Henry Bweh

Much of my last week at work was energized by goings-on at the Firestone Plantation. Other sources can provide better and more detailed overall information, but the Firestone Plantation, “the world’s largest rubber plantation” is a million-acre concession to the Bridgestone-Firestone corporation, centered around the company-town of Harbel, approximately 45 minutes outside Monrovia. The plantation was first leased to Firestone in 1926, in exchange for 6 cents per acre and a deal that refinanced Liberia’s British and European-held foreign debt and amounted to a significant economic-industrial coup for the United States and Harvey Firestone in an era when the British empire still commanded most of the world's natural rubber and latex production.

The plantation is truly vast, section after and row after row of rubber trees leaning to one side, with spiral cut bark and tapping cups at the base to collect the latex sap. Environmental, working and living conditions at and around the plantation are terrible by all credible reports. There's an Alien Tort Claims Act lawsuit pending in Federal District Court in Indiana which alleged both forced labor and child labor (child labor claims are continuing), and there’s been a brewing, contentious fight between Firestone management and the neighboring community of Owens Grove, which sits directly opposite the Farmington River from the main processing plant.

On Thursday the Firestone company police, the Plant Protection Division, managed to capsize canoes and rock the river ferry enough to spill about 16 members of the community into the river. Three canoes (of a total of 8 in town) were permanently lost, 3 teenagers were arrested by the PPD and slapped around for “stealing” waste rubber which is discharged directly into the river and they gather up to use or resell.

After the wake settled, there were still 3 community youth who were missing in the river. So the local reformist and community leader, Henry Bweh, went to file a complaint and report the missing persons with the police.

On Friday morning the three returned to town on foot, and Henry went back to the police to amend his report, noting that everyone was now safely accounted for, except of course the three still under arrest by the PPD who weren’t released until Saturday afternoon.

Owens Grove has long complained about the unprocessed effluent from the Firestone processing plant that’s flushed into the river directly across from them. So this is not the first time Firestone has heard from Henry. On Monday, after various consultations and discussions about ways to mitigate the impacts of the high-speed patrol boat on community fishing and river use, Henry was summoned to the regional police station at Robertsfield. When he arrived he first had to wait about 5 hours for the police commissioner who’d requested him to show up, and when she did, he was arrested for “spreading false rumors” that the PPD had drowned the three kids missing Thursday night.

Word of this got to Alfred in Monrovia late in the day. Alfred and Green Advocates are long time supporters of Firestone workers and the Owens Grove community organization trying to win some mitigation of river discharge. So at about 6pm we set out from Monrovia to go get Henry released from jail. It happened that we’d had the official opening of new office space that will serve as a local resource center for the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, and so for the first time since arriving here, I was wearing a suit and tie.

Heading to Firestone for the first time, while in double-breasted power suit, seemed sufficiently ironic, but only became more so when the radiator blew out, the car overheated, we spent 30 minutes refilling the radiator with swamp water from a bucket, in the increasing dark (glad I had a headlamp in my briefcase) and then had to push-start the car and head back to town. We spent all day Tuesday trying to get the car repaired, and meanwhile Henry was still being kept in jail. This is Liberia - jailed because you picked the wrong fight, with no warrant or charges, and you spend an extra two days in jail because the only lawyer likely to come get you out drives a 13-year old diesel Nissan Patrol, imported used, that never seems to runs without trouble for more than 5 days in a row.

On Wednesday, we finally got back to Firestone Plantation, having now assembled a small convoy of newspaper and radio reporters and supporters from other human rights and community organizations. The smell around the town of Harbel is overpowering, sickly-sweet and caustic ammonia and fermenting rubber odor. All of Harbel and surrounding towns wake and sleep with it, but experiencing it for the first time is very nearly nauseating.

When the police heard we were on the way they hastily transferred Henry from jail to the court. First they took him inside to sit in the dock. Then, just as we pulled up, they walked him back outside the building so that they could present him with his arrest warrant. Mind you, he’d been jailed for almost 48 hours at this point. The police provided him no food or water during this time, though they did allow his family to bring these to him.

The true absurdity of the whole proceeding continued to escalate as the prosecutor, who seemed convinced that he had met me before, continued to pester me to donate pens and stationery to his office. The clerk of court refused to let the defendant or his attorney (Alfred) inspect the charging sheet, “because there is no official matter open before the court…”

Eventually Henry was released, after various human rights organizers signed a “promissory note” to guarantee his return on Tuesday for arraignment. We returned to Owens Grove, where a troop of women and children was singing and clapping to welcome his release and Henry held an on the spot press conference with the 8-10 reporters now part of our concession. So those newspapers whose editors aren’t on Firestone's payroll have run the story, the National Security Advisor and the President’s office are expressing their concern in response to inquiries solicited from international human rights partners, and it’s not clear whether the whole thing will boil over or just blow past. Current level of attention and pressure is high, since there’s an important union election pending in less than a month, with serious reformers trying to take control and insist on real negotiation, transparent accounting and open reporting for the tappers’ and laborers’ union, which has ignored its reporting requirements to the government and its members for over two years.

That’s not a short version, but I’ll stop there and post more as events continue to unfold. Needless to say., most other projects at work got pushed back by about 3 days, so now I have weekend work to catch up on comments and document preparation for the national forestry strategy which has just been released and will have an all-day citizens feedback event next week.

(One last picture of some kids.) More new photos in gallery as well (link to right).