- Decry constant police harassment
By. G. Bennie Bravo Johnson.
On Thursday, May 12, 2022, the marketers of the Barnesville Road Junction stormed the grounds of the Liberia National Police Headquarters, demanding an investigation into the early Thursday morning burning of their markets tables by the chief of traffic zone four police station on the Japanese freeway, who is known as the butterfly.
The women spoke to the media about losing their market tables, describing it as a terrible disaster that the LNP continued to impose on them.
The women’s spokesperson, Mrs. Alina Tamba, complained that they awoke to find their market tables and other selling utensils had been burned to ashes by the police. “This has happened on numerous occasions. Your market will be burned when you wake up, and they may even come and cease our markets, asking that we give them twenty US dollars or at least two thousand Liberian dollars,” she accuses.
She also complained that police at the Barnesville road intersection had a practice of grabbing marketers in need of money and leaving their markets with them because the worth at the time might not even approach the amount they sought. “Whenever the butterfly arrives at the intersection, he will collect twenty, twenty dollars, and when we beg him, he will say, “Your go put yourself together and come, and then we will give him two, two thousand dollars for the market, and then he will send us back there to sell.”
Meanwhile, she noted that at a meeting with the police administration, LNP unit 116 stated that he never wanted to see them again because he was the one who issued the order to have the markets destroyed this morning.
Massa Kamara, for one, lamented that she has always been a victim of butterfly burning, and that her market is her main source of income since her husband died ten years ago. “Do you want me to go do ‘HOBOJOE Work’ (meaning prostitution in local palace), Butterfly? Because my children’s father died before the outbreak of Ebola, the market is my only means of surviving. We pack our markets and leave it at the store, but the officers arrived at 3 a.m. and set fire to it. He does that all the time,” she informs.
Meanwhile, when contacted, the LNP claimed that an investigation into the situation would begin on Monday.
