[Liberia, a West African country of 3 million people, was founded in 1847]
[by freed American slaves. Their descendants formed]
[an elite class which dominated indigenous ethnic groups for more than a century.]
[Rising tensions finally erupted into civil war in 1989.]
[From then on, Liberians suffered a prolonged period of violence.]
[At times, fighting was concentrated in the countryside. Other times,]
[the conflict raged through the capitol, Monrovia.]
[By 2002, over 200,000 people had died. One in three people had been displaced.]
[There was no end in sight.]
[Then, ordinary women did the unimaginable.]
[FORK FILMS PRESENTS]
[A FILM BY ABIGAIL DISNEY and GINI RETICKER]
[CO-PRODUCER: JOHANNA HAMILTON]
[AFRICA LIBERIA]
[MUSIC COMPOSED BY: BLAKE LEYH VOCALS BY ANGELIQUE KIDJO]
[CHEAP GUNS $25]
[DIRECTOR OF CINEMATOGRAPHY: KIRSTEN JOHNSON]
[EDITOR: KATE TAVERNA and MEG RETICKER]
[NOW NOW WE WANT PEACE, WE WANT PEACE, WE ARE TIRED, PEACE]
[PRODUCED BY: ABIGAIL E. DISNEY]
[DIRECTED BY: GINI RETICKER]
[PRAY THE DEVIL BACK TO HELL]
I am 5 months pregnant, my son is 3, and my daughter is 2.
So under reams of bullets we leave the house,
and we walk for like 7 hours to my parents house.
And it was hell on earth.
My 3 year-old is sitting down, sweat pouring off his body,
and he says to me, "Mama, I wish just for
a piece of donut this morning, I am so hungry."
I'm sitting there and thinking, where am I going to get
a piece of donut for this 3-year old?
[LEYMAN CIBOWITZ - Social Worker]
And the anger built up again, a pain was there, and I said to him,
Nuku, I don't have a piece of donut to give you.
He said, "I know, but I just wish for a piece of donut."
Liberia had been at war for so long that my children had been hungry
and afraid their entire lives.
Some say the war was about the gap between the rich and the poor.
Some also say that the war was about the hatred
between the different ethnic groups.
[BE WERES OF THE BAD DOG AT NIGHT]
Others say the war was to control natural resources.
Power, money, ethnicity, greed.
But there's nothing in my mind that should make people do
what they did to the children of Liberia.
The war started on Christmas eve in 1989.
That was when Taylor started his bloody rise to power.
We have an opportunity starting from zero
to reconstruct the minds of our people.
[The New York Times]
[Horrific genius]
[A Master Plan Drawn in Blood]
Taylor had the small boys unit, young kids from like 9 to 15.
["...would force boys to kill their parents..."]
A lot of them were children who were on drugs.
They gave them drugs, they fed them drugs.
Nobody can be war against me, I'm war itself.
["In 1997... he terrorized Liberians into electing him president."]
[The Tyrant We're Too Willing to Live With]
[has done millions of dollars' worth of business with al Qaeda and Hezbollah]
[...a key figure in Sierra Leone's blood diamond trade."]
["...rebels supported by Taylor...
... were hacking off the hands and feet of civilians..."]
["...systematically pocketed the wealth of his country."]
He had absolute power and total control over the finances
of the country.
That was bad, it was miserable.
People, they couldn't even afford a cup of rice.
Taylor had his private army which was called the Anti-Terrorist Unit.
We lived in fear.
It was always like you go to bed and pray that you have
something different the next day.
You know, that the shooting will stop,
that the killing will stop, that the hunger will stop,
saying, "God please!"
I had a dream.
And it was like a crazy dream,
that someone was actually telling me to get the women
of the church together to pray for peace.
[ST. PETER'S LUTHERAN CHURCH MONROVIA, JUNE 2002]
This is completely a terrible life to live.
We are tired.
We are tired!!
But then as I said, the dream it was like more ideas kept coming.
[inaudible]
We feel it's now time to rise up and speak.
But we don't want to do this alone.
We want to invite the other Christian churches to come
and let's put our voices together.
And we started the Christian Women's Peace Initiative.
You are asking, "Who are you to be our savior?"
Ordinary mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters.
For us, this is just the beginning.
I was moved!
