Today is Saturday, August 24, 2013 and it is Flag Day in Liberia commemorating more than one hundred and sixty years of a Flag standing and gesticulating over the Liberian nation in remembrance of what our Forefathers and mothers suffered for – FREEDOM - and brought forth in a land that we, their children, can call our own through INHERITANCE!
“The Lone Star Forever” is the song beautifully sung during Flag Day in Liberia. It has been sung by those on whose shoulders we stand today for centuries with PRIDE knowing that those who came long before us gave their lives for us to have a nation we can call our own.
Today, we are asked to sing “ The Lone Star Forever” on Flag Day with DEEP PRIDE once more to consolidate the love for our Parents’ land and the VLAUES we have to uphold each day like brittle clay.
Students, youths and the military marched throughout the streets of the country as an unconditional support and love for our colors.
In the end, “The Lone Star Forever” is sung from the throats of 3.5 million Liberians with the DEEPEST PRIDE far and near.
But something is wrong: This Flag Day is different!
The nation has taken away those things that remind us of our VALUE SYSTEM - freedom, justice and law and order.
Today, many citizens are languishing behind bars without due process on false charges and many have been killed and brutalized by the police without judicial review.
Our VALUE SYSTEM being the sum total of our ideas and beliefs is being undermined.
Our VALUE SYSTEM that includes every opinion we hold about life, things we like or dislike, and the importance each one has to the nation, which merges to form our unique value system is UNDER ATTACK!
Our VALUE SYSTEM, developed through what our Forbearers taught us and that we experienced, combined with our reactions to them, forming our preferences and our unique perspective on life are seemingly now gone into the oblivion.
Ultimately, every opinion we, as a nation have in life, based on something in our National Values System has evaporated for now!
Our Forbearers lived by those TRUE VALUES; they held them to their breasts and left them for us. They left them embedded in the annals of the nation and its history. Like we will expect of our children, we must hold dearly those Value Systems that make our country second to none.
We as a nation cannot claim to a VALUE SYSTEM and do the opposite; then actually we value something else than what our Forbearers left us.
We as a nation cannot claim to value TRUTH, yet lie; then there is something more important to us than telling the TRUTH. Our continued lies in the country prove that we hold some other value more deeply than what our Forbearers left us!
There has been weeping and gnashing of teeth of men, women and children for want of justice in the country in the cities, hamlets, villages, trenches, ghettoes and squalors of the land.
Too many people have gone to prison for political reasons.
Like many other citizens, I have suffered police brutality and injustice.
On June 29, 2012, fourteen months ago this August (Flag Day month), I was brutalized by the Liberia National Police.
Based on our VALUE SYSTEM, the aggrieved party is to submit a COMPLAINT and the Government is to DISPENSE JUSTICE! I complained! But all efforts to seek justice from the Government have proven futile. It is all STONEWALLING and CAMPAGN OF SILENCE.
Fourteen months I have cried justice! Today, Rodney Sieh, a journalist, is crying justice! After Rodney, who’s next?
“JUSTICE, JUSTICE, JUSTICE!” is the cry all over the country.
But today is Flag Day and we have a responsibility as citizens. And that’s to sing “The Lone Star Forever” and wave the Flag above all else.
But we are deeply hurt!
So how can we sing “The Lone Star Forever” with the deepest PRIDE, from the inner part of our souls with the strongest plume of PATRIOTISM and love for the sacrifices of our Forbearers when we are being brutalized by police, locked in prison and relegated to a secondary position?
How can we sing “The Lone Star Forever!” and ask for it “to wave over land over sea” when we are being dehumanized, tortured, lied on and imprisoned for our political views?
Hmm?
How can Rodney sing “The Lone Star Forever” when he and others sit behind bars for nothing other than political reasons?
How can I sing “The Lone Star Forever” from the depth and abyss of my soul with a genuine magnitude of patriotism when I am bleeding in the heart, soul and body from police brutality so much so my wounds are very deep to be healed while singing the song?
Hmmmmm?
Well, our Forbearers left us with the Song and we have an OBLIGATION irrespective of the odds to sing it. So we will! Bu we will hum it.
We will do so quietly deep, deep in our hearts and souls so that we will be listening to our Forbearers for their response in total silence!
This is the country for which our Folks gave their lives. WE MUST DO SO TOO FOR OUR CHILDREN!
I am Thomas G. Bedell, a volunteer worker; working and speaking on the ground in Liberia, a victim of police brutality and candidate for citizenship repudiation.
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