DEMONSTRATION IS ILLEGAL- BARTELS

13/03/2008

Story: Mary Mensah & Naa Lartiokor Lartey
THE Minister for the Interior, Mr Kwamena Bartels, has described the demonstration currently taking place at the Buduburan settlement as illegal and a breach of the Public Order Act of 1994.
He said the government viewed the action as a breech of the goodwill extended to the refugees by the government and the good people of Ghana in their time of need.
He, therefore, warned that the government would use the full rigours of the law to deal with the issue should the refugees persist in the illegal action which had been ongoing for the past 21 days.
Mr Bartels gave the warning at a meeting with representatives of the refugees, the UNHCR, the Refugee Board, the IGP and Service Commanders in Accra on Tuesday.
He described the statement by the refugees that they did not want to be resettled here as an insult to Ghana and a show of ingratitude to a country that had protected, fed and given them and their children free education.
He said the government had initiated a consultative process with other relevant stakeholders to invoke the Cessation Clause for Liberian Refugees under the International Refugee Convention, adding that “there must be an end to the protracted Liberian refugee situation”.
“ I wish to sound a final warning to all refugees living in this country that they are obliged under the International Refugee Convention to obey the laws of the land and we shall ensure that they do so,” he stated.
The Minister indicated that the demands of the refugees were very misplaced and without merit and said the government had not taken any decision to locally reintegrate Liberian refugees and that it had no intention of doing so.
“Besides, nobody is holding any refugee hostage and so they are free to leave the country,” he added.
He said refugee status was not granted indefinitely and that the Liberians were granted prima facie refugee status at a time they were fleeing a civil crisis under the 1969 OAU Convention governing specific aspects of the refugee problem in Africa.
“Liberia has gone through a lot since then and is now peaceful with a democratically elected government and since then over 100,000 Liberians have returned home in safety and dignity from the Sub-region.
The UNHCR Representative in Ghana, Ms Aida Haile Mariam, reiterated that resettlement to a third country was no longer an option and that the organisation was not in a position to pay $1,000 per person.
The UNHCR received a communication sent to it on the Liberians’ demand for allowance of $1,000 as grant to rebuild their homes and restart their lives in Liberia, resettlement to a Western country and opposition to local integration.
She said the Refugee Agency had made available over 2,000 copies of an information bulletin on its programme in Ghana to the Liberian refugee community and also displayed same on bulletin boards.
She announced that all those efforts did not yield satisfactory results as the “Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns” decided to go on demonstration, saying they had disrupted the delivery of services to the most needed in Buduburan — the elderly, women and children — leading to avoidable medical emergencies.
The representative noted that the first group of refugees who embraced the self-reliance programme were refugees with special needs and the physically-challenged.
“Unfortunately, the “ Liberian Refugee Women with Refugee Concerns” disrupted the programme which had to be closed to prevent physical harm to the participants,” she added.
The refugees at the Buduburan Settlement camp began demonstrations from February 19, 2008, demanding that they did not wish to remain in Ghana to be locally integrated into the Ghanaian society.
They rather wanted resettlement in a Western country and $1,000 to be paid to each refugee opting to voluntarily repatriate.
They have been mobilising the elderly, women and children to demonstrate in support of a petition they submitted to the UNHCR in Geneva.
Ghana hosts some 40,519 refugees, 26,967 of them being Liberian refugees.