Liberian transplant: A woman of peace

Liberian immigrant Betty Toe knows firsthand about the power of God and of women.

Toe, who moved to Brooklyn Park three years ago, was among thousands of Christian and Muslim women involved in nonviolent sit-ins and in lobbying warlords to end the 14-year Liberian civil war in 2003.

"The women of Liberia were fed up, and they were tired of the killing of their children and husbands, so they decided to seek divine intervention and do something about it," Toe said.

Toe, 59, will talk about the grassroots peace movement Saturday at River of Life Lutheran Church, 2200 Fremont Av. N. in Minneapolis. A documentary film about the movement, "Pray the Devil Back to Hell," will be shown at 12:45 p.m. Toe is seen in the 72-minute film that uses TV news clips of the sit-ins and peace talks, and features interviews with women leaders and then-president Charles Taylor. He is now on trial in the Hague, the Netherlands, for war crimes.

Toe, whose parents, brother and uncle were killed in the war, said she heard about the peace movement from friends and her Assembly of God church near Monrovia. "The plan was to go out in the [Monrovia] airfield and fast and pray," she said. The sit-ins grew to about 2,500 women who dressed in white clothes and headbands and carried peace placards.

Warlords fought Taylor's forces in Monrovia and elsewhere. Some days, bullets flew and bombs went off around the women at they sat-in at a fish market or the airfield.

"If we die for our land, then we die," Toe said. "But we were not going to leave the airfield until God answered our prayers for peace."

The film shows Taylor threatening the protesters because he believed they were embarrassing his administration. Toe said she saw Taylor's armed security convoy roll past the sit-in, but he never stopped. She said she didn't hear of any women being harmed during their sit-ins.

The film says the women talked to church and mosque leaders to pressure Taylor and the warlords to agree to peace talks. They also denied sex to their husbands, some of whom were involved in the war, to motivate them to help end the fighting, the film said. Taylor and two warring factions met in Accra, Ghana, and talked for two months with little progress. Some Liberian women also went to Ghana and rallied Liberian women in refugee camps there. After negotiations stalled, the women formed a human barricade around the conference center and told the leaders they would block the doors until an agreement was reached, Dwanyen said. He said he closely followed media reports of the peace talks from June to August 2003.

He said the human blockade lasted a day or two and was successful partly because the women threatened to disrobe if guards tried to remove them or negotiators tried to leave.

"It is an African taboo that when a woman exposes her naked body in protest, that is a disgrace to you, a man. It is a humiliation," Dwanyen said. "An agreement came out of nowhere. It was reasonably fair and was the foundation of recovery of the country. It set the basis for elections and for U.N. troops to come in and demobilize the fighting factions."