The Liyba dictator is under unprecedented pressure from his people
Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com
By William Yaw Owusu
Monday February 28, 2010.
THE FIRST batch of Ghanaians who were stranded in Libya have arrived safely at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), Accra from the troubled North African country.
The all-male returnees numbering 55 touched down between 1: 30 and 2pm on Saturday on board Egypt Air.
They were taken to the Aviation Social Center near the airport by officers of the National Disaster Management Organization (NADMO) and some government officials for screening before heading for their various homes.
According to government officials those who returned were close to Egyptian border so it was not difficult to airlift them.
Kwabena Dwemena, a Ghanaian resident in Benghazi, Libya’s industrial city who spoke to the media said the situation was getting out of hand and the government needs to do something to help them without delay.
“I have been in my room for 11 days. You cannot go out. If you venture you could easily be killed,” he lamented.
Pressure is mounting on the government to evacuate over 10,000 Ghanaians in Libya as some of them alleged that the telephone numbers given by the government for them and their family members back home to contact to ensure a smooth evacuation exercise do not appear to be effective.
Anxiety is beginning to set in among residents particularly Nima, a suburb of Accra where it is believed many have relatives in Libya.
Asibi Mohammed, a food vendor told Daily Guide that she has a brother in Tripoli but since the disturbance started she has heard from him once, adding her son told her the situation was getting serious.
Another Nima resident who gave her name as Fauzia said she has two sons in Libya but has not heard from one of them. She made a passionate appeal to the government to step up the evacuation exercise.
“My brother is in Tripoli. He called to say that there is sporadic gun fire every day. All countries are evacuating their citizens. I will plead with the government to bring our brothers and sisters out of the place,” Oumar Alhassan said.
According to the Ministry of Information, close to four thousand Ghanaians in Libya have been registered out of the estimated 10,000 expected to be airlifted home.
The repatriation became necessary due to increasing anti-government protests that have rocked that country in the past fourteen days.
Enormous pressure from Ghanaians both home and abroad has been mounted on the Government to evacuate Ghanaians resident in the north African country following the political unrest there.
Government had earlier said Ghanaians were not in danger since black Africans were not being targeted. But the evacuation became necessary as xenophobic attacks were reported.
The reports that Ghanaian soldiers were collaborating with Libyan security forces to suppress the political uprising against Libyan leader, Col Muammar Gaddafi, has been already denied by the Ghanaian government.
Deputy Information Minister Baba Jamal told Citi FM on Friday that “every single Ghanaian will be evacuated from that country whether they are illegal immigrants or not”.
The returnees are accusing Ghana Embassy officials in Tripoli of neglecting them.
Some of the evacuees accused the Ghana mission in Libya of paying deaf ears to their desperate calls to evacuate them. They however praised officials of Ghana mission in Cairo for coming to their aid.
But Baba Jamal told Joy FM the volatile situation in Libya may have prevented the Embassy officials from offering the necessary help.
He indicated that the complaints will be looked into.
He had said a temporary structure will be created at the El-Wak Sports Stadium and Trade Fair site in Accra, to accommodate the returnees for a while, before they are reunited with their families.
Unprecedented wave of revolutions currently sweeping across Northern Africa and other parts of the Middle East has already seen Presidents of Tunisia and Egypt respectively toppled but the one in Libya is deadly.
Colonel Muammar al-Qathafi, the Libyan dictator who has stayed in power for 42 years has said he will not succumb to demands by protesters asking him to resign and insisted he would rather die a martyr.
According to BBC, information from Libya remains difficult to verify and many reports cannot be independently confirmed. The total number of deaths has been impossible to determine.
However, Human Rights Watch said it had confirmed nearly 300 deaths, but the International Federation for Human Rights said at least 700 people had been killed while Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said estimates of 1,000 dead were “credible”.
Masses of foreigners are still struggling to leave Libya with the situation at Tripoli airport described as mayhem.
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