Beyond the Coffin

On June 27, 2025, Liberia buried former President Samuel Kanyon Doe in a long-delayed state funeral—thirty-five years after his assassination plunged the nation into chaos. The ceremony, held in his native Zwedru, was draped in military protocol and symbolism. Yet for many of us who lived through the war, who carry its scars not just on our bodies but deep in our memories, it wasn’t closure. It was confusion. And pain. Again.

Was that really his body? Was DNA conducted to confirm the remains? Why has the government avoided these questions, despite a damning account by Senator Prince Johnson that Doe’s body was cremated? These are not idle curiosities—they are matters of national integrity.

Because until we know what was buried, we cannot bury the past.

A Childhood Stolen by War

I was just a child when the gunfire started. The kind of child who should have been learning to ride a bike, chasing friends through mango trees, or scribbling names on the backs of exercise books. But like countless other Liberians, my childhood was stolen—not by fate, but by war.

War turned our schoolyards into military camps. Our lullabies became the sound of shelling. Our classrooms closed. Our laughter was silenced by grief.

And at the center of it all were leaders who abused power, manipulated ethnicity, and refused to be accountable. Samuel Doe was one of them—but not the only one. He was both a product and a trigger of Liberia’s post-coup chaos. His death, captured in gruesome footage in 1990, did not end the suffering—it escalated it.

What followed were 14 years of unimaginable horror. Over 250,000 people dead. Families scattered. Girls raped. Boys turned into soldiers. Elders abandoned.

Liberians didn’t just lose their loved ones—we lost our innocence.

Truth and Closure: More Than Symbolism

This is why truth matters. Why accountability matters. And why this recent state funeral, instead of offering closure, has reawakened painful questions.

If, as Prince Johnson told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Doe’s body was cremated, what was laid in that coffin in Zwedru? Was DNA testing conducted? Was there any forensic examination at all?

We cannot reconcile a country by burying symbols. We must bury the truth, and with it, the lies and half-told stories that continue to divide us. Anything else is theater.

The Danger of Repeating History

It’s not lost on us that many of the very things that led Liberia into war—the politicization of ethnicity, the impunity of warlords, the neglect of justice—are creeping back into our national life.

We see ex-generals sitting in Senate seats. We see war-time actors rebranding themselves as peacemakers. We see youth manipulated by tribal loyalty, just as we were in the 1980s. The playbook hasn’t changed—only the cast.

Without justice, without truth, without a full reckoning, Liberia is not healed. It is paused. And pauses don’t last forever.

What we bury without honesty, we dig up with consequences.

A Government's Duty to the People

I do not raise these questions out of hatred. I do so out of love for Liberia. It is not a crime to demand clarity about the remains of a former president. It is not disrespectful to ask if DNA was done. It is patriotic.

This is not just about Samuel Doe—it’s about every family still searching for a body that was never found, about every survivor still wondering if their pain even matters, and about a nation that cannot afford to fake its way through reconciliation.

A government that cannot be transparent with the remains of its own former president cannot claim to lead a credible process of national healing.

Final Thoughts: Burying the Right Thing

Let us be clear: what Liberia needs to bury is not just a body—but a legacy of impunity.

Until we have the courage to face our past, to verify our claims, and to tell our people the truth, we are simply going through motions—empty ceremonies that serve politics, not people.

This funeral could have been a turning point. But in its current form, it risks being yet another moment where Liberians are asked to forget what they have never been allowed to properly confront.

If this is truly about healing, let the government show the DNA results. Let it explain the process. Let it confirm, with scientific proof, who we have laid to rest.

Only then can we say we have buried Doe—and not just our doubts.

Let Liberia rise on truth, not myth. Let us bury injustice. Not questions.