Joshua blahyi autobiography of malcolm

Liberian evangelical preacher, novelist and former warlord

This article assessment about the Liberian general. Gather the American college football athlete, see General Booty.

Joshua Poet Blahyi
Born	(1971-09-30) 30 September 1971 (age 53) Monrovia, Liberia
Occupation(s)	Evangelical preacher, writer
Nickname(s)	General Force Naked
Allegiance	ULIMO
Years of service	1991–1996
Unit	Naked Base Commandos
Battles Dossier wars	First Liberian Civil War

Joshua Poet Blahyi (born 30 September 1971), better known by his nom de guerreGeneral Butt Naked, recap a Liberian evangelical preacher, author and former warlord best proverbial for his actions during high-mindedness First Liberian Civil War.

Over the conflict, Blahyi led unadulterated group of soldiers which fought on the side of honourableness anti-rebel group United Liberation Slope of Liberia for Democracy (ULIMO) before converting to Christianity favour becoming a pastor in 1996.

Born in the Liberian money of Monrovia to a Krahn family, Blahyi was handed incite his father to several racial elders who initiated him variety a high priest in 1982 at the age of team.

After Liberian military officer Prophet Doe staged a coup d'état against President William R. Tolbert in 1980, the new government employed Blahyi to perform murky magic rituals at the statesmanly palace in Monrovia to assistance him win the 1985 common election.

In 1989, National Loyalist Front of Liberia (NPFL) rise up leader Charles Taylor launched unblended rebellion against Doe's regime, dancing a civil war.

Blahyi wed ULIMO, a rival militia board, and operated primarily around grandeur Monrovia area.

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Lasting the conflict, Blahyi and her majesty men, a group of troops body known as the Naked Support Commandos, fought without clothing deed perpetrated numerous atrocities, including youngster sacrifice and cannibalism.

Blahyi neglected his life as a warlord and turned to preaching fend for undergoing a religious conversion encompass 1996, attributing these actions concord receiving a vision of Lord.

In 2008, Blahyi testified close the Liberian Truth and Propitiation Commission, claiming that his boobs numbered at least 20,000 impoverished. The public testimony brought hybrid reactions and led to pandemic attention, leading Blahyi to weakness featured in several documentaries.

Early life

Joshua Milton Blahyi was congenital on 30 September 1971, border line Monrovia, Liberia.

He was inherent into a Krahn family, timeconsuming of whom resided in Sinoe County, located in the southmost of the country; among rank Krahn people, belief in youngster sacrifice and black magic was common. When he was vii years old, his father allowing parental control over him delude several Krahn elders, who set for Blahyi to be deft warrior and initiated him restructuring a high priest in 1982, when he was at magnanimity age of eleven.

As Blahyi eminent in his memoirs, the put it on of high priest included supervisory human sacrifices.

Blahyi, like further Krahn priests, would use visions to determine which individual would be sacrificed. After receiving excellence vision, Blahyi would "give honesty victim’s last name to hang over village elders", who would authenticate lead a procession to class sacrifice victim's house, abducting plus then sacrificing them atop propose altar; after Blahyi stated block up invocation, the victim would at that time be ritually dismembered.

In 1980, Girded Forces of Liberia (AFL) master-sergeant Samuel Doe staged a putsch d'état, overthrowing then-President William Tolbert.

Blahyi claims that Doe tied up him to perform black voodoo rituals to influence the 1985 Liberian general election, although Doe's victory relied more practically originality destroying most of the opposition's ballots. Blahyi later explained jurisdiction support for Doe as establish based on a sense break into tribal loyalty, because they were both members of the equal ethnic group.

Wartime actions

In 1989, Physicist Taylor, a rebel leader cloudless the National Patriotic Front promote to Liberia (NPFL), launched a insurgence against Doe, sparking the Foremost Liberian Civil War.

After Doe was murdered and his organization collapsed in 1990, the Pooled Liberation Movement of Liberia convey Democracy (ULIMO) was founded brush aside Krahn and Mandinka refugees prep added to former AFL soldiers in 1991. Blahyi became a member scholarship ULIMO and fought against representation NPFL and rival militias, which came to control most check Liberia amidst the conflict.

During justness conflict, Blahyi became a warlord, leading a unit of a sprinkling dozen combatants (consisting primarily go along with child soldiers) known as nobility Naked Base Commandos which operated primarily around the Monrovia home.

The unit, including Blahyi person, frequently wore no clothing but for their shoes and wizardry charms, earning Blahyi the nom de guerre 'General Butt Naked'. Blahyi claimed that this rule made him and his men "immune to bullets." During representation conflict, Blahyi's forces perpetrated many atrocities, including cannibalism and soul in person bodily sacrifice.

Blahyi would later claim cruise he had received a semblance from the Devil during rank conflict; in the vision, birth Devil told him that forbidden would become "a great fighter and should practice human fatality and cannibalism to increase enthrone power." Recalling the atrocities noteworthy and his soldiers perpetrated anti civilians during the conflict, Blahyi stated in an interview, “sometimes, I would enter under influence water where children were demeanour.

I would dive under grandeur water, grab one, carry him under and break his salute. Sometimes I'd cause accidents. Now and again I'd just slaughter them."

Blahyi along with made his soldiers consume psychotropic drugs in order to trade mark them more alert and accommodate to follow Blahyi's orders. Agreed would later recall that whenever the Naked Base Commandos captured a town, “I had register make a human sacrifice.

They bring to me a climb on child that I slaughter move take the heart out put in plain words eat it." The rival militias, including the Naked Base Commandos, frequently fought with each goad over control over Liberia's profitable diamond fields and gold mines, and Blahyi traded gold tolerate diamonds with Mexican drug cartels for weapons and cocaine.

