent girls simply has no defense.
you may be right that Nick Kristof is using an ‘Geraldo’ approach but at least he is getting the message out to millions of people…
your problem is that right or wrong, and not withstanding a short guest appearance on BBC and hanging out with Julian Assange’s legal team, no one knows who you are..
As far as Nick Kriston the Rich, White, Straight, male…I would give that issue a rest…Since, to judge from your photos you are a Rich-World, White, Woman …you fit the neo-colonalist profile too.
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Laura Agustín on 29 November 2011 at 01:57
What problem are you talking about, marc? It doesn’t matter if I am important, it’s a blog, these are my opinions as a researcher in the field for many years. Freedom of speech, remember? And whiteness is not about skin colour, I guess I will have to write about that soon.
Also I never mentioned Geraldo, that was someone else.
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Bittermuch on 6 December 2011 at 21:39
You take criticism well, Laura.
Maybe what Marc was simply stating is that he disagrees with your bashing because, unlike you, Nick is well known and is doing a really good job with the awareness factor. Freedom of speech….remember?
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Gregory A. Butler on 29 November 2011 at 01:51
Marc –
It’s easy to make cheap shots at Dr Agustin.
How about we keep this story focused on the main theme.
That is, a glory-seeking affluent White man from America comes to Cambodia to impose his morality on adult Cambodian sex workers. Many of these sex workers have ended up in Cambodia’s hellish prison system thanks to Kristof’s “rescue efforts”.
That’s the bottom line, no matter what you think of Dr Agustin.
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Pingback from Reality Tour of Human Trafficking in Cambodia: Yes, This Actually Exists | Faine Opines on 29 November 2011 at 18:01
Johnpaul on 29 November 2011 at 23:09
Mr. Butler,
How about we keep this story focused on the important theme.
Children are being forcibly raped.
Somebody needs to do something and Kristof is doing more to raise awareness than anyone else (yes, including you Ashton).
That’s the bottom line, no matter what you think of Mr. Kristof.
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Gregory A. Butler on 30 November 2011 at 05:56
John Paul,
The issue is, Kristof’s raids are leading to adult sex workers, voluntarily employed in the trade, being arrested, beaten, robbed and raped by the Cambodian Police.
That’s the real issue here, as the vast majority of sex workers rounded up in Kristof’s raids (about a 200 to 1) ratio, are adult sex workers.
As for Nick Kristof, he’s a rich White man from the west with a messiah complex, an unhealthy obsession with young women having sex and more money than brains.
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Tracey Tully on 30 November 2011 at 05:52
John Paul, we do not know if or when and where children are being forcibly raped. In case you haven’t noticed, Kristof is a liar. It’s all part of the neocolonialist mindset. If sex work was vested with labour rights, it would prevent trafficking. It is the best safeguard against it, as well as against HIV, STIs and violence. Especially state violence.
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Johnpaul on 30 November 2011 at 22:27
Thanks Greg and Tracey, where do you get your statistics from and Tracey why do you say Kristof is a liar?
I heard from a lot of people that don’t like Nick Kristof but I don’t really understand where the anger comes from. Surely it can’t be for refering to one of the Cambodian children as a “Seventh grader” (which, in my opinion, is the pettiest criticism I’ve ever heard).
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Gregory A. Butler on 1 December 2011 at 22:23
Kristof sets himself up as this “great White father” out to “save” the dirty fallen girls of Cambodia.
His raids lead to Cambodian women being herded into prison camps, where, according to Human Rights Watch, they are subject to beatings, rape and robbery by Cambodian police officers.
Incidentally, most of these women are ADULTS who are VOLUNTARILY working as sex workers.
That’s my beef with Kristof.
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Tracey Tully on 2 December 2011 at 05:24
I am opposed to western neocolonialism in the developing world.
