No retreat in Chinese galamsey war

The Chinese are up in arms against Ghana in a seeming intractable war. The stakes are high and with a lot of quislings in the duel; the war has taken interesting and twisting dimensions. The good thing about it though is that there is an unprecedented commitment by concerned citizens to deal a fatal blow to the environmental degradation of our forests and water bodies. It is a war Ghana should not lose lest she faces a gloomy future of polluted water bodies and destroyed forests.

The foes across the dividing line in the raging war are the Chinese – their mission steeped in the galamsey equation as they provide the diplomatic cover for their nationals.

The silent diplomatic touch to the anti-galamsey war – its origin traceable to the previous political administration – makes the war even more complex, the niceties of diplomacy providing the inappropriate cushion for the environmental spoilers. The days of the long hand of diplomacy in the efforts to stop galamsey are almost over: the newfound resilience is unstoppable.

The Chinese embassy has demanded what it calls a fair reportage about galamsey. What fairness do they want when their nationals are using strange looking craft, some euphemistically called FPSOs, to dredge the bed of our rivers for gold?

They are also asking that the media be gagged so they do not report about galamsey. Ours is a democracy not communism. We do not have a Central Committee that issues fiats for the gagging of the media and others whose occupation threaten the survivability of communism.

We would fight galamsey to the hilt, even if envoys jump into the debacle with dragons leading them. The Chinese mission’s media gag demand only proves former Minister Inusa Fuseini’s disclosure that the ambassador impressed upon former President John Mahama to stop him from furthering his war against the degradation of our water bodies and environment by the Asians.

In the matter of the degradation of our water bodies and environment, for that matter, we would not subscribe to the niceties of diplomacy. We would descend upon anybody who destroys our natural resources, even if such persons live within the secluded and protected piece of China in Ghana, let alone those turning the natural colour of our rivers to brown.

No foreigner would be tolerated in China whose occupation entails destroying the chemistry of the Yangtze River or any other water body in that country. Why should we countenance this nonsense here in our country?

We are very serious and if the Chinese envoy underestimates our resolve to uproot galamsey and her compatriots knee-deep in it, let her disabuse her mind immediately. If she succeeded previously, not so this time around because a new government is in place, which ways are different. It brooks no nonsense in matters pertaining to the interest of the country.

We are in a galamsey war and under such conditions radical measures must be taken in response. It is in view of this that we ask that all Chinese arrested for being in the galamsey business be deported forthwith. These suspects easily find their way to their galamsey havens as soon as they are granted bail for want of interpreters.