Then I raised my hand, and I was recognized.
And then I walked out before the church
and then I said, "Praise the Lord."
and then everybody said, "Amen."
So then I said, "I have a surprise for this congregation.
And I said, "I'm the only Muslim in this church."
I was moved, and I'm impressed by the Christian Women's Initiative.
Then everybody was just there "Oh, hallelujah!"
They praised the Lord, they were so happy that I was there.
God is up. We're all serving the same God.
This is not only for the Christian women.
I want to promise you all today
that I'm going to move it forward with the Muslim women.
I knew my Muslim sisters
and then I knew who to contact.
I wanted it to be an initiative that was going to continue.
When I sold the idea to them,
they were more than excited.
And then they said, "Let's go for it!"
At first it was somehow difficult.
When we started, some Christians said,
being a follower of Christ
and going to work along with the Muslim means
they were diluting their faith.
But the message that we took on was,
"Can a bullet pick and choose?"
"Does the bullet know Christian from Muslim?"
[WHILE THE WOMEN ORGANIZE FOR PEACE, TAYLOR'S ENEMIES MOBILIZE FOR WAR.]
[WARLORDS DENIED A ROLE IN TAYLOR'S GOVERNMENT'S VOW TO OVERTHROW HIM]
We want Taylor out!
[THEY UNITE AS LURD
(LIBERIANS UNITED FOR RECONCILIATION AND DEMOCRACY)]
I'll escort you guys to Monrovia.
We want Monrovia in 30 days.
Taylor does not listen to any peace, any negotiation,
except the barrel of the gun.
[SEKOU CONNEH National Chairman, LURD]
This is why we are in the bush.
The warlords would give these boys guns and send them off.
They just told them to take whatever they wanted along the way.
That's how all the fighters survived.
So people in the countryside were terrorized.
These boys would go to your home
and they rape you in front of your children,
they could rape you in front of your husband,
and they just do anything because they had guns.
Joe!
These warlords don't come to save anybody.
They come for their own selfish greed.
They have their own agenda,
and most of them in Africa is to get rich, to get power.
Absolute power. And absolute power brings wealth.
[BY MARCH 2003, LURD CONTROLS THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRYSIDE.]
[MONROVIA, LIBERIA]
It's like the entire country poured down
into Monrovia to seek refuge during the crisis.
There were camps where they had to go.
Life there was really terrible.
People died there every day,
especially children.
I don't think I've ever seen people live
in such abject poverty
as I saw in the camps.
We went looking for some of the women
who had come, to see how they were faring,
and we met this group of people.
We just broke down and cried,
because it hurt
that there was no outlet for the Liberians.
I met this woman in one displaced camp,
and she said this day,
the rebel attack the village
she, her children, and husband were living in.
And when they got there,
they arrested her husband,
told him to lie down flat on the ground.
He lie down.
Then her daughter, by then was twelve,
have just started to menstruate.
They grab her and told her say,
"Spread the lapa on the ground."
And she said she saw this fighter
took out a long knife,
and told her, say "Woman, stand up.
Sing, clap, and dance."
And she started to sing, clapping and dancing.
And told her, "Look straight at me.
You turn your face, I will kill your husband.
First, turn around."
She said when she turn around,
she saw these huge three guys.
One stripped himself to rape her daughter in her presence.
She was in the middle,
the husband so, and the daughter so.
Both of their head to the sun.
And they told her, "Look on your right."
She look.
Gradually, cutting her husband's neck, gradually.
They said, "Sing!"
So she said when her husband's blood flashed on her,
she went off.
She didn't know where she was.
Up to the day we met her she was still
singing the song they asked her to sing.
And clapping and dancing.
And from the rape, her daughter got pregnant.
These women had seen the worst of the wars,
something that I had not seen.
But they still had that vibrance for life.
And just being able to help them,
to sit and hold their hands,
and to hug their kids,
and looking at people who had lost everything,
and still having hope,
I think that was where I got baptized into the women's movement.
Taylor told those in the displaced camps
to go back to where their mother borne them.
Because by staying in the camps,
it was giving his government a negative image.
And it was showing that he was not in control.
But yet there were fighting still going on in these areas
where the people came from,
and so the people refused to go.
And he threatened that he was going to get them
out of the camps by force.