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Casey Nelson on 30 November 2011 at 22:30
“Great balls of fire, what colossal nerve to make such a claim. I know he is trying to reach the mainstream but it is so offensive he would refer to a young person in Cambodia with a made-in-USA label like seventh grader.”
This does seem something of a pedantic point, but taking it a bit further, one of the things I find odd about this characterization of the girl as a “seventh-grader” is that if she is imprisoned in a brothel, she’s not going to school, regardless of the grade. And if she is a 14-year-old that’s been trafficked from Vietnam and debt-bonded into a brothel in Cambodia, most likely by her parents, it is highly unlikely that she is from a background in which she has received any significant schooling, let alone 7 years of it. While being, as I said, a rather pedantic point, it hints, in part, that Kristof is not acting as a journalist reporting on a brothel raid and the people involved, but as a dramatist of sorts, spinning a narrative in which the details of the real-world individuals are not as important as painting a particular picture. The messy particulars of actual individuals are smoothed into characters in a narrative (which do in fact fit neatly into Twitter-size blurbs.) We are not supposed to think about the complex and difficult real world circumstances leading to girls (and women) like this ending up in brothels or as some other sort of CSW, but merely have a visceral reaction that demands simple, immediate, uncomplicated solutions.
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Frank on 7 December 2011 at 16:52
I guess I came to the party a little late, but since Kristof has a movie coming out soon, this issue isn’t going away anytime soon.
marc – When you say, “I don’t want to get into the sex worker issue here…”, either you are uninformed or you are following the tack of Kristof and his cohorts who, because they cannot debate the issue of sex work straight up, have to hide behind the relatively rare 10 year old forced into prostitution to promulgate a global ban on sex work. This issue is about sex work (and imperialism) and little else.
Furthermore, taking cheap shots at Laura proves that:
1) You are losing the argument.
2) You have nothing else to add.
If you can’t handle the truth, go back to reading and listening to people like Sorvino, Hunt, and Kutcher; they have a far bigger presence on the web than people like Laura.
Lastly, regarding your “give it a rest” remark, it is pretty difficult to “give it a rest” when you have all this White ***** (in the thousands, with millions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies behind them) floating around Asia trying to impose those good ‘ole superior “Western Values” on people who never asked for or want it. Saying that Laura is some sort of neo-colonialist is ridiculous.
Frank
Nicholas Kristof, Charles Murray and the "Culture of Poverty"
Blaming the Poor for Their Own Poverty
by CAMERON RIOPELLE
Counterpunch
February 10-12, 2012
Nicholas Kristof and Daniel Patrick Moynihan have much in common. Namely, they have constructed variations on the “culture of poverty” argument. In “The White Underclass,” his recent op-ed piece for the New York Times, Kristof brings our nation’s favorite blame game back: “In 1965, Daniel Patrick Moynihan released a famous report warning of a crisis in African-American family structures, and many liberals at the time accused him of something close to racism. In retrospect, Moynihan was right to sound the alarms.”[1] Kristof does not call Moynihan a racist—no, he is merely something close to racist. This is far from comforting.
Kristof, like Moynihan, blames poor black families for their own struggles. Unlike Moynihan, he graciously extends this blame beyond black families and to white families as well—an update for these colorblind times. With Kristof’s muscle, the “culture of poverty” argument is taking on the contemporary poor generally, purportedly without race in mind. He has a grudge against the poor because he thinks they do not get married enough, that they do not engage enough in nuclear family structures, that they use too many drugs, and they have the gall to think that capitalism might work for them, when it is obvious to everyone else that it does not: “But the glove factory closed, working-class jobs collapsed and unskilled laborers found themselves competing with immigrants.” With the poor forced to compete with the invoked specter of immigrants, Kristof concludes that the “pathologies” discussed by Moynihan are real and relevant, and that we must build our social policies with this blame in mind.
