Forty-five years since the 1980 military coup, Counsellor Yvette Chesson-Wureh, Head of the Angie Brooks International Centre (ABIC), led a powerful national tribute in remembrance of the 13 executed officials of the late President William R. Tolbert Jr.’s government.
Held under the banner: “The April 22 Memorial Initiative,” the event served as both a national reckoning and a call for enduring reconciliation and justice.
It brought together a diverse audience of government officials, civil society actors, journalists, religious leaders, and families of the victims.
Cllr. Chesson-Wureh, who stood before a respectful crowd, read aloud the names of the more than a dozen ministers, legislators, and military officers, who were summarily executed without trial following the 1980 coup d’état led by the People’s Redemption Council (PRC).
The names included E. Reginald Townsend, Information Minister, David Neal, James T. Phillips, Jr., John Sherman and Frank Tolbert, etc.
“Today is not just about remembering names,” she said. “It’s about restoring dignity to our national memory.”
These men were denied due process, stripped of justice, and executed without a fair trial, an act that violated both our laws and our shared humanity.”
In her emotional address, Cllr. Chesson-Wureh said, the memorial extended beyond government officials.
She also honored the lives of security personnel, including General Charles Railey, Jr., Police Director Varney Dempster, and Major Gabriel Moore, who were caught in the same wave of extrajudicial violence.
“These men and countless others whose names we may never know are not just our fathers, they are part of Liberian history.
This remembrance is not just for their families; it is for the soul of the nation,” she said with heavy emotive voice.
The event preceded a week-long memorial initiative organized by the April 22 Memorial Group, supported by the government.
President Joseph Nyuma Boakai, has meanwhile, endorsed the effort as a crucial step in national healing.
Book of Condolence for the late President Tolbert was opened at the historic Centennial Pavilion on Monday, June 30, 2025, with a formal State Memorial Service to follow on today, Tuesday, July 1.
Later on that same day, a major dedication ceremony will take place at the Liberia Baptist Theological Seminary in Paynesville, where a permanent April 22 Memorial Site has been constructed.
Cllr. Chesson-Wureh said, the site will not only commemorate the victims, but serve as a center for national education, public memory, and research.
“This will be more than a monument of stone,” she said. “We are building a library, establishing scholarships, and creating a historical archive to ensure that this part of our painful past is never forgotten. We must preserve this history not for retribution, but for instruction.”
As a leading legal voice in the country, Cllr. Chesson-Wureh did not shy away from condemning the executions as “illegal under both national and international laws.”
She said the killings violated every tenet of due process guaranteed by the country’s Constitution.
“There was no trial, no defense, no appeal. These were political assassinations masquerading as justice,” she told the gathering in an emotional voice.
“Even if asset recovery was a motive, our laws call for seizure and lawful prosecution, not death.”
She added that remembering April 22 is not about reliving national pain, but about “preventing future injustice.”
“This must never happen again,” she said. “We must build a nation where the rule of law stands above anger and power.”
Cllr. Chesson-Wureh made a heartfelt appeal to the public and the diaspora Liberians for support, both financial and informational for the continued work of the April 22 Memorial Group.
In a particularly emotional moment, she asked for help in tracing the family of army Lieutenant Vaseline, one of the executed officers, whose personal history remains unknown.
“We don’t have a photo. We don’t know his people,” she said tearfully. “If you know who he was or where he’s from, please come forward. Everyone deserves to be remembered.”
The Angie Brooks International Centre extended gratitude to Pres. Boakai and a number of governmental institutions for their collaboration, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Paynesville City Corporation and the Liberia Broadcasting System.
“The government has extended a hand of reconciliation,” Chesson-Wureh said. “Now, it is up to all of us citizens, families, communities to walk together in remembrance, healing and hope.”
The April 22 Memorial is poised to become a cornerstone in the country’s quest for transitional justice and collective national memory.
For many Liberians, especially families, who lost loved ones during the coup, the long-overdue recognition and state acknowledgment offer some measure of closure.
“We honor the dead not by vengeance,” Chesson-Wureh concluded, “but by ensuring that such injustice never finds ground in the country again.”
As the nation continues to reflect on its past, the memorial stands not only as a tribute to those unjustly killed, but as a clarion call for justice, human rights and the unbreakable power of memory in shaping the country’s future.