Stories from the Field

An update from Jessica on the current situation in the Buduburam refugee settlement -
Stay tuned for regular updates!

At about 4am today, the Ghanaian police showed up to camp armed with machine guns and tear gas - luckily they never used either, but still - I consider it to be unnecessary force... They arrested a couple hundred of the women. No one knows exactly how many, but I have heard from several different people (including Mark [ARCH staff member, ndlr] who was there when it happened) that there were 5 buses (big buses, not the tro tro size) and 2 trucks that they filled with women. They went along willingly and the police even had to refuse women from getting arrested (they were all volunteering to go ! ) Apparently 8 women got minor injuries - there is conflicting information over how it happened. Some people are saying it was the confusion and people were moving around too quickly, but Mark told me that one of the officers used a beat stick on one of the women. I have even heard that one woman gave birth on the way to the police station!

Overall things remained calm during the ordeal and no real violence broke out, which I am very shocked about. But after they left with the women [one of which is Doris, the head cook at the School Feeding Program] hundreds of additional women went to the field. I went there around 10 this morning and there must have been at least 600 or 700 people there. The Ministry of Interior is saying that when the numbers of women decrease a bit, they wil be back to arrest more of them. They are also threatening to prosecute all arrested women and deport them back to Liberia as criminals.

As you can imagine, tensions on camp are a bit high at the moment and all possibility of normal work is pretty much stopped. Even the markets were empty today cause many of the market women were arrested.