The Giwa Executions - Did Ghana Cry Wolf?
By a correspondent
The original Radio Ghana broadcast on Saturday March 24th, stated: "Three dissidents who were captured in special search and destroy operations were executed by firing squad yesterday.
They are L/Cpl Halidu Giwa, Sgt. Malik and Cpl Martin Ajumba. The three, together with Pte Kwame Sekpo, were captured last Friday (March 23rd) during the operations.
INFILTRATION
An official statement said that Pte Sekpo died from wounds he sustained during an engagement between the dissidents and army and police personnel.According to the statement, the four were among groups of dissidents who have infiltrated the country to create chaos and confusion by attacking vital civil and military installations and personnel.
It will be recalled that Giwa, Malik and Ajumba were sentenced to death in absentia following the abortive attempt to destabilize the government on June 19th last year.
In a separate search and destroy operation ordered by the Force Commander and the Inspector General of Police, there were exchanges between them and police on the Ivorian border and at the new Prampram beach. The statement said some of the dissidents were wounded and have escaped. It is suspected that some of the dissidents are in hiding in towns and villages and the general public and PDCs are being called upon to be on the lookout for them and report any suspicious characters to the nearest Police station or military barracks for straight military action.
All troops are to be confined to barracks. There should be no troop movements without the authority of the Force Commander. The curfew hours have been changed. They are now from 10 p.m. to 04.30 a.m. as from last night. The Government, however, assures the public that the situation is under control."
When the BBC World Service first reported the story on Sunday afternoon the definite impression was that a fresh "invasion" of Ghana by dissidents was under way. By midnight the station was reporting fighting between loyal troops and invading dissidents who had launched a two pronged attack from Togo and Ivory Coast.
By Monday morning the British press had virtually lost interest in the story and the morning papers carried three-paragraph reports. The Financial Times story carried the headline: "Eleven rebels killed in Ghana coup bid". The story said at least 11 rebels have been killed during and after a coup attempt against the Ghanaian Government, quoting Reuters reports from Abidjan.
It said the fighting broke out last Friday when rebels infiltrated from abroad in the fifth organised attempt to overthrow Flt-Lieut. Jerry Rawlings, the head of state.
The paper said that the casualty figure was expected to rise because more rebels were killed or wounded. before the government got the situation under control. The Times carried a similar story.
On Tuesday morning, the Network Africa programme of the BBC World Service carried a comprehensive account of the confused events. It reported Ivorian officials as stating they were unaware of any fighting along their border with Ghana.
The programme also carried an interview with Mr Cameron Duodu, the celebrated Ghanaian journalist who before his arrival in London last year was an authoritative source of information on the government.
Mr Duodu gave a background account of L/Cpl Giwa and his dramatic jail break/coup attempt of June 1983.
He offered as an explanation of why troops had been confined to barracks that it was aimed at preventing unnecessary casualties.
The dissidents, he said, used to be members of the Ghana Armed Forces and thus had uniforms and arms of the Forces and might possibly be confused with loyal troops if other troops were allowed out.
IMPRESSION
In another interview conducted over the telephone with the Deputy Secretary of Information Mr Quakyi from Accra; he said that the reports of the events as reported over the BBC and Radio Nigeria had been grossly exaggerated. His impression was that Accra had been quiet and nothing untoward had happened. Why had the troops been confined to the barracks, he was asked "well, for security reasons... " was his answer.A third interview with Mr Kojo Smith, described as a spokesman of the Ghana Democratic Movement, the exile organisation opposed to the Rawlings regime, stated that the events of the week-end were a hoax. He offered that far from the dissidents having invaded Ghana, they had been handed over to Flt-Lt. Rawlings by the Togolese authorities where they had taken refuge and had been executed.
Yet another story making the rounds in London stated that L/Cpl Giwa and his colleagues had been infiltrated by the Ghanaian security and Giwa who had always boasted about his ability to enter and leave Ghana at will had been betrayed to the PNDC.
According to this story, L/Cpl Giwa entered Ghana with fourteen of his friends through the Brong Ahafo region and were rounded up and arrested in Sunyani where they were executed.
The truth about what happened in Ghana over the week-end has obviously not been told, all the press reports having been based on the Radio Ghana official report. Unfortunately Radio Ghana is known not to pay undue regard to the truth and their reports need to be taken with generous helpings of salt.
The BBC's West African correspondent, Mr Alexander Thompson based in Abidjan is known to have applied for an entry visa to Ghana for over six months and has not been granted one, and independent sources of information are thus hard to come by.
As we went to press, only one thing was definite: Lance Corporal Halidu Giwa, one of the "other ranks" who fell out with Flt-Lt. Rawlings in 1982 and staged the spectacular jail break/coup attempt of June 1982 had been killed together with three others.
Travellers from Ghana spoke of having been unaware of anything happening in Accra or the whole of the country for that matter until the announcement on the radio. A new arrival told "Talking Drums" at Heathrow airport last Tuesday that the first time he heard "anything at all" was the BBC World Service report announcing the "invasion, capture and execution of Giwa. I don't know which civil or military installations were attacked. In Accra, the only thing that happened was that on Sunday, military planes were flying all over the city, but then that is a phenomenon we have lived with in Ghana for the past two years", he added.
There were reports of demonstrations in Accra by PDCs and WDCs in support of the PNDC and calls in the press for the government to "deal with Ivory Coast and Togo for harbouring dissidents".
