First Person: Moctar Bayor, refugee and freedom fighter
February 25, 2009 at 6:40 pm by Andy Nelson in News
While in his native Togo, Bayor was a leader in the Union Force for Change, an underground movement that challenged then-dictator Gnassingbé Eyadema. Before becoming involved with the UFC, he was a doctor. During an attack on his village, Bayor was warned by one of his former patients that the government was planning to kill him. He fled to Ghana, where he stayed for eight years. Bayor came to Atlanta in 2001 and has since worked for MedShare International, a nonprofit organization that collects surplus medical supplies from hospitals and redistributes them to developing countries. Bayor says his work is a source of “great joy, because I know I am helping a lot of people.”
The main reason we got involved [in the UFC] was because there was no liberty in the country. There was a dictatorship, and no one was doing anything to change it. Any changes we wanted, [Eyadema] refused – any liberty of expression, or anything that happens in a normal democracy.
All of this began when there was the wind of democracy flying over Africa in 1990. Before that, I was part of an underground movement trying to push change for my country.
Continue reading “First Person: Moctar Bayor” …
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Leave a Reply