Ghana's Spreading Conflicts Makes One Wonder What Parameters Are Used to list a Country as 'Peaceful'

Friday, 19 April 2024

By: TB Obwoge

Not only were 30 buses stuck at a filling station in Ghana due to highway robbers but now the conflict areas in Ghana are spreading. With the upcoming elections, the Ghana government is trying their best to ignore all conflicts in order to save face as West Africa's second most peaceful country.

Even with the Bawku fighting, Ghana has been able to slip into the place of most peaceful country in West Africa. However listen to Ghanaians telling it they think they're the most peaceful country in Africa. Even with their news reporting that Sierra Leone pushed past them in 2023 as most peaceful country in West Africa.

For some reason many Ghanaians didn't read the "in West Africa" portion of that news. As with their Wote Maya who ignores the existence of North Africa for some odd reason, might be because of their skin color and ethnicity.

However an African man from the Congo has his own thinking about Wote Maya's ignoring North Africa.

However Ghanaians will call Ghana the "most peaceful" country in Africa for some reason they don't seem to get the memo. Ghana's conflict areas have been decades long and since 2019 the deaths are stacking up. The Ghana government is great for ignoring issues, pretty much the way its citizens are.

You can easily find Ghanaians on social media bullying either Nigerians are in some past cases other Africans from Cabo Verde and Ethiopia. For something as small as their languages.

Bawku Ghana, Bolgatanga, Ghana and now Sampa, Ghana. are all dealing with tribal fighting, which are disputes over chiefs. Sampa Township, a Ghana-Cote D’Ivoire border town in the Jaman North District of the Bono Region.

While the other areas are near the Burkina Faso - Ghana border area.

In this below YouTube video you can get a view of the area of Sampa, Ghana, which is on the Bono Region.

A few days ago there was a curfew set in place, as indefinite curfew imposed on Sampa due to chieftaincy disputes from 4:00 pm to 7:00 am each day, effective Thursday, April 18, 2024.

On several YouTube pages Ghanaians are speaking about the fighting, however none of them are speaking in English. Here are some of the videos.

SAMPA CURFEW! Otumfuo's Power, Man Fires As He Tells How Police & Citizens Were K!lléd Before Him

Below is a letter from the Ministry of The Interior of Ghana, this outlines the curfew and when it will start, the items that are banned. Please note that any place these guns should be banned, however they're listing them as part of the curfew.

Some security officials deployed to enforce a recently imposed curfew in the Bono Region have been captured allegedly terrorizing some residents who flouted the order.

In a video shared on X (formerly Twitter), the masked police officers are seen flogging about a half dozen residents who are lying in prostrate position.

The video has attracted reactions relative to how security officials have over the years abused citizens in the line of enforcing security protocols.

Source: Ghana Web News

The Sampa curfew:

The government, through the Ministry of Interior, imposed a curfew on Sampa Township in a statement dated April 18, 2024.

"The Minister for the Interior, on the advice of the Bono Regional Security Council and by the Executive Instrument has imposed a Curfew on Sampa Township in Jaman North District of the Bono Region following some chieftaincy disputes from 4:00 pm to 7:00 am each day effective Thursday, April 18, 2024, until further notice."

Abuses by security forces, this is not the first time that Ghana Armed Forces as been accused of abusing citizens of Ghana. In Bawku and Bolga there have been several complaints of Ghanaians being beaten and even killed by security forces.

Ghana Police/Customs Head Butt Man Another Grabs Woman’s Arm in the Name of Taxes; IMF Said Beat -Citizens?

Imagine your shop owes some taxes, then imagine standing outside when the police roll up on you at work, screaming with Ak-47’s in hand. Whelp that’s Ghana, where brutish police and military personnel come to beat the shit out of common citizens.

In this video posted about the GRA (Ghana Revenue Authority) going around to local shop owners who were said to be in violation of paying their taxes. At a time when the economic hardship in Ghana is crushing the average Ghanian to death.

