Bennett Akuaku

Amnesty International (AI) has called on Ghanaian authorities to place a moratorium on all future evictions until such a time that the country has developed and implemented a human rights-based housing policy.
The organization has also demanded that government ensures respect for the principles of necessity and proportionality, as well as the basic principles of the use of force and firearms by law-enforcement officials.
This and others were contained in a joint public statement by AI with the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in Accra yesterday in the wake of the Dudzome boat disaster.
Reading the statement, Mrs. Birte Scholz, country director of COHRE, said the two groups were unhappy with the manner in which the evacuation was carried out without any regard to the safety of the people of Digya.
"These forced evictions have deprived residents, including women and children, of their homes and, in most cases, of their means of earning a living. The organizations are also deeply concerned about the death of more than 100 of those forcibly evicted, when a ferry forcibly removing them from the island capsized on 8 April," she said.
According to Scholz, the practice of forced evictions constitute a gross violation of human rights, saying that it runs contrary to Article 111 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Earlier, the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Centre for Housing Rights and People's Dialogue on Human Settlements jointly made urgent, immediate and long-term recommendations to government concerning the disaster.
They recommended that the bodies of all those who perished are found and given proper burial rites, with compensations to all the families of evictees who perished. This was after the mass burial of the first nine bodies was condemned and described as not befitting.
The organizations also complained about the terms of reference of the committee of enquiry set up by government and wished it were widened beyond the disaster incident.
"Whilst we welcome the announcement of the setting up of a committee of enquiry into the boat disaster of April 8,2006,we are disappointed that the terms of reference were narrowed to the boat disaster incident and do not include an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the forced eviction of settlers from Digya National Park, which involved serious and gross human rights violations.

A representative of the People' Dialogue, who had just returned from the Manchare Camp in the Afram Plains, found it sad that at the time the entire nation was witnessing the beauty of the recent eclipse of the sun, other citizens of the country, who have equal rights under the constitution, were packed up in camps under the vagaries of the weather and possibly watched the rare solar development with bare eyes.
Another photographer from the area noted that at the time when the Forestry Department was at the heels of the people of Digya because they settled there illegally, the Ghana Education Service (GES) was also distributing education materials for them for their children to go to school there, while the Electoral Commission (EC), was also brazing up to get them registered for the up-coming district assembly elections. He contended that for one government institution to brand a people as migrants, while another recognizes their stay, is the funniest thing he had ever heard.
Meanwhile, several other associations, including citizens of the Volta region, living in the Diaspora, have condemned the disaster, saying it is regrettable and could have been avoided.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200604200615.html