Word: tolbert
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...crowd of angry Liberians shouted insults and hurled rocks last week at the body of their assassinated President, William Tolbert, which had been dumped in a mass grave alongside 27 other victims of a predawn coup d'état the previous weekend. Pockets of loyalist resistance remained; there was at least one fight between opposing military factions. For the most part, however, the new government, led by a natty master sergeant named Samuel Doe, 28, appeared to be in firm control...
...first acts after seizing power was to order the release of some 50 leaders of the opposition Progressive People's Party whom Tolbert had jailed early last month. One of his next acts was to order the immediate roundup of 91 officials of the Tolbert regime. Within days, eleven former ministers, including Tolbert's brother Frank, a onetime leader of the Liberian Senate, were standing trial on charges of "high treason, rampant corruption and gross violation of human rights." Several others, among them the slain President's two sons, were in hiding...
Long simmering anger against the Tolbert regime erupted a year ago when the government proposed a hike in the price of rice from $22 to $30 for a 100-lb. bag. (The average Liberian earns $80 a month.) In Monrovia, 2,000 people gathered in protest. A student-led group of some of the demonstrators headed toward Tolbert's executive mansion. The President overreacted, ordering police and soldiers to shoot into the crowd. Forty people were killed and hundreds injured, which set off riots and looting...
...Tolbert's violent reaction strengthened such opposition groups as the leftist Movement for Justice in Africa and the Progressive Alliance of Liberia. Last December, after a lengthy court battle, the alliance gained legal status as an opposition party under the new name of Progressive People's Party (P.P.P...
Deeply alarmed by the P.P.P.'s call for a general strike to bring down the government, Tolbert ordered 33 of its top members arrested. According to Korlue Pyne, who led about 25 Liberians in a nonviolent post-coup takeover of the Liberian consulate in New York City, one of the new regime's first acts was to release the imprisoned politicians...