I'm here because the One that created me
to launch this revolution, and I'll tell you,
if God did not want me,
I'm not here because I wanted to be here.
Because the only person that could have protected me
over the past five to six years
is Jehovah God Almighty!
Taylor went to church.
And the leadership of LURD went to the mosque.
Taylor could pray the devil out of hell.
And we said if this man is so religious,
we need to get to that thing that he holds firmly to.
So if the women started pressurizing
the pastors and the bishops,
the pastors and the bishops would pressurize the leaders.
And if the women from the mosque started taking to their Imams,
they would pressurize the warlords also.
We organized and had a meeting
immediately after our Friday prayer.
We encourage the fighter to come home,
to lay the gun and come, to make peace.
We were constantly engaging the imams in dialogues, for them
to see reasons why we were getting involved in this process.
We told them that today, today we are breaking the silence.
April 1, 2003.
I'm sitting in my house, leg up.
Actually, I had a bit of malaria.
And then I get this call from Asatu.
She said, "The war is closing in.
The war is getting worse and worse everyday."
We needed to do something more forceful,
more dramatic.
For us, relation is not a barrier for us.
We decided to take a protest.
When we decided that this is something to do,
someone said, "Oh, but then let's call Janet."
She was working with Radio Veritas,
which is the Catholic-owned radio station.
Once I do the recording,
it becomes the first lead story on the news.
We are ready.
And everyone's gonna hear that.
Are you sick and tired of war?
Come join in a peace festival and rally organized by women of Liberia...
It was like, "Listen out to what we want to do next."
This Saturday at [INAUDIBLE] airfield...
We went back to the Bible.
We saw what Esther did for her people,
that she went in sackclothes and ashes,
saying, "I mean it."
Liberian women that love to do their hair
and put on jewelries and make-up,
were not allowed to do any of those things.
We wore plain white clothes with the hair tied.
We wore the white saying to people we were out for peace.
We are determined, and nobody gonna deter us.
We're gonna find a strategic point,
where Taylor's gonna encounter us
and give us some attention.
And this is how we decided to sit at the fish market everyday.
Thousands of women, including IDPs,
internally displaced persons, went.
It was the first time in our history in Liberia
where Muslim women and Christian women
were coming together.
And we had a big banner that said,
"The women of Liberia want peace now."
Charles Taylor said,
"Those who think, they can come out in the street to embarass themselves,
come out! I'm waiting for you.
I said nobody, N-O-B-O-D-Y, nobody,
will get into the street to embarass my administration."
We were not afraid.
My mother was like,
They will beat you people, they will kill you."
And we said, "Well, if I should get killed,
just remember me, that I was fighting for peace."
By the time President Taylor was about to go to work,
we were over 2,500 women
under the blazing hot sun.
We were lined up with our placards
that we wanted peace and no more war.
This is how this song came about,
"We want peace, no more war."
Our children are dying, we want peace.
We are tired suffering, we want peace.
We are tired running, we want peace.
And then Taylor's convoy came,
and we were all there, singing, shouting.
President Taylor's convoy slowed down.
He didn't stop, he went on.
We were there over a week, and still the president didn't
see reason to talk to us.
Every morning we went there, we got to know one another.
We started to empathize with one another.
We were so desperate for peace,
we were going to have a sex strike.
And we said to the women,
One way or the other you have a power as a woman,
and that power is deny the man your sex.
And tell him the reason you're going to deny him.
Look, if you have any power to put stop to the war,
you go and do it.
Men were the perpetrators of violence, so either by commission or omission,
you were guilty.
Some of them who went against it came back and confessed and said,
"Let me tell you, you know I had no control,
this happened."
We said, "Then pick up from there."
And their husbands were equally praying with them,
because for them, the end of the war meant
a good beginning of enjoyment for us.
I got information that the war had come as far as Po River,
and we didn't want that to reach to the city.
I will use 107's to empty Monrovia.
All the civilians will leave.
Just firebomb Monrovia.
All the civilians will leave. Then we enter.
Asatu was quote unquote our spy,
because she could give us information
about what was about to happen.
She called me while we were at the program and said,
"You need to hurriedly get these women back to the camp,
because we have a security situation."
The rebels had attacked the camp.
The rebels would come and attack,
and the government troops would go in there
to say they are safe-guarding the people,
and they would equally attack, and commit the same atrocities
that the rebel had committed on these people.
