Ebola Notes 2, Friday, August 22, 2014: Pleading with President Ellen-Johnson Sirleaf If you are the head of the Liberian government, the last thing you want for a people who have just come through a 14-year civil war to feel is the sense that their country has become like a WAR ZONE. Thats the last thing you want them to feel. Yet that is exactly the way Liberians are feeling, due, not so much to the Ebola outbreak, but the governments response to the epidemic, especially the State of Emergency and the Curfew. These actions are draconian, and they seem unreasonable and show little regard or respect for the Liberian people. The peoples level of frustration is rising, mounting, approaching the boiling point. But you, Madam President, can open the valve and allow our people to breathe a deep sigh of relief, a ray of hope to shatter the foggy cloud of despair that has settled over the nation like a suffocating blanket. The State of Emergency should have been used only to make the point that Ebola is really in Liberia, that this disease is deadly serious. Once that point was made so dramatically, the State of Emergency should have been lifted after three days at the most. That would have quelled the food shortage and the sky-high jump that food prices has taken. Instead, you added to the fuel of the State of Emergency the fire of a nation-wide Curfew. Under the State of Emergency, which is MILITARY RULE, food was already hard to find, and when found, food was hardly affordable for the typical Liberian family. Now, the Curfew shortened the time that our people had to find food, not to mention the enormous stress of scrambling for the money to actually pay for the potential meal for ones family. In short, Madam President, Liberians have entered the DANGER ZONE. Thats right, the whole country, especially, Monrovia, the capital city, is now CODE RED. You see, the Curfew should have been limited to West Point, the only place where residents rioted. Its like a ruthless parent punishing all the children in the house because one of them misbehaved, though the parent knew exactly which child misbehaved. Here is our URGENT PLEA: Seriously reconsider the iron-fist measures, and reverse them. Why? Because Liberians are feeling like they are in PRISON, like they are in some kind of CONCENTRATION CAMP, like they are in the WAR ZONE all over again! I must commend you for giving the Liberian people supplies of disinfectant to wash their hands to prevent contracting Ebola. That is praiseworthy. But there is something more basic than that: FOOD! Its time to come up with a plan to distribute food to the poorest and neediest of our people who cannot afford the rising cost of food, such a basic human need. Appeals to the international community to come to the aid of Liberia against Ebola should include petitions for FOOD. Caution: If you ignore the peoples cry and insist on these heavy-handed measures, you risk moving the country into the direction of chaos, confusion and conflict. And as people get desperate for food, they will feel like theyve got nothing to lose, and they will resort to doing desperate things to get food for their families. You know -- that If I die I die kind of attitude. Do you really want to test the people, to create the conditions that may point them in the direction of revolt, uprising, conflict? In lieu of human nature, this is a real possibility. If you push hundreds of thousands of people against the wall, they will reach the TIPPING POINT, where things will spiral out of anyones control, including YOUR CONTROL. At that point, your big guns may not really matter, when the masses angrily and suddenly shift into survival mode. Madam President, please use your authority to LIFT THE STATE OF EMERGENCY, and rescue our people from MILITARY RULE, which many of us still remember so vividly. Then while you are at it, LIFT THE BLANKET CURFEW also. Not doing so will give the perception that you dont mind ordinary Liberians dying of malaria, diarrhea and such common illnesses, or even more painful than that, their dying of HUNGER. Please do the right thing, the WISE THING: Prevent deaths by MASS STARVATION, as much as you want to prevent deaths by EBOLA.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 03:42:46 +0000
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