Kristof’s piece is inspired by a new book by Charles Murray, Coming Apart, which blames liberal social policy for these problems. On the surface, Kristof opposes many points in the book, but if Kristof’s musings on the poor are any sign of how liberal policymakers think about such matters, then Murray has already won his point. The language is so drearily predictable. The working-class are men. There is a fixation on drug use as if it is solely a problem of the working-class and the poor. There is a framing of blacks and whites against immigrants. That this narrative about race and poverty reappears so easily and is so accessible tells us what we should already know: this argument is antagonistic to the poor and it is popular enough that liberals and conservatives can readily agree about it and move on to the debate over whether liberal or conservative social policy can fix the problem. There is no fixing the imagined.
In order to make clear his benevolence to the working-class subjects of this article, Kristof is quick to inform the reader that he is from a working class background, born in Yamhill, Oregon. This is irrelevant. Regardless of one’s roots, it is misleading to inform us that “growing numbers of working-class men drop out of the labor force.” We should be accountable for what we write and for how we write it. The way he phrases it, Kristof blames the victim–and also assumes a general maleness on the part of the workers. Kristof’s solution to this “male problem” of joblessness is antiquated and moralizing: he suggests that men may be tamed into the workforce through the civilizing effects of marriage. Unemployment is not pathological. The jobless do not drop out of the labor force; the labor force drops out on them.
Cameron Riopelle is a Ph. D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois.
Be Aware: Nick Kristof’s Anti-Politics
“How can you watch people die in the streets?”
“You don’t look, you close your eyes.”
Nicholas Kristof, Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist, is often hailed as a defender of the downtrodden, courageously reporting those man-made events that “shock the conscience.” As he traipses the globe to report on its most grisly moments, Kristof is followed, physically and digitally, by a significant swathe of educated, upper-middle-class America: 200,000 people like his Facebook page, a million track him on Twitter, and that’s not to mention his column in the Times. He even periodically holds a contest to allow young journalists to follow him in the field. Hence, whether decrying sex work in Cambodia (Kristof once bought a young girl out of sexual slavery) or relaying images of hacked-apart bodies in Congo, Kristof’s witnessing reaches a significant number of people. His words diffuse through book clubs, church groups, and even think tanks and governments to shape grassroots activism and policy alike. On the issue of civilian deaths in Darfur, for which he won his second Pulitzer, both critics and supporters cite Kristof’s importance in shaping both the Save Darfur movement and the U.S. President’s opinion.
Kristof’s ability to frame and deliver the world’s horrors to millions—in a way that keeps those millions coming back for more—seemingly should make him worthy of the hero worship that has attended his rise. Indeed, what is worse than a privileged bourgeois population that knows nothing of the way the other half (or rather the other 99 percent) lives? And yet the devil as always remains in the details—or in Kristof’s case, the lack of details. For, when exploring why Kristof has become a high priest of liberal opinion in America (arrogating the right to speak on almost any sociopolitical phenomenon, provided it involves an easily identifiable victim), we crash into what can be called Kristof’s anti-politics: the way his method and style directly dehumanize his subjects, expelling them from the realm of the analytical by refusing to connect them to systems and structures that animate their challenges. Kristof’s distancing double move provides us with precisely what is worse than a bourgeois not knowing about the world’s horrors: knowing about them only enough to simultaneously acknowledge and dismiss them, to denude them of political and moral demand, to turn them into consumable and easily digestible spectacles. We are encouraged to look only so we can then close our eyes.
To address this apparent paradox—and to explore what social values, imaginaries, and desires Kristof embodies—I will introduce the concept of the open secret, arguing that elite American discourse is increasingly defined not by ideological obfuscation (where there are secrets that we just do not know), but by an insidious mélange where secrets still exist but also often seem somewhat open, recognized through the side of the eye, becoming things we must know but cannot acknowledge. Kristof is a virtuoso at introducing vexing questions about how various violences might have structural determinants … only to immediately silence those questions. As a result, his reporting allows us to process the trauma of a world of contradictions and incoherencies while concurrently collectively agreeing on an official and comforting narrative: that of progress through the diligent application of universal liberal values. Against Kristof’s double move—opening up the caesura, allowing the pressure to escape, closing it again—the project must become to begin thinking through ways of speaking our open secrets, of holding that caesura open and doing politics in the gap.
