The Martyrdom of Hladini

[Guest guest]

I just wanted to share this with you all. Hare Krsna.

 

The Martydom of Hladini

by Jalakara das

 

>>>Hladini devi dasi and her husband Mahananda dasa were initiated in Detroit on

29 March 1970. How she came to be in Monrovia, Liberia at the time of her death

is obscure. Because she was aligned with the breakaway Kirtanananda faction at

the time of her death she has never been given the recognition she deserved.

Now that a general amnesty has long since been granted to the breakaway

faction, and indeed as former breakaway members now serve on the GBC, perhaps

her story can now be told.

By the time Hladini got to Monrovia, the various factions fighting in Liberia

had gotten a reputation for bizarre behavior. They wore strange costumes like

wedding gowns, Donald Duck masks, shower caps, or nothing at all. They fought

in a drug-induced frenzy. Many of these warriors were children who went into

battle carrying teddy bears and baby dolls. Why devotees were there at all is

an open question with mysterious overtones. The temple was in the capital,

Monrovia, in an area nominally controlled by the Economic Community of West

African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG). The Freeport area, which is about

five miles outside Monrovia, was controlled by the troops of the Independent

National Patriotic Front of Liberia (INPFL), led by Prince Yormei Johnson.

Prince Johnson was a notorious killer who had tortured and killed the former

President Samual Doe. The event was filmed on video and the copies sold in the

marketplace. Johnson also was known for killing his own men at a faster rate

than the enemy.

Now, it so happened that the devotees wanted to do food distribution: there was

widespread starvation and two out of every three Liberians had been made

homeless. So, they approached Johnson and made a proposal to him which ran

something like this: “Since you control the port and all the international

food aid that comes to the country passes through your hands, why don’t you

give us some of the food? We will distribute that food to the hungry and you

will get credit for being a great humanitarian.” The warlord agreed to this

proposal and thereafter he diverted supplies of commodity food to the devotees,

who then distributed it as prasadam. He even visited the temple and received a

Bhagavad Gita as-it-is. Apparently he visited more than once and enjoyed

prasadam. But, the warlord’s reputation for insane murder bothered some of the

devotees, so one day a Nigerian devotee wrote a letter to Prince Johnson that

said, in effect, “You are a great personality, so you should stop conducting

yourself in such a demonic manner and stop killing people. This will benefit

you and all humanity.” It has been claimed that Hladini was the author of the

letter, but that is not true. There were two young brothers who were bhaktas in

the temple. It is they who heard Johnson and his troops arrive late in the

night of Thursday, 13th September 1990. One of them hid behind the bathtub,

the other in a closet. Because they hid, they survived. There was banging on

the door, and then a crash. All the devotees were rounded up downstairs.

There were seven African men and an African woman, plus Hladini devi dasi,

disciple of Srila Prabhupada. Johnson ranted and raged and held up the letter,

shaking it. “How dare you send this to me!” he bellowed in his pidgin West

African English. Then they pushed the devotees out and shoved them into a

waiting vehicle. They were driven over the low bridge that crosses the muddy St

Paul River and then the little convoy stopped at a dirty beach by the mouth of

the river. At gunpoint, the nine devotees were forced out and herded onto the

sand. Johnson announced that only the men would be killed. It may be the women

were to be raped and released, or left entirely unmolested. Such things are

terribly random in these circumstances, and very hard to predict. But it was

then that Hladini had her finest hour and showed bravery greater than any man I

have ever known. As Johnson raised his weapon to fire the execution volley,

Hladini leapt forward and attacked Johnson with her hands. “How dare you kill

devotees of Krishna!” she shouted. But she was a woman, and a beautiful but

weak one at that, so her attack had little result but to ensure her own death.

All were slain save the African girl, who is no longer an active devotee. They

chanted as they were shot down. That was the night of September 13th, or it

could have been the early morning hours of September 14th (Indira Ekadasi). The

bodies were left on the beach. When the tide came in they were washed out, but

as the river is tidal at that point, the bodies were carried back into the town

with the tide. The bodies of some of the men could be seen drifting in and out

in the St Paul River for days, their dead hands stiff with rigor mortis holding

their beads within their beadbags. Hladini’s body also drifted in. Her sari

became entangled with the structure of the bridge and remained there for

several days, rising and falling with the tide. According to Tribhuvanatha

prabhu, who helped investigate this and interviewed one of the brothers, “It

freaked out the whole town.” Not content with his work thus far, Prince Johnson

continued on his bloody rampage, murdering a total of 29 people that night. In

1996 the interim government of Charles Taylor attempted to arrest him for

murder and Johnson precipitated a wave of violent riots. He later went “insane”

and is rumored to be in an asylum in Nigeria. The faction he led disintegrated.

The next time you are distributing a book and someone insults you, think twice

about calling him a demon. Understand what a demon really is, as opposed to the

merely misguided or unfortunate. For a chaste woman, given the choice between

rape and death, with your students about to be slain in the cruelest manner

before your eyes, what do you do? Hladini faced an impossible choice in a

doomed, impossible situation. She reacted with integrity and loyalty and

without fear and is a credit to her spiritual master. Oh, such a disciple! But

she had such a spiritual master! And, we know how Prabhupada admired courage.

In short, she passed her test gloriously. Let no one attempt to minimize her.

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-Johann Renaud (Madhumangala das)

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