"Kona Khasu's Shattered Dream" - Interview with the Boston Globe (1987) - excerpt

Stocker, Carol. "Kona Khasu's Shattered Dream." The Boston Globe (6 January 1987): 21. © 1987 New York Times Company. All Rights Reserved.

• As the licensing fee for this copyrighted content is very high, the text cannot be reproduced in its entirety.
• The following three excerpts focus on Kona Khasu's exerpience of being arrested by soldiers of the Tolbert and the Doe administrations, respectively.

Excerpt 1:

Last October the country [i.e. Liberia] held its first popular election since a military takeover in 1980 headed by Master Sgt. (now General) Samuel K. Doe. According to most international observers the results were falsified, and Doe declared himself confirmed with 50.9 percent of the vote.

The public outrage that resulted led to a coup attempt a month later. It failed and widespread arrests, torture and executions followed.

Within six days, Khasu, who said he took no part in either the coup attempt or the elections (except to vote), found himself being driven away in a car by soldiers with orders to shoot him.

Excerpt 2:

His son Kona Jr., then 15, who was born in Boston when his father attended school here, was also arrested.

"The soldiers threatened to put him in jail and shoot him," said Khasu with another laugh, "and he started shouting, 'I'm an American citizen!' So the soldiers were cautious. They released him after his mother bribed them. [...] I was very, very afraid for my family while I was in jail because these kids are very mentally active and they say exactly what they feel like."

Excerpt 3

Khasu said he had also been arrested under the old regime in 1976, when, as a member of a university group that wanted to bring about political reforms, he had earned the displeasure of the country's finance minister, then-president William R. Tolbert Jr.'s brother.

"I have a joke that every 10 years I end up in jail. So I'll make sure in 1995 I'm not home!"