Close Reading
In order to grasp Kristof’s success, it is important to deconstruct his style and method. He is remarkably efficient with words, evocative through stories, and convincing in tone. After reading perhaps hundreds of his columns on the underdeveloped world, certain patterns emerge: Broadly speaking, Kristof often employs clever journalistic and prose devices to weave personalized traumas into bite-sized morsels of digestible horror. By playing on his audience’s Orientalist, classist, and racist fantasies, Kristof fabricates legible narratives out of snapshots of distant worlds. He then crafts stunningly simplistic solutions to the seemingly irrevocable problems that plague those backwards places. Kristof accomplishes this by using a standard and replicated formula: some mixture of (1) a construction of a bestial and demonic Other creating a spectacle of violence; (2) a rendering of the object of that horror—a depoliticized, abject victim, usually no more than a body; (3) a presentation of a (potential) salvific savior figure(typically the West writ large or a Western agent—some teleological process immanent in capitalism or development, the reader himself (who can act by donating money), and almost always Kristof himself as well); and (4) an introduction of potential linkages with larger systems and structures … only to immediately reterritorialize around the non-political solutions and the savior implementing them.
We can illustrate Kristof’s rhetoric by reading him closely. “From ‘Oprah’ to Building a Sisterhood in Congo” exemplifies his oeuvre. As the title indicates, Kristof begins by grounding the story (he describes himself in a “shack” in a DRC village) through the mediation of Lisa Shannon, an American who has found herself a long way from home. Why is she here? The answer comes in a tableau of horror: Militiamen (the bestial Others) inexplicably invade the home of a Congolese named Generose (the abject victim) and proceed to do terrible things to her. Instead of glossing these details to get to the story’s point, Kristof encourages the reader to connect viscerally and voyeuristically with a victim who is not only stripped of politics and identity, but also of clothes, becoming simply and only a body and a name:
As Generose lay bleeding near her husband’s corpse, the soldierscut up the amputated leg, cooked the pieces on the kitchen fire, and ordered her children to eat their mother’s flesh. One son, a 12-year-old, refused. “If you kill me, kill me,” he told the soldiers, as his mother remembers it. “But I will not eat a part of my mother.”
So they shot him dead.(emphasis added)
The imagery here is staggering: Generose is rendered, with leg hacked off, lessthan her body. In the inexorable arms race of reducing people to bodies, rape—the violation of the body—is supplemented and then superseded by maiming and cannibalism, where the destruction and consumption of the body lead to its partial elimination. But this serves Kristof’s objectives well: Here the body creates more symbolic capital by virtue of becoming less than itself. Because somehow this is not enough, the young boy stands up in the face of evil to be shot down, made the sacrificial lamb who will need to be resurrected and redeemed.
Besides introducing the Other and the victim, this section has an important additional effect: It serves as a way of silencing. Against the suggestion that Kristof should gloss the details of the horror to get to the point of the story, it becomes clear that those details are the point. As a result, the horror is too great to be responded to politically; politics is callous, insensitive, inadequate, somehow just not enough against this evil. The effect of this technique is to leave the reader stunned, numbed, and disarmed, waiting for something to make this horror go away.
Enter the third part of the triptych: the witness who plays the messianic role, both for Generose and the reader. Shannon, leading a normal life in the U.S., heard about Generose’s story in a normal way (by watching Oprah), yet she makes the extraordinary and laudable decision to go live in the DRC. Consequently she becomes the true subject of the rest of Kristof’s column, not only the redeemer for the boy and the body left behind as residual but a surrogate for the reader as well. She goes so we don’t have to. As a way of highlighting Shannon’s sacrifice, Kristof further infantilizes Generose:
“God sent me Lisa to release me,” Generose told me fervently, as the rain pounded the roof, and she then compared Lisa to an angel and to Jesus Christ.
