WANEP Records Seven Politically Motivated Deaths � Report

The West African Network for Peace-building says it has from January to June this year recorded seven deaths and nine injuries across the country, which it says were politically motivated. It recorded 86 reported cases of violence out of which 20 incidents or 23 percent were politically-motivated and mentioned Ledzokuku, Gushegu, Odododiodoo, Bawku, Bimbilla, Aflao and Buipe as the areas that experienced the most violent cases within the period. WANEP also recorded a total of 21 chieftaincy-related incidents with one death and four injuries out of the 86 cases per the period, representing 24 percent of the recorded incidents and appealed to the security agencies, the National House of Chiefs and the media to be extra careful with the fragile peace in the country. These were contained in a press release issued in Tamale and signed by the National Coordinator of WANEP, Justin Bayor. The release said the incidents were recorded in the biannual alert of WANEP, which categories recorded cases into disasters, chieftaincy tension, politically motivated violence and armed robbery as the most threatening because they have the potential to easily trigger serious conflicts. It said this Early Warning Alert, a biannual publication of the WANEP-Ghana, showed an analysis of proximate human security conditions, some of which emanated from structural and systemic challenges and produced from WANEP-Ghana�s Early Warning reports. According to WANEP, since the beginning of this year, there had been growing political anxiety with communication team members of various political parties at the national, regional and district levels engaged in direct insults, personality attacks, allegations and counter accusations against each other through the media. It said such comments whip-up ethnic tension just for the sake of electoral votes, which equally has the tendency of creating violence but some politicians were dangerously stoking it lately, saying �The potential to ignite violence through ethnic pronouncements is high as some media houses are not monitoring and sanctioning their members who either flout the ethics of the profession or are not conflict-sensitive in their reportage. Thirteen armed robbery incidents were recorded within the period and appealed to the National Peace Council, the Regional and District Security Councils, to adopt peace building methods and approaches to resolve the numerous conflict situations under their jurisdictions rather than waiting for violence to erupt before they intervene with peacekeeping. It also entreated international institutions and civil society groups to increase the communication, transport and ammunition detection capacities of the security agencies as well as support the Police with bulletproof uniforms and equipment to enable them respond to violence and crime situations effectively.