National Security urged to avert simmering conflict

Kokrobite (G/A), Nov. 5, GNA - Nii Ardeyansah II, Gyasetse of Kokrobite in the Ga West District, on Sunday appealed to the Minister of National Security and the Inspector General of Police (IGP), to take immediate steps to avert a simmering conflict between some feuding factions in his community.

He said a series of chieftaincy and land disputes, which had created factions, remained unresolved, but had been put under control bringing some calm to the community as the cases were being tried before the courts.

Nii Ardeyansah said recent developments, however, showed that the police at Odorkor had taken sides in the issue thereby strengthening the hands of one faction against the other and enabling them to recruit "landguards" to brutalise their opponents using cutlasses and other dangerous implements, raising a lot of concern among residents. He said on a number of occasions the police at Odorkor had detained some innocent persons who had been arrested by the landguards, sometimes for more than two weeks without bail.

The Gyasetse said in view of the volatile atmosphere created by the situation, the chiefs and elders were left with no other option than to mobilise the youth to protect residents, if immediate steps were not taken to maintain law and order in the community.

Nii Asaase Ayittey, Chief Fisherman, who corroborated the chief's statement, said attempts to secure bail for four fishermen who had been detained at the Odokor Police Station since Friday, after they had been brutalised by a group of alleged landguards, led by an armed military man in uniform following an "invasion" of the community in a taxicab, had failed.

He said despite the wounds inflicted on them by their captors requiring medical attention for those arrested, the personnel at the Odorkor Police Station refused to take them to the hospital for treatment on a claim that they could only be granted bail on Monday. Nii Ayittey said additionally, the police personnel at the Odorkor Police Station had deliberately presented some of the cases against persons they had sought to arrest on "trumped-up charges" without informing them, only to seek bench warrants for their arrest, thus compounding the issue of bail and appealed to the authorities to investigate their arrest and to identify the armed military man involved in the arrest of the four fishermen.