The Martyrdom of Hladini

[Guest guest]

"Johann Renaud" <johannrenaud (AT) cox (DOT) net>

The Martyrdom of Hladini

 

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.

<<<

 

-Johann Renaud (Madhumangala das)