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Saturday, March 22, 2008
Concerned Liberian
briefly chronicles on-going crisis in Ghana between
Liberian refugees and local authorities
Godfrey
G. Kerkulah
Liberian refugees camp
Accra Ghana
Early this morning at about 5 AM, police men from the
Ghanaian police service arrived at the Liberian
refugees camp and surrounded our women that slept on
the field. After some time, the police officers
started running behind the men that were standing
nearby.
The
police officers then entered the houses, churches and
the hospital and arrested more then 200 hundred men
from these places. Just yesterday evening, some eighty
five (85) women and children that were arrested on
Monday and taken to the concentrated camp in the
eastern region were released because some were bitten
by scorpions, other were very sick and two of these
women had miscarriages.
The
women and children at the refugee camps have vowed to
continue their month-long protest to press for their
demands from the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR), not the government. The refugees
have taken this action to press home their demands on
revision of resettlement cases, repatriation and their
opposition to the pending local integration exercise
for us in Ghana.
We
are suggesting that the UNHCR give one thousand dollar
($1,000.00) to every refugee opting to return home to
start his or her lives. From information gathered, the
UNHCR budgetary allotment for the local integration is
fifty million dollar ($50,000,000.00), so it is
obvious the government of Ghana’s actions is base on
this money.
However,
the interior minister, Kwamena Bartels, on BBC Network
Africa on Wednesday said that the protestors were
naked which was not true, the women were never naked
during their protest.
To
make matter worse and without any independent
investigation, our president was very unintelligent
when she said the women behaved rudely, however,
instructed the embassy here to intervene into the
matter. It is believed she made such a silly statement
simply because of what she was told by the authorities
here.
For
any clarifications on this unfortunate event, you can
please contact / call me on +233 243913384. I will be
willing to provide more for publication in this
newspaper.
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