[ESCALATING WAR THREATENS TO IGNITE THE REGION.]
[THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY'S CALL FOR PEACE TALKS EMBOLDENS THE WOMEN.]
[TAYLOR AND THE REBELS REFUSE TO COME TO THE PEACE TABLE.]
We decided to present a position statement
to the government of Liberia, informing them to see reason
to come to the peace table with the warring faction.
And we said, "Right now,
we are demanding, we are not appealing."
[WOMEN OF LIBERIA - POSITION STATEMENT ON THE LIBERIAN CRISIS]
Women in this peace work, didn't want to be seen as politicians
so let's not talk about politics.
Let's not talk about the practices of the government
because we could be prosecuted for it.
Let's just stick to the word "peace."
[THE WOMEN OF LIBERIA SAY PEACE IS OUR GOAL, PEACE IS WHAT MATTERS]
[PEACE IS WHAT WE NEED]
We went to Parliament, presented our statement,
and said we will continue to sit in the sun and rain
until we heard from the president.
And when we got in the street,
Leymah was at the front so she wasn't looking at the back.
Everywhere we pass,
it was a group of women joining the group.
Plus twenty. Plus fifty.
At that point in time we didn't care whether we had jobs or not,
whether we had food or not,
because if we never had peace you wouldn't have job.
Your children wouldn't have gone to school,
my husband wouldn't work.
And so anybody who thought that way too,
would see reason to sit there.
Taylor could no longer ignore us.
Finally, he decided to meet with us.
[WORDS CAN BE MORE HARMFUL THAN BULLETS]
[APRIL 23, 2003]
Some of the women, they was really afraid to
go to the mansion and to see Taylor.
[ETTY WEAH Market Woman]
People were just edgy and edgy and edgy
and people were feeling faint.
And then we realized that it was fear of the unknown.
Even when he's smiling with you you have to be very careful,
you know, because he could be smiling with you
and the next minute ordering you killed.
Going to meet Taylor that day
was the moment that I've lived for.
When Leymah got on stage to read the statement,
we were like holding hands and praying,
as if to say, "Jesus give her the strength."
I said, "We rebuke any evil force that would make her weak."
Ms. Leymah Gbowee, Coordinator of the
Women's Peace Building Network.
We ask the honorable Pro Tem of the Senate,
being a woman, and being in line with our cause,
to kindly present this statement to his Excellency,
Dr. Charles Taylor with this message:
that the women of Liberia, including the IDPs,
we are tired of war.
We are tired of running.
We are tired of begging for bulgar wheat.
We are tired of our children being raped.
We are now taking this stand, to secure the future of our children.
Because we believe, as custodians of society,
tomorrow our children will ask us,
"Mama, what was your role during the crisis?"
Kindly convey this to the president of Liberia. Thank you.
Taylor and his people could see that popular support was on our side.
For the first time, he agreed to our demands
that he would go to the peace talks.
Now we had to get the rebels to promise that they would also go.
[FREETOWN, SIERRA LEONE]
So two days later, we sent Asatu and Sugars to Sierra Leone
because we heard that the rebels were meeting there.
We'd arranged for women to be sitting in Sierra Leone,
so that the rest of West Africa,
the rest of the international community,
would know that we were serious about peace.
And the morning that they were going to meet the rebels,
it was amazing.
When these rebels were about to leave their hotel,
you had women, Liberian and Sierra Leonian women,
lining the routes, calling for peace.
Even one of LURD was my former schoolmate.
And then he was like, "What are you doing here?
Don't say anything to me."
Then I said, "You have not seen me for some time here.
Are you not happy to see me?"
I kept reminding him,
"Your mothers have come this far to talk to you,
your sisters have come this far.
If you don't go, don't you know these people
will die in Monrovia?
And don't you think you will be guilty that you are
also responsible for their death?"
Some of them were saying things like,
"You all have come to represent Mr. Taylor," you know,
And it was like, "Listen,
many of these women have come from areas where you are,
and they're talking about your human rights abuses as well,
it's not just Mr. Taylor's human rights abuses."
[Joe Gbalah Security General, LURD]
The rebels finally promised the women
that they would go to Ghana to the peace talks.