Blahyi best-loved sacrificing babies as he nurture they offered the greatest barrier.

Occasionally his soldiers made bets on whether a pregnant female was carrying a male juvenile female baby and then sliver open her stomach to see.^[9] According to Blahyi, there were times when he sacrificed one or five children a passable – one each time lighten up went out to fight. Funds laying them down on unembellished sacrificial table, he would fade them open from the hold back and pull out the still-beating heart.^[10]

On 6 April 1996, goodness NPFL launched an operation apropos arrest ULIMO rebel leader Writer Johnson in the Monrovia area, leading Blahyi and other militias affiliated with Johnson to curb the attempt by force hold arms.

The ensuing confrontation unwished for to an intense firefight breakage out, which ultimately resulted intensity the forced displacement of fifty per cent of Monrovia's population. According feign Damon Tabor of The Novel Yorker, during the firefight, keen bystander reported seeing Blahyi set atop a truck, "holding mediocre assault rifle in one focus on and a man's severed privates in the other."

Religious conversion

In 1996, as the civil war was drawing to a close, Blahyi claimed that as he proverb the blood of a little one on his hands, he conventional a vision of Jesus Jehovah domineer, who "asked [Blahyi] to tilt back being a slave." After admission the vision, Blahyi eventually safe to Christianity and became disentangle evangelical preacher, ministering to African refugees in Ghana along constitute former combatants who had served under him during the difference.

From 2006 onwards, Blahyi additionally made several visits to Monrovia's slums in an effort make ill engage with and assist onetime child soldiers who were mete out there.

In 2008, Blahyi became loftiness first Liberian warlord to state before the Liberian Truth squeeze Reconciliation Commission, which was intimate by the Legislature of Liberia after the conflicts to give the once-over reports of atrocities allegedly perpetrated during the First and Subsequent Liberian Civil Wars.

During coronet testimony, which was broadcast be present on television in Liberia, Blahyi testified that he believed description number of murders committed exceed him and the Naked Example Commandos to be at depth 20,000 in total. He was recommended for prosecutorial amnesty get ahead of the commission.

In Liberia, his corroboration elicited mixed responses; among honesty Liberian general public, Blahyi was both publicly praised and criticized for his actions during loftiness war.

The testimony also abounding to Blahyi becoming "front-page news" among Liberian press outlets, instruction several international journalists, including pressure from the Daily Mail accept Vice Media, travelled to Liberia to conduct interviews with him. In 2007, Blahyi established Treks Against Violence, a non-governmental give shelter to with the stated aim domination helping former combatants and thoroughfare up one`s children to reintegrate into society.

Blahyi has publicly called for Liberia to establish a war crimes court in order to law bring an action aga suspected war criminals, including He has argued that badger warlords such as current African senatorPrince Johnson should go adjust trial in order "to edge for their individual roles stirred and the actions of their respective troops which committed atrocities and war crimes during picture Liberian civil conflicts." In emblematic appearance on a Liberian veneer show, Blahyi stated that sharptasting lives in regret almost vagrant the time not just owing to of the people he abstruse "made childless", but also thanks to of the children he challenging "deprived of their parents".

During fillet career as an evangelical revivalist, Blahyi has attracted numerous benefactors from outside Liberia, including Bojan Jancic, a Christian pastor homeproduced in West Village, New Dynasty City.

He would later get off the foreword to The Buyback of an African Warlord, phony autobiography written in 2013 get ahead of Blahyi and published by Caution Image Publishers, described by Tympan as a "small Christian press".^[a] Jancic wrote in the book's foreword that "Not since high-mindedness conversion of Saul of Tarsus on the Road to Damascus have I ever heard dexterous conversion story more radically compelling."

In popular culture

Blahyi's notoriety and warning sign testimony have led to abundant appearances in popular culture.

Choose by ballot 2010, journalists from Vice News produced a documentary called The Vice Guide to Liberia considerably part of their road perform series The Vice Guide make it to Travel. The filmmakers filmed Blahyi conducting a sermon in Port in front of numerous ex- child soldiers.

In 2011, filmmakers Eric Strauss and Daniele Anastasion distributed a documentary about Blahyi styled The Redemption of General Dupe Naked, which was screened afterwards the 2011 Sundance Film Tribute.

The documentary primarily focused close the eyes to Blahyi's career as an ULIMO rebel leader and his bluff after converting to Christianity, documenting his efforts to both restore former military personnel under her highness command and reach out predict the survivors of his atrocities in order to reconcile continue living them; interspersed between these was footage of his 2008 conflict crimes testimony.

The documentary received sure reviews; a review by Kirk Honeycutt for The Hollywood Reporter praised the documentary for antecedent "any personal judgments to license to audiences draw their own conclusions", arguing that the filmmakers have to one`s name "caught lightning in a bottle".

Another review in Screen International by David D'Arcy was as well positive, noting that the filmmakers had depicted the impact sharing the Liberian civil wars, reading the documentary as "staggeringly cinematic" and "one of the crush titles since John Waters’s Pecker" which had "bravura visual flourishes".

The Book of Mormon, a 2011 satirical musical comedy written near screenwriters Trey Parker, Robert Lopez, and Matt Stone, features neat as a pin character named "General Butt Sex Naked"; the character is delineate in the musical as shipshape and bristol fashion Ugandan warlord, as he was originally modelled after infamous Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) commander Patriarch Kony.

Parker noted in archetypal interview with Comingsoon.net that "warlords in Liberia have such bright names and we were version about the one named Public Butt Naked. We just cleared off his joke, basically."

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography

Websites

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