Scrunching up in embarrassment in the darkened room, Lisa fended off deification.
To be clear, believing in Jesus does not make one an infant. But the way Generose is portrayed—saying outlandish things while our heroine squirms awkwardly—presents Generose as not being sophisticated enough to grasp the awkwardness that her statement would induce. Generose is too simple or too irreconcilably traumatized.
Consequently, the reader connects even more intensely with the savior, empathizing not just with her sacrifice but with sacrifice in the face of such savages who cannot understand the way one should communicate. Hence, even as Kristof insists that these women share a kinship connection (the title of Shannon’s book is 1000 Sisters), the reader is encouraged not to see them as part of the same humanity.
It’s worth noting here that Kristof publishes photos and names of his victims, indicating that he does not see them as part of the same discourse and hence is free to treat them as objects. This is consistent with a larger point: In Kristof, the victim is wholly constructed and constituted by violence, or more specifically, violence that can be turned into narrative. She (and it’s usually a she) literally doesn’t exist until violence is done to her body and Kristof reports on it; she ceases to exist when violence is cleansed away through the savior’s ritual act. The victim does not continue on and face ordinary problems such as impoverishment or limited access to health care. She has served her purpose, and Kristof is off to report on the next mass rape. So he can use her name and photograph—she doesn’t exist afterward anyway.
This narrative, however, constitutes only the easily assailable part of a Kristof column. In many ways the most important part typically occurs next and is gone so fast that the reader almost misses it:
While for years world leaders have mostly looked the other way, while our friend Rwanda has helped perpetuate this war, while Congo’s president has refused to arrest a general wanted by the International Criminal Court, while global companies have accepted tin, coltan and other minerals produced by warlords—amid all this irresponsibility, many ordinary Congolese have stepped forward to share the nothing they have with their neighbors.
Here, ever momentarily, there is a mention of broader linkages—but only so they can be dismissed. We hear vaguely about the “irresponsible” international community, another state (Rwanda), big business, a global institution (the ICC), but what are the connections between these actors? How do they lead to the violence done to Generose? We don’t know, and Kristof does not encourage us to ask. Indeed, if Kristof believed that the challenges of the postcolonial state—the patterns of extraction that preempt industrialization and economic structural transformation, the destructive geopolitical machinations by states ostensibly defending human rights—were really problems, wouldn’t he spend more time on them?
Moreover, what are we supposed to do about this? Hold our government to account? Question the consumption patterns of our society and ourselves? No, we are supposed to give money and celebrate Congolese resilience, and be aware. Hence, despite appearing critical, Kristof’s model column is actually pacifying, paralyzing, mystifying, and in these senses is profoundly conservative. I compare this moment to the introduction of a vaccine, where a bit of the virus (politics) is allowed into the bloodstream (the field of vision of the American bourgeois) so that it can immediately be eradicated by the immune system (the reterritorializing power of the comforting American progress-through-charity ideology). Hence, this potential hinge point where the piece could be made meaningful is instead taken the opposite direction, toward the ordinary-people-helping-themselves-with-a-little-help-from-their-friends trope. Kristof concludes by emphasizing the easy charity solution, returning to the horror at the beginning but recodifying it, infusing it with hope:
Lisa is organizing a Run for Congo Women…with Congolese rape survivors participating. You can sponsor them atwww.runforCongowomen.org. And one of those participating in the run, hobbling along on crutches and her one leg, will be Generose.
The reader smiles at the power of the (sub)human spirit: “hobbling along on one leg,” like an animal. And scene.
Short-Circuited Awareness
What are the social and political ramifications of this kind of document? People may defend the story because it is somehow true, because Kristof saw it, and therefore he is “raising awareness.” But what is to be done with this knowledge? What kind of awareness has he really raised?