Our basic expectation in Accra is to engage the peace talks
with clean hearts.
And we expect it will be successful, and he will relinquish power.
He will relinquish power.
We knew we had to keep the pressure up,
so we began to raise money to send a few women to Ghana
to mobilize refugee women living there.
We got students, taxi drivers,
women's organizations who just came
and gave 500, 200, 1000 Liberian dollars.
On a daily basis, people came and said,
"This is something that we should contribute to."
[ACCRA, GHANA]
The president, Dr. Charles Taylor is arriving here at Kotoka airport,
then upon arrival by the vice-president of Ghana...
Good morning and welcome to another edition
of Network Africa from the BBC...
[ACCRA, GHANA JUNE 4, 2003.]
Peace talks are due to begin today in Ghana between the warring factions
in Liberia.
There's been pressure on both sides to end the war which has
destabilized much of West Africa.
It'll be the first time the Liberian president Charles Taylor
has talks with the rebel movements which are now
trying to oust him.
The women living in the refugee camp
joined our delegation when we got to Ghana.
We are their conscience, sitting out here.
We are calling to their conscience to do the right thing.
And the right thing now is to give the Liberian women
and their children the peace that they so desperately need.
Peace talks on Liberia get under way in the Ghanian
capital later this morning.
The talks are arranged by the regional grouping ECOWAS
are expected to go on for 2 weeks.
Several African leaders are expected at the opening ceremony...
The people of Liberia have suffered for too much and for too long.
[THABO MBEKI President of South Africa]
And there is no particular reason why that conflict should continue
for another day, none.
If we allow this opportunity to go, if we miss this opportunity,
we may never have it again.
People were listening to the radio as the talks were going on in there.
And then I think it was by 2... 3 o'clock,
Focus on Africa, BBC.
And then it was like a breaking-news alert that Liberian
president Charles Taylor had been indicted for war crimes
in Sierra Leone.
[SEKOU CONNEH National Chairman, LURD]
A bombshell hits the Liberian peace talks.
President Taylor is indicted by Sierra Leone's war crimes court.
A war crimes tribunal in Sierra Leone accused him
of being responsible for crimes against humanity.
Some people believe
that President Taylor is the problem.
If President Taylor removes himself,
fellow Liberians, would that bring peace?
If so, I will remove myself.
The word that came out of the conference room was that
there was talk between the Ghanian government
and the international community
for him to be arrested there and then in Ghana.
[TAYLOR FLEES TO LIBERIA A WANTED MAN.
HIS DELEGATION REMAINS BEHIND TO NEGOTIATE LIBERIA'S FATE.]
Instead of being flown off to jail as the war crimes
tribunal had hoped,
Charles Taylor has flown home.
Ghanian ministers insist they never officially heard the request
to arrest him.
I don't think anybody's going to take me from here to any court.
I haven't done anything to the Liberian people,
and I don't think anybody's going to do that.
So if anybody's coming in here with a hostile intention,
they better come in fighting, because I fight when I have to fight.
So when does it begin, will you... wait?
The battle gonna begin today.
I'm gonna pass the order now.
[FULL SCALE WAR BREAKS OUT IN MONROVIA WHILE TALKS CONTINUE IN GHANA.]
The boys got on the rampage.
They were all in the streets with their arms and things.
They said if they arrest Taylor, there will be no more Liberia.
They said they were going to go from house to house,
and kill everybody and burn everything.
No food, nothing. We were just indoor.
If I were to leave this country,
I see disaster. I see trouble.
I see murder, mayhem, I see rape,
I see total destruction.
Taylor had announced that
if you don't feel secure you can go to the football field.
People felt insecure dealing with the rebels.
They preferred dealing with the devil they already knew.
And so a lot of people walked with their loads on their head
all the way to the football field.
[FEARING LURD, THOUSANDS SEEK REFUGE IN THE STADIUM.]
Our major concern right now is we lack a safe drinking water.
From last night to now we have not had any drinking water
in this place.
For now we have over 6,700 and more,
and we're expecting more to come.
[IN GHANA, PEACE TALKS CONTINUE.]
We were in Accra, really, really worried
for the family members that we've left back.
My son was calling me
and telling me, "They just dug a mass grave.
We put in like a hundred persons.
We gotta go, they're digging another one."
