In a podcast on social media, Evangelist Joshua Milton Blahyi has alarmed that since his pronouncement to join the opposition Unity Party (UP) in order to exercise his political franchise several armed generals who fought during the Liberian civil war have allegedly vowed to assassinate him, but declared, “I am prepared for any eventuality”.
Speaking further during his podcast, Evangelist Blahyi who himself fought during the war and was called General Butt Naked, also disclosed that some former armed generals have been hired from his home village in Sinoe County to came to Monrovia for his assassination due to his stance to call for War Crimes Court to come to Liberia.
He said these former armed generals were reportedly ordered to come to Monrovia via a special flight, but did not disclose the name of those who ordered those who he said came from Sinoe County to attack him at his residence.
He used the occasion to called on the Liberian Government through President George Weah, the Vice President, Jewel Howard-Taylor, and Mayor of Monrovia, Jefferson Koijee to be mindful of whoever is behind his attack to stop.
Evangelist Blahyi who is also the Executive Director of Journey Against Violence in Mount Barclay, Montserrado County, where over 200 disadvantaged young people are benefiting from various vocational programs aimed at improving their livelihood, challenged his would-be attackers to come forward.
In the first civil war, Blahyi led fighters from the feared ULIMO — the United Liberation Movement of Liberia for Democracy — that backed the then president Samuel Doe.
It was Doe’s 1990 assassination that sparked the orgy of violence that engulfed the country for most of that decade.
In January 2008, Blahyi testified to Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), recalling the atrocities he had committed to maintain his “special power.”
“Any time we captured a town, I had to make a human sacrifice. They bring to me a living child that I slaughter and take the heart off to eat it,” he said to a stunned audience.
He did not know how many people they killed, he said. “But for what I did, it is not less than twenty thousands,” he added, breaking down in tears.
The turning point, he said, came in 1996, when after seeing the blood of a child on his hand, “Jesus appeared to me and asked me to stop being a slave.”
WAR CRIMES
Despite regular appeals to establish a war-crimes court, very few people have faced trial for war crimes or crimes against humanity committed in Liberia — and none inside Liberia itself.
Some ex-warlords also remain powerful figures in the impoverished nation of 4.8 million people.
Prince Johnson — another notorious war figure who has also become an evangelist — is the head of the Liberian Senate Committee on Defense and Intelligence.
But Blahyi is a strong proponent of prosecuting war criminals, including himself, in order to guarantee lasting peace.
“I destroyed so many people’s children,” he said.
“If I refuse to answer to it… that same violence that I started will come after me and my children.”
President George Weah has so far resisted establishing a war crimes court, but calls to do so are growing louder.
The question was raised during recent hearings by a committee of the US House of Representatives.
And last week, more than a dozen influential Liberian organisations petitioned the country’s lawmakers to back such a court.
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