A lawmaker of south-eastern Grand Gedeh County has raised alarm that after the recent meeting of chiefs and elders in Guiglo, La Cote d’Ivoire, which was attended by Presidents Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Alassane Ouattara, more than 500 foreign nationals from the Cote d’Ivoire side of the border have encroached on Liberian territory.
Starafrica.com reported that in an interview with UNMIL radio at the weekend, Grand Gedeh County District #3 Representative Alex Grant said the foreign nationals, who were believed to include Burkinabes and Ivorians were also ‘physically and practically in possession of arms on Liberian soil.
Grant said the Burkinabes and Ivorians recently opened fire in the air to scare citizens in that part of Grand Gedeh County, who ran helter-skelter for their lives.
“We did not expect such from Ivory Coast. We, citizens of Grand Gedeh expect Ivorians to protect our border as they too respect their borderline,” the lawmaker lamented.
“We do not support anything that will cause instability for our south region; security is important for each and everyone of us; they should respect our borderline. We are the custodian of that land and where the incident is occurring is the area that I represent in the lower house of the Liberia Legislature,” Grant added.
He disclosed that over 500 acres of the land in question have been cultivated by the Burkinabes. He said the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL and the United Nations Mission in the Ivory Coast are aware that the land in question belongs to Liberia.
He said the Legislative Caucus of Grand Gedeh County is holding discussions with the government to use its diplomatic influence to have the Burkinabes and Ivorians evicted.
He lamented that some of the villagers on the border, who have fled their homes as a result of the incursion, are currently displaced.
In May 2015 a report by the AFP and published on the Daily Mail Online reported that armed men had crossed into Liberia from Ivory Coast and occupied an area of forest, spreading alarm in the remote border region, quoting Marshall Dennis, another senator in the south-eastern county of Grand Gedeh.
The alleged incursion, which could not be verified at the time was said to have marked a worrying development in a campaign of violence by militants crossing in the other direction where thousands had been displaced and dozens killed.
“It is dangerous in the sense that it is about people from another country, Ivory Coast, coming to Liberia,” the senator had said.
Meanwhile President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf visited her counterpart, Alassane Ouattara of Ivory Coast where they reached a deal that would ensure sustainable peace and peaceful co-existence of peoples culturally engrossed although reside on either side of the borders in Liberia and Cote d’Ivoire, according to a press release from the Executive Mansion in Monrovia, dated 18 January, 2016.
Liberia is one of four countries in the Mano River Union basin that first suffered a brutal civil war which later spilled over to Sierra Leone and affected the two other countries - Guinea, Conakry and Ivory Coast.
(C) Politico 02/02/16