We're getting like,
play-by-play, you know.
And somebody called and said,
"It's not just easy here.
We can't get out of the houses.
We are in closed door."
And there's no way to get out to find food.
How will my young baby eat?
We took the opinion of the women with all seriousness.
I found an ally in them.
We on the mediation side,
we felt the women were doing a good thing,
trying to make their men see reason.
We had to continuously strategize what to do.
because the men,
they felt the more persons you kill the stronger you are,
and the more people look up, you know,
listen to you on the peace table.
We'd been talking behind the scenes to the various warlords
to negotiate, you know,
"Ok, so yes, this is your position.
What will you be comfortable with?"
So that when you went to talk to the other side,
you could then be able to negotiate with the other side.
The women kept going
from one delegate to the other,
from one hotel to the other,
trying to influence these delegates.
And the belligerents have really come to the point
they have just but captured the whole of the government of Liberia.
So, during the peace talks,
really they were talking about power, about position,
about a job, and the control of the resources.
Because that was what it was all about at the end of the day.
It was about jobs.
"I want to be the Minister of Justice."
"I want to be the Minister of Finance. So I can steal."
So are we supposed to pay you for killing us?
And then one of the LURD members had come to me and said,
"Well, we're going to kill the people in Monrovia,
and then we'll go back there, and we'll bring women with us,
and we will replenish the population."
That was the foolishness he said to me.
He became Deputy Minister of Defense.
The women had said they didn't want any warlord
to occupy any position of authority in the transitional government.
If you are going to form a government
that is going to exclude the warring factions,
that is not acceptable.
You are not seeking peace.
You are seeking more and more and more problem in the nation.
[INAUDIBLE]
Ok, but it's important that I [INAUDIBLE]
And it splits [INAUDIBLE] forces in two...
They go up into their bedrooms,
and they're calling Monrovia and giving instructions.
Fire in the hole!
Go back! Go back!!
We were still going at the fish market during the war.
While the peace talk was taking place,
We were still at the fish market every morning,
and we were still fasting and praying.
There were missiles, there were shooting,
there were stray bullets.
And then we continued.
Every day I would see a truck full
with young boys going to fight.
But at the end of the day when they are coming back
the truck is like empty.
Wounded people are inside.
My son was always with me.
I always used to talk to him that
"I don't want you to leave the house to go and go out."
Because if having to go out,
he would be influenced by his friends to go out and to go and fight.
I killed three enemy yesterday.
To see my friends' young boys going out there
and they are coming back wounded,
I would always cry and pray
that the war should come to an end.
My men will be encouraged to fight to the last.
We will never desert the city.
We will fight street to street, house to house,
and we'll defeat them.
It was just bad.
Because you didn't know who was who,
because they were all dressing the same old way.
They would leave the front and come to the civilian
because they wanted to loot, because they wanted to rape.
They would leave the front,
and come to your house.
And pull you out, and take everything off you,
take your shoes from your foot.
We mobilized ourselves and went to the American embassy.
We went picketing.
[AFTER SIX WEEKS, THE PEACE TALKS ARE GOING NOWHERE.]
These warlords, who slept in bushes before
and who had never known good lives,
some of them were living their dream life
at the peace talks.
It was almost like they were on vacation.
We were getting nowhere.
And we were really reaching the end of the road.
What can we do, really, to get these people
to sign this peace agreement?
They were still jockeying for more and more.
We have women that grew up from all over-
Women [INAUDIBLE] women of Liberia who [INAUDIBLE] -
Mass action of peace.
As I got angrier and more bitter,
I realized that there was no way I could do the work that I did.
No new ideas were coming
because I wasn't thinking anymore.
Is this the last chance for Liberia?
We think it is.
[JULY 21, 2003]
Don't die yet.
There was a news flash again on Liberia,
and a missile had landed inside the American embassy compound.
where many displaced Liberians were staying.
I just thought of my own children.
And I was just raging inside.
So I told sugars,
"Today is showdown. Send for more women."
So I told the women, "Sit at the door,
and loop arms, one arm within the other."
And the next thing we heard
on the overhead speaker was,
"Oh my God.
Distinguished ladies and gentlemen,
the peace hall has been seized
by General Leymah
and her troops."
They really came and locked us in,
that nobody will come out
until that peace agreement was signed.
