‘Villagers struggle to honor the dead after losing graveyards to investors’ 21 March 2022

It is early morning and Pastor William Binda and two other villagers offer prayer in a short memorial ceremony at the St. John Lutheran Church in Qua-ta. This is how Binda and many people in this small village in the Salala District of Bong, and their neighbors in Margibi have observed Decoration Day since they say Salala Rubber Corporation (SRC) cleared several villages and their graveyards for the expansion of its plantation in 2010. Binda’s grandfather, Dugba Flomo, had been buried in a village called Dede-Ta One, but his grave was demolished with a horde of others, their debris dumped in a nearby creek, locals tell The DayLight.

… In 2019, Binda and other villagers lodged a complaint with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which in 2008 invested US$10 million in SRC to rehabilitate its facilities and expand its plantation. They accused SRC of several counts of human rights abuses, including land-grab, water pollution, and destruction of ancestral graves and shrines, which contravene IFC’s own standards. SRC denies clearing graveyards and planting rubber on them. The company told the IFC the land it cleared was part of 100,000 hectares it leased from the Liberian government in 1959, and that it supported the communities to perform cleansing rituals. The IFC is still investigating the matter.

… In Salala, Binda hopes he and other townspeople win the case against SRC the IFC is investigating, and receive damages for the graveyards the company allegedly cleared. “They should remove their rubber from our land,” Binda says. “They should pay us for [clearing] our people’s grave.” Others want their land returned. “I want the spot back to do decoration,” says Emmanuel Kpaingbah, an elder Qua-ta, who lost his relatives’ grave. His late uncle Dede was a traditional healer, famed for curing snakebites. “Money will not do that.” “Let them gave our land back to us,” says Joseph Nelson, the town chief of Ballah Town in Cape Mount who lost his grandparents’ graves. “The new gravesite they identified for us is too small [and] the graves will soon enter the town. “We are doing this for our future generation.”