Hundreds gathered on Friday in rural Liberia for the state funeral of authoritarian former leader Samuel Doe decades after his assassination, a reconciliation effort the president described as meant to help the nation heal.Doe’s brutal 1990 torture and murder were an early turning point in the two bloody civil wars that killed around 250,000 people and ravaged the west African country’s economy.He is being commemorated in his native southeastern Grand Gedeh County alongside his wife, Nancy, who died in May and will be buried at the family compound.President Joseph Boakai, who attended the funeral service, said it symbolised “a broader effort to reconcile with our past and to heal our nation”.Ahead of the service, which was held in the city hall of the county capital Zwedru, Liberians gathered to watch the couple’s caskets — his symbolic, and hers containing her body — travel through town.The cortege consisted of a large truck decorated with bunting in the country’s red, white and blue colours, carrying the two caskets.Boakai, who declared a period of mourning this week from Tuesday to Friday, with flags flown at half-mast, said the funeral was a dignified means to “remove the lingering shadows of conflict” from Liberia’s violent past.Following the ceremony the procession headed to the family compound for the burial.- Violent history -The circumstances surrounding Doe’s death mark a notorious episode in Liberia’s history.Infamous warlord Prince Johnson, a key player in the civil wars from 1989 to 2003, was filmed watching his fighters slowly mutilate and torture Doe to death while calmly sipping a beer.Various rumours but little concrete information exists as to the fate and location of Doe’s remains following his death.Doe’s own rise to power was also steeped in violence.His 1980 to 1990 rule remains divisive, remembered by many Liberians as a brutal dictatorship, while others recall some transformative measures he implemented fondly.Liberian Mercy Janjay Seeyougar reminisced in the capital Monrovia ahead of the service on how Doe once gave her a sweet. During street cleanings, she told AFP, he would “stop and be with the people who are doing the cleaning”.Despite Doe’s contentious reputation, Liberia’s speaker of the House of Representatives, multiple lawmakers and cabinet members attended the funeral.- ‘Lots of killings’ -In 1980, Doe, then an army sergeant in his late 20s, led a coup assassinating president William Tolbert, the last in a line of leaders from the Americo-Liberian ruling class comprised of the descendants of former US slaves.Quickly establishing a regime of terror, Doe had 13 members of the government he had overthrown publicly executed on a beach and his government subsequently jailed or persecuted many of its opponents.He was elected in a 1985 presidential vote that many observers said was marked by fraud.The brutality of his rule, combined with declining economic conditions and favouritism towards the Krahn ethnic group of which he was a member, decreased his popularity.John Kollie, executive director of the Liberia Media For Democratic Initiatives non-profit, told AFP he “cannot remember Samuel Doe for any good”.”I lived in a time when I was old enough to know there were lots of killings in the country, lots of disrespect for people, the military was on a rampage”, he said.
