August 23, 2003, Saturday
FOREIGN DESK
Liberia's Split Families Heal, Child by Lost Child
By TIM WEINER (NYT) 1036 words
MONROVIA, Liberia, Aug. 22 -- ''Good evening,'' said the voice of Radio Veritas, the Roman Catholic broadcast service in Liberia. ''This is the Red Cross family tracing program. We bring you the names of children who are looking for their parents.
''Shaka Toe is 3 years old. His father's name is unknown. His mother's name is unknown. His last address before he was lost is unknown.''
The list went on, and on, and on into the night. Fifteen miles away, in Banjor, a village of tiny, scattered, bullet-pocked homes, Comfort K. Toe was listening in hope and fear, for her child, another child, not Shaka.
All over Liberia, hundreds of thousands of families have been torn apart by 14 years of war. In the latest fighting, which began in June and died down when President Charles G. Taylor, an indicted war criminal, resigned 11 days ago, many hundreds of children disappeared. Some were torn from their mothers' arms as the forces of the rulers and the rebels clashed in the capital, Monrovia, and surrounding villages.
The names of more than 1,400 of these lost children, from infants to teenagers, are in a laptop computer at the looted offices of the Red Cross in Monrovia, where a small team of Liberians led by a Swiss, Marcus Stössel, 30, is trying to help those children find their parents.
FOREIGN DESK
Liberia's Split Families Heal, Child by Lost Child
By TIM WEINER (NYT) 1036 words
MONROVIA, Liberia, Aug. 22 -- ''Good evening,'' said the voice of Radio Veritas, the Roman Catholic broadcast service in Liberia. ''This is the Red Cross family tracing program. We bring you the names of children who are looking for their parents.
''Shaka Toe is 3 years old. His father's name is unknown. His mother's name is unknown. His last address before he was lost is unknown.''
The list went on, and on, and on into the night. Fifteen miles away, in Banjor, a village of tiny, scattered, bullet-pocked homes, Comfort K. Toe was listening in hope and fear, for her child, another child, not Shaka.
All over Liberia, hundreds of thousands of families have been torn apart by 14 years of war. In the latest fighting, which began in June and died down when President Charles G. Taylor, an indicted war criminal, resigned 11 days ago, many hundreds of children disappeared. Some were torn from their mothers' arms as the forces of the rulers and the rebels clashed in the capital, Monrovia, and surrounding villages.
The names of more than 1,400 of these lost children, from infants to teenagers, are in a laptop computer at the looted offices of the Red Cross in Monrovia, where a small team of Liberians led by a Swiss, Marcus Stössel, 30, is trying to help those children find their parents.