Even if it means staying there for days.
And then the security guards came.
"Who is the leader of this group?"
"I stood up and said, "Here am I."
And they said, "You are obstructing justice."
And that word, obstructing justice,
was almost like when you took gas
and just pour it on an open flame.
I just went wild.
I said, "Obstructing justice?"
They said, "Yes, and we're going to arrest you."
I said, "Ok, I'm going to make it very, very easy
for you to arrest me."
I took off my hair tie.
It's a curse in Africa to see the naked body of your mother.
And they were looking at me. I said, "I'm going to strip naked."
Especially if she does it deliberately.
Leymah had started stripping when I came out.
She really was saying,
"Look, you guys, you do this, or this is what we're going to do."
I will listen to you, but these people,
these people have come here,
ECOWAS gave them big beds.
When they came they were all pale.
No eating in the bush.
Now they are wearing fine Ghanian-milled textiles.
And they are passing around, telling us,
We will kill your people. When we go back we will procreate."
They won't come outdoors.
Today they will feel the hunger our people are feeling there.
[INAUDIBLE] General.
One of the warlords came to the door
and tried to jump over the women.
and the women push him back,
and he went back as if he was about to
kick their backs.
Please... please... I beg you...
And General Abubakar said to him, "Hey, I dare you, try it."
He said, "Go back in there and sit down."
"They can't do this!"
He said, "I said go and sit down.
If you were a real man,
you wouldn't be killing your people.
But because you are not a real man,
that's why they will treat you like boys.
Go back, and I dare anyone leave this hall
until we've negotiated with these women."
I am going to have my meetings,
and then I'm going to meet you in the evening at 6 o'clock.
After that, then we get our heads together to see...
Complaining that negotiators were making little progress,
Liberian women staged a sit-in, blocking delegates from leaving
the conference hall.
They've been there, they've been prolonging,
in our opinion, this thing,
in their quest for power,
in their quest for this whole thing of authority in Liberia.
And we're going to keep them in that room,
without water, without food,
so they at least feel what the ordinary people in Liberia
are feeling at this particular point in time.
So we went, accompanied by the Ghanian ambassador,
accompanied by other people,
and for 30 minutes, it was just like tears and tears.
Finally he said, "You have to let your women out of there."
We said no.
We were not leaving, because then you would have to take all of us,
and there were almost 200 of us.
But ironically,
the very security that were arresting me a few minutes earlier
were the same security that came and said,
"You have to send some women to the window
because some of the delegates are jumping out of the window."
So we told some of the women "Go and stand there."
And then we said, "General, if we remove these women,
we give these guys two weeks, or we will do it again.
Here's what we want:
one, the peace talk has to move on.
All of them will attend sessions regularly.
They have to pass by us and don't ever insult us
because we are not crazy.
So we were just saying to them,
"This peace talk has to be a real peace talk,
not a circus."
Afterwards, the mood of the entire peace talk
changed from gay and happy
to more sober and more serious.
What we've done here today
is to send out a signal to the world
that we, the Liberian women in Ghana, at this conference,
we are fed up with the war,
and we are doing this to tell the world
we are tired of fighting the killing of our people.
We can do it again if we want to.
And next time, we will be more than 1000.
There are over 25,000 women at the Buduburam refugee camp.
There are over 10,000 Liberian women living in Accra.
We can do it, and we will do it again.
[THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY THREATENS TO CUT OFF FUNDING
UNLESS A BREAKTHROUGH IS REACHED.]
[TWO WEEKS LATER, THE TERMS OF THE AGREEMENT ARE ANNOUNCED:]
[TAYLOR WILL BE EXILED TO NIGERIA.]
[A UN PEACE-KEEPING FORCE WILL ENTER MONROVIA.]
[A TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT WILL LEAD TO DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS.]
[MANY WARLORDS RECEIVE POSITIONS IN THE TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT.]
[AUGUST 4, 2003 INTERNATIONAL PEACEKEEPING TROOPS]
[ARRIVE IN LIBERIA.]
[AUGUST 11, 2003 TAYLOR LEAVES FOR EXILE IN NIGERIA.]
I leave you with these parting words.
God-willing, I will be back.
We decided to come home in our t-shirts.
And it was like, hugs from people that we didn't know.