Notice how in Kristof’s writing (and in Western advocacy campaigns writ large) “raising awareness” involves shaming citizens around knowledge rather thanaction: “Did you know this is going on?” one exclaims, while clutching her pearls. “Oh yes, I did read about that. Just terrible, isn’t it?” goes the appropriate response.
Merely knowing about (parts of) it rather than doing something about it signifies the critical orientation toward the phenomenon. And as a result, Kristof’s attempts to shock the conscience serve, perversely, to push out the frontier of what no longer offends or alarms. As his tales of horror are continually processed into the new normal of horror (rape of five-year-olds? That’s old hat. Only rape of four-year-olds shocks anymore), readers not only expect always greater horror but come to demand it weekly. Note also that one of the main actions one can take is to simply write on Kristof’s blog in support of, well, awareness.
Keeping readers in a constant state of becoming aware creates an indefinite loop that would be laughable if it were not so productive. And while it produces awareness of abused bodies over there, it resolutely refuses to make readers aware of their complicity in those abuses. The material conditions that reinforce the world’s structural violences apparently do not qualify as awareness-worthy.
As a result, awareness makes the reader less educated about what animates a horrible situation and less equipped to respond to it conceptually or politically.
Kristof’s kind of awareness-raising is a vacuous (and vapid) tautology that motivates no social change but rather exists to serve itself, an endlessly churning machine to project the ultimate liberal humanitarian fantasy: a clean, orderly, decent world without having to change anything. His glosses become social facts that are difficult to displace.
Rebuttal: Writing Differently
If the typical Kristof piece on the underdeveloped world actually does harm, the task becomes to ask, “What would it look like to not write like this?” It can be done, but even though critique itself is productive, providing a material alternative can sometimes be more politically useful.
Rewriting Kristof involves two objectives, the first flowing into the second. First, we’d invert the way Kristof thinks of his story’s main characters, discarding the typical necessity of mediating the object-body’s story through the gaze of the Western avatar. In discarding the surrogate, we gain 200 words to better tell Generose’s story, and in telling it, we would start with a simple thought exercise: How would we write about Generose if she were the audience of her own story? That is, if she and her family would read it, rather than it being read only by thousands of people thousands of miles away? Would we present her as an animal? Or would we try to tell her story in a sensitive way? Would we allow her to remain an object of violence? Or would we allow her to become a subject—not an empowered subject (because it is clear that she has endured horrible things that are not of her choosing) but a political subject, a human subject with a variety of concerns that go beyond her being hacked to bits?
That story might explore the daily challenges of village life, only then moving on to explain why she was attacked. On this, we would propose questions or theories with the help of local academics, NGO members, Generose herself. Was her village seen as a source of resources for the local militia? Was violence deployed to pacify the population for the purpose of political control? Did these militiamen have grievances that motivated their actions? These questions would not excuse the violence but rather make it explicable. If it was simply deranged, senseless brutality, these questions would put that in context.
That paragraph would contextualize Generose, making her a political actor part of a larger political economy. But what is that larger political economy? This is where the first part of our story dovetails with the second: examining broader linkages that produce the conditions that allow Generose to be subjected to these abuses. Filling in the abyss that Kristof creates between those bodies over there and the readers here would involve looking at Congo’s history. Not mentioning U.S. support for the Mobutu regime that began this cycle of violence is noteworthy. For the purely venal objective of selling papers, wouldn’t that bring Kristof’s readers further into the story? Whether this is an intentional obviation by Kristof’s editors, sloppiness on Kristof’s part, or simply his unwillingness or inability to think politically is an open question. We would then contextualize DRC against other African economies, outlining how DRC stands as a particularly egregious case of the general pattern of exclusion through incorporation that attends natural-resource exporters.
This alternative article would not require vast amounts of research. Kristof uses academic literature fairly often, the critical difference is that he focuses on thestatistics of suffering rather than the structures of violence.
