Youths reportedly detained under state of emergency

News organisations reported this week that police had arrested scores of young people in Monrovia under a state of emergency decreed on Friday. However, humanitarian workers in the Liberian capital told IRIN on Wednesday that they could not immediately confirm the reports. "We got information that 100 children have been arrested but we don't have any exact figures for this," a humanitarian source told IRIN on Wednesday. Radio France International reported that police had arrested 200 youths "to prevent terrorist infiltration" into the capital by anti-government forces. During last week, reports of fighting between pro- and anti-government forces in Klay Junction, about 47 km north of Monrovia, triggered an exodus of thousands of internally displaced people and villagers from the area. Liberian President Charles Taylor declared a state of emergency on Friday. However, an official with the humanitarian agency Action Against Hunger in Liberia, Jerome Fournier, told Radio France International on Tuesday that authorities had given no details on how the state of emergency would be enforced. He said there was no officially declared curfew, although several military checkpoints had been set up at dusk in parts of the city. Amnesty International said on Monday that the state of emergency was "being used as a justification by the security forces to abuse power and commit human rights violations against the civilian population". It said that on Sunday 39 young men and boys "were reportedly rounded up" from churches around Monrovia and "forcibly taken" to a field near Duala Market. "They were told they had to fight with the army and forced to sit with their shirts tied together for several hours," Amnesty reported. Liberian authorities could not be reached for comment on the Amnesty report, available on http://web.amnesty.org/web/news.nsf/thisweek?openview. The Associated Press reported that police began raiding parts of Monrovia on Monday in search of rebels. The news agency quoted Police Chief Paul Mulbah as saying that 55 people were released on Tuesday after they were cleared of any association with the rebels. The recent unrest forced thousands of people - internally displaced Liberians and Sierra Leonean refugees - to flee, and led to separate appeals for an end to the fighting by the secretaries-general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, and the Organisation of African Unity, Amara Essy.