Breaking News

Yesterday two pretty hefty items hit the Ghanaians News Agenda.

1. Yesterday morning police officers with several buses pulled in to the Liberian Refugee Camp outside of Accra and arrested busloads of refugees, mostly women and children. Reporters on the scene said the officers packed them into the buses tightly "like sardines" and some of them- including pregnant women- passed out, presumably from the heat.

It wasn't until the evening news that the government issued a statement. They said that the people arrested were involved in illegal protests and demonstrations and were arrested. The news media did not say exactly what type of demonstration is illegal, or why they arrested children. But it sounds like they are being held not in cells, but in a camp in the Eastern Region, where they will be "screened" (I don't know what that means) and deported back to Liberia. If that's the case, then I assume they simply wanted to keep the children with their mothers.

According to the TV news, the reason the Liberians are protesting is because they believe the UN should pay them each a $1,000, and they want to live in America or another Western European nation. I've heard from people talking that they've been using hunger strikes and rallies to protest- again, I don't know what's illegal about that. I guess the Liberians refuse to integrate into Ghanaian society, though the Ghanaian government says they never actually offered integration as an option. Still, many Liberians already have integrated- they weren't strictly kept inside the camp, and many have married, had kids here, and become part of the informal economy. I doubt they will ever be tracked down and sent back.

These refugees and the UN have been at odds for some time. In 2004, the first time I was here in Ghana, one of my schoolmates did a paper on the camp, and he said that though the UN had pronounced Liberia stable and withdrawn funding from the refugee camp, that people were still dying in Liberia and Liberians were afraid to return. Talking to some refugees myself, I heard lots of stories of rape and torture- it sounded like a pretty horrific situation they escaped to come here.

2. A high school student flung himself off a building and died yesterday afternoon in Cape Coast. Apparently his teachers were trying to force him to go to chapel, and, being a Muslim, he refused. They proceeded to cane him, so he ran up on top of a building and jumped. I'm not clear whether he intended to kill himself or if he thought he could survive the fall and just get away from the teachers... But it's still sad.

Which begs a question I've been churning in my mind for awhile- Should private high schools force students of other religious faiths to participate in religious ceremonies? I mean, on the one hand, they are private institutions (although I have heard of government schools forcing kids to pray, which I think is unquestionably inappropriate). And so it might follow that a school that is privately funded can force any curriculum they choose, and it would make sense that the churches funding the school will want to impart a religious education of a Christian persuasion.

And yet, almost all of the best high schools in the country are private Christian institutions, so anyone wanting a good education is forced to allow themselves to be indoctrinated. Plus, they have a complicated system of getting into high school, and I'm not sure how much choice one has in what high school you go to- I'm not really clear on the details, but it seems to me there's a board of some sort that holds a lot of the decision-making power when it comes to who goes to what school.

And in my mind, the most important question is: Is forcing students of other religious faiths to attend chapel services and sing hymns really helping anyone? Does it benefit the student? DOes it benefit the community? Does it benefit the country?

What do you think?