Instead, a story must simply provide analysis that interrogates those structures and hence the reader as well: Is the ICC really a legitimate tool, given that its foundation prevents it from policing the great powers? Does that illegitimacy create blowback that could lead to more violence and suffering (as with al-Bashir expelling humanitarian workers from Darfur)? How do we constrain the global profit motive when we as consumers require cheap and available goods? Going beyond awareness, our article would make connections between the rapacious extraction of wealth committed by Wall Street and the violence experienced by those, like Generose, at the end of the line.
Channeling the Needs of the Symbolic
Against this critique, a common defense of Kristof is that by putting us in the scene so viscerally he gives heretofore invisible subjects a human face, thereby allowing the reader to enter into the scene and then act. The close reading above shows that Kristof resolutely does not give his victims any humanity. It also shows that any action that he recommends would likely do little sustainable good. But does he succeed at least in opening up new opportunities? Will his readers learn, become more involved, go beyond his impoverished glosses? Put differently, would anyone read the alternative version above? This is a more vexing question, and it returns us to the deepest power of the Kristof column: the vaccine.
In an article entitled “Sewing Her Way Out of Poverty,” Kristof again deploys his standard four-part formula. Here the Other is poverty, the object is Jane the former “prostitute,” and the saintly Westerner is a woman named Ingrid Munro who changes Jane’s backward ways: “Jane was pushed to save for the future, to lean forward.” The narrative continues as expected: From squalor and a life squandered, Jane carves her perilous path out of poverty, helping her children get to school. But then:
Here Kristof puts his argument’s self-contradiction directly in the reader’s face and dismisses that contradiction with an ingenious device: not by refuting the contradictory element with reasoned argument, but by blithely ignoring it. To wit: For Jane to stand as a success story (using NGO intervention to “overcome poverty”), the reader must understand her to have achieved enough income or assets to, for instance, prevent a random accident from making her incapable of covering basic needs (such as school fees). Yet this is precisely what happened to Jane, who was only saved (again) by the largesse of Westerners who just happened to be there at that time (and charitable—or duped—enough to give). Thus, the success story that Kristof showcases would have been a failed case if not for his own intervention! That this plays to Kristof’s adoring fans is beside the point—it effectively operates as a way of recodifying the meaning of “overcoming poverty.”
We are left realizing that such an overcoming does not signify structural transformation of a society and political economy such that a health shock would not leave one again in destitution. Nor does it suggest that poverty alleviation involves a political project whereby the damned of the earth can demand and then achieve better conditions. Instead, Kristof himself bestows the passage from poverty as a gift.
Kristof then couples this with another substitution: Jane’s passage out of destitution (tenuousness as it is) becomes a synecdoche of the “mountains of data” that show that “anti-poverty programs work.” He symbolically projects Jane as representing all those struggling in miserable material conditions. And yet, against the suspicion that poverty is too complex to be “sewed out of,” Kristof closes this gap by asserting that (1) what we are doing is just fine (simply give money) and (2) no political changes on our part are necessary (no restructuring the global economic architecture through different trade policies, taxation regimes, different aid platforms, etc.).
This returns us to this essay’s opening epigraph. In the 2011 film In Time, the underclass hero asks the privileged heroine how she can stand to observe inequality that results in people dying before her. She responds, “You don’t look, you close your eyes.” Read metaphorically, this means the stratified society builds devices that allow one to remain effectively blind to its divisions, eyes closed. But perhaps we should read the exchange superficially: Stripping away any Hollywood artifice, we are left with a person who sees the horror before her and then choosesto close her eyes. Because how could she know to close her eyes if she didn’t look in the first place?
This is the quintessential distillation of the parallax: looking without looking, knowing what not to know. And because we cannot figure this out on our own, we learn when and why to close our eyes from those who are experts at opening and closing them.