They were like saying to me,
"Well, how did you manage?"
I said, "With this t-shirt, I'm very powerful."
By the time we enter our community,
the children would start singing, "We want peace, no more war,"
until we just had this train of children
following us all of the time.
That was the moment for us.
[LIBERIA WILL RISE AGAIN!]
Now what? What do we do?
Do we just go back home and sit and dance and celebrate?
It was like all of us just turned to that answer, no,
we have to be involved.
We wanted to show members of the transitional government
and the rest of the world
that we were carefully watching
the implementation of the peace agreement.
Peace is a process.
It's not an event.
When the guns are put down,
we have to continue to build the peace.
We have to accept our combatants into our midst.
We cannot hold it against them.
Sometimes I'm the opposite side to forgive these guys.
But again I say to myself,
"How can we move on if we do not forgive?"
But really I tell you no lie,
with the stories from the women,
I find it hard.
I was angry with the perpetrators.
These ex-child soldiers.
But when I started working with them,
I realized that
a lot of them were as much victim as we were.
[DECEMBER 2003 UN MILITARY FORCES (UNMIL)
[BEGIN DISARMAMENT.]
[EXCOMBATANTS REPORT TO SCHEIFFLIN ARMY BASE TO]
[SURRENDER WEAPONS FOR CASH.]
We had tried to get very involved
in the disarmament.
What we had tried to tell them was that
Liberia has had more than one disarmament,
which means that we have some idea
about what works, and what doesn't work.
But we were constantly told that they were the experts.
By 2pm, you have over 3000 fighters
standing here with different kinds of weapons,
and smoking weed,
and doing all kinds of drugs and alcohol,
and no one is doing anything.
I said, "Sugars, mark my word,
we're headed for chaos today."
Then the whole thing just erupted.
The UN didn't know what to do.
Fortunately for them, the women were there.
The next morning, we issue a statement
and listed all of the things that the UN had done wrongly.
We put statements on the radio in all of the local vernacular
calling for calm among the fighters,
that the women were doing everything in their will and power
to ensure that they got their benefits
and that the process went the way they anticipated.
In 3 or 4 days we were able to calm the situation down.
They were there during the day of disarmament
to command us to go and give the weapons, ya'll know.
Crying on us. So we listened to them.
Other people were saying,
"Gentlemen, do not give our arms to the people.
Gentlemen, do not give the arms, do not give the arms."
The ol' ma's were saying,
"No, our children, we beg you."
We did one-to-one talk with some of the fighters.
And even some of the rebels disarmed to us.
I believe in their words,
so I tell God, "Thank you for every one of us today."
We appreciate them a lot, and we're still there for them.
They are our mothers.
[LIBERIA]
[LET'S RECONCILE AND LIVE TOGETHER IN PEACE AND UNITY]
The men have been out there,
they've made all the mistakes.
They've brought war, they've brought poverty, suffering, everything.
And so women were determined this time to make a difference.
[REGISTER TO VOTE]
We believed that until we had elected democracy,
Liberia would not know true peace.
We decided to keep working
and go into the field until that day came.
We all got involved one way or the other.
We campaigned till we campaigned in the night.
We campaigned till we forgot that we could even be raped.
[JANUARY 17, 2006 LIBERIA IS THE FIRST COUNTRY
IN AFRICA TO ELECT A WOMAN AS PRESIDENT.
I want to hear now, gratefully acknowledge the powerful voice of women
from all walks of life
whose votes brought us to victory.
They defended me, they worked with me,
they prayed for me.
It is the women who labored and advocated for peace
throughout our region.
There's no way that the history of Madam Sirleaf
can be written without the history of the women's peace work.
It was the cake,
and then her election was the icing.
After two and a half years, we officially ended
the mass action campaign and left the field.
[PEACE FOREVER]
But Liberians knew that if things ever
got bad again, we would be back.
[ST. PETER'S LUTHERAN CHURCH MONROVIA]
[MOTHER'S DAY, 2007]
If we had not had different women
from different walks of life
banding together,
we may not have been able to solve the problem.
It was so beautiful.
It was the first of its kind,
to see Muslim women and Christian women working together.
Really the women of Liberia, I must admit,
I'm proud of them. We stood.
What we did was to make Liberians bold, to step out.
We stepped out first and did the unimaginable.