Chris Kwabena Taylor

Most of my friends have left , the blatant corruption , every Government agency knocking on business to extort money plucking figures out of the sky ! Loss of 70% on the value of your cedis and everything increased 3 fold sometimes fourfold , it’s all too much !!

Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) cracks down on Tax Offenders in Greater Accra

Source Medium

A year ago in March of 2023, Ghana Army beat around 200 men in the streets of Accra, Ghana. This came after one of their own was killed and robbed. A young Ghana soldier was murdered during a robbery, on the streets of Accra around 1-3 am in the morning. The same streets that Black Americans are calling safer than any place in the United States.

President silent as Military made men eat cow shit & left hundreds injured

Akufo-Addo hasn’t said a word to hundreds of Ghanians terrorized

The Ghana government is also ignoring the child-marriage that took place in their country just over a month ago.

This makes me wonder, how do they decide how peaceful a country is, to place them on an index of peaceful countries. Because surely I wasn't living in a peaceful Ghana.

Here are some of the ways that they determine a peaceful country.

ONGOING DOMESTIC & INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT

Number and duration of internal conflicts Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Battle-Related Deaths Dataset, Non-State Conflict Dataset and One-sided Violence Dataset; Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP)

Number of deaths from external organised conflict UCDP Battle-related Deaths Dataset

Number of deaths from internal organised conflict UCDP Battle-related Deaths Dataset

Number, duration and role in external conflicts UCDP Battle-Related Deaths Dataset; IEP

Intensity of organised internal conflict Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts g Relations with neighbouring countries Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts

SOCIETAL SAFETY & SECURITY

Level of perceived criminality in society Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts

Number of refugees and internally displaced people as a percentage of the population Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Mid-Year Trends; Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)

Political instability Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts

Political Terror Scale Gibney, Mark, Linda Cornett, Reed Wood, Peter Haschke, Daniel Arnon, and Attilio Pisanò. 2019. The Political Terror Scale 1976-2018. Date Retrieved, from the Political Terror Scale website: http://www.politicalterrorscale.org.

Impact of terrorism IEP Global Terrorism Index (GTI)

Number of homicides per 100,000 people United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (CTS); EIU estimates

Level of violent crime Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts

Likelihood of violent demonstrations Qualitative assessment by EIU analysts

Number of jailed population per 100,000 people World Prison Brief, Institute for Criminal Policy Research at Birkbeck, University of London

Number of internal security officers and police per 100,000 people UNODC CTS; EIU estimates

Source: Vision of Humanity

Now you can get the sense of why the Ghana government is cracking down on journalists reporting about Bawku and other areas. No wonder they don't want small time X accounts like Ghana Crimes to exist.

You can see that if these reports of violence and deaths get out to the public then Ghana would no longer be able to hold onto its place as a peaceful country.

One day, early in the morning I was in a Bolt car on my way back to my home. I had spent the night out with Kwame and his family. However I wanted to go home to shower, eat and relax in my AC room.

I remember the older Ghanaian driver telling me that Ghana was the.most peaceful country in the world. He said that no one ever died in Ghana. I let out a laugh, I didn't mean to, however hearing this older man tell me that no one ever died in Ghana was insane. He went onto say that no one was ever killed in the country, if they were then it would be reported on the news.

So this man thinks that if he doesn't hear about murder or deaths on the news then they never happened in Ghana. This is the same for the rape culture in Ghana. According to their logic, because women and even children are forced to pay rape fees, when they don't have the money they can't file a complaint.

If there are not any rape reports then no one in Ghana is ever raped?

This is like the recent child marriage, no ones going to investigate, the parents aren't going to call the police and nothing will ever happen. A 63-year old man married a 12-year old child, then changed his story several times along with the girls age.

This is how Ghana gets away with murder, literally and figuratively.

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©️TB Obwoge 2024 All Rights Reserved