Kristof’s sad gift is to act as a perfect exponent of the symbolic order. He is one of those rare few who have totally mastered the symbols and affects of society, who by being completely captured by them is able to be one with that order and hence capable of reflecting and magnifying social desires back to society, guiding us through collective decisions about normative goals and goods.
Looked at this way, focusing our ire on Kristof appears mostly misplaced. Slavoj Žižek writes that institutional desires are somewhat autonomous of their members, rather acting to produce their constituents. We can think of the New York Times and its readers as a site operating analogously: Both directly (through the editing process) and indirectly (through book deals, blog posts, and numbers of Facebook likes for particular articles), Kristof receives feedback on the desire he helps create. The Times animates him, rewards him, slightly corrects him when/if he ever goes off script, etc. The Times in turn is responsive to and hence animated by our symbolic order itself. It becomes clear that if there were no Kristof, we would create another one.
Where does this leave us? We should not despair at Kristof’s rise to prominence. The circuit constructed between liberal subjects on one hand and political-economic and symbolic power structures on the other—which Kristof stories flow through and help reinforce—is hardly impregnable. This has much to do with the era of the open secret.
While the residue or gap that constitutes the open secret can assist in sublimating potential pressures, allowing people to become cynical and enervated (“What can we do, we all know the system is set up against us … yet no one will admit it!”), it can also liberate us from constantly uncovering secrets, expecting that information will itself change people’s minds. The era of the open secret lets us see the obscene underbelly and the official, insisted-upon truth in one field of vision. Given this, the task is not to try to find and broadcast some Truth but rather to make interventions on social desire itself.
This might be better illustrated with an anecdote. Psychoanalyst Felix Guatarri once relayed a story about an octopus swimming around polluted Marseille harbor, happy as an octopus could be, despite (or actually because of) the muck. An artist took him out, put him in clean water, and the octopus promptly died. The points here are (at least) three. First, this may serve as a metaphor of life under postindustrial capitalism: We are these octopuses, and the things we value and seek out have been so fashioned by our massive political-economic and symbolic machine that if we were to be presented with something that might appear objectively good (clean water), we might reject it and die. Second, there are no objective interests: The octopus demonstrates that once desire becomes refashioned, there’s no going back. The Kristofs of the world are able to adapt, and then tap into this social desire; the left often cannot. Hence projects should not hysterically project beliefs or practices based on deduced rationality; the cleanliness of the water is radically subject to the perspective of the octopus in question.
Finally, there is opportunity for improvisation: Desire has changed, and it can change again. This will likely occur by mining the gap between the official discourse and its underbelly, and using that contradiction—and the trauma that speaking it causes—to shatter the agreed-upon common sense. This would entail not simply screaming the truth from the rafters—and as a result perhaps creating reactionary rejection (a more aggressive and obdurate shutting of the eyes)—but rather using that act of speech to rejigger values and ways of seeing, such that closing one’s eyes is still possible but no longer desired. This article is hence not meant as an exposé of some Truth about Kristof, but rather an attempt to make it slightly neat or even cool to no longer objectify the poor or ignore our arbitrarily privileged position within a brutal global political economy.
Occupy Wall Street may (perhaps inadvertently) provide us with a particularly sophisticated example of how to “speak” the open secret: By not speaking—by resisting attempts that would coerce it into making legible claims—OWS performs demands on others to think and act politically. To wit, when mainstream Kristof-types attempt to capture OWS by reducing it to a set of policy prescriptions, OWS remains silent. When cynics insist that “we don’t know what you want,” OWS, as Doug Rushkoff suggests, says, “I don’t believe you.” In refusing to provide a solution that nests comfortably inside the existing system of power relations, OWS both effectively denies the cynic’s acceptance of the open secret (where we must pretend that the system is containable through regulation; that it won’t produce as a matter of course stratification, exploitation, and crisis; that capitalism can be made to work for the middle class), as it also makes a fairly radical demand on everyone to begin thinking what the system might look like instead.
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