When peace keepers Become Executioners: The Fight against Ghana’s Galamsey

By: OWARE Iddrissu

0599467559

The fight against illegal mining is meant to save our rivers, protect our forests, and safeguard

the future of Ghana’s children. Instead, it is increasingly leaving behind a trail of blood, fear,

and suspicion. While citizens are dying at the mining site by falling into pits, reports of violent

clashes between the military and civilians in galamsey-prone communities are no longer

whispers. Lives are being lost, families are being shattered, and trust between citizens and the

very institutions meant to protect them is collapsing.

The military was never designed to be a police service. Soldiers are trained for combat, not

community engagement. Deploying soldiers into towns and villages, armed to the teeth, has

turned mining communities into battlefields. Each clash leaves behind not only victims but also

deep scars of resentment that will last for generations.

Ghana cannot be “a land of gold” if people are dying for it. The country cannot profess to care

for its forests, rivers, or democratic rights while allowing guns to settle disputes. The fight

against galamsey is necessary, but it must not be a dragnet that beats and kills the vulnerable.

Yes, galamsey is a national emergency. Our rivers are dying, our cocoa farms are vanishing, and

billions in gold revenue are siphoned away. But should the solution be a war waged with bullets

against our own people? When soldiers enter communities as executioners rather than

protectors, the state signals that it values trees and rivers more than the very lives of its

citizens.

While young men in mining communities are gunned down, the powerful financiers of

galamsey, those who import excavators, destroy the forest, bribe officials, and launder the

profits, remain untouched. Justice flows downhill in Ghana; the powerless are punished, the

powerful are protected. That is why galamsey continues.

The recent incident happened last August this year at Bonteson in the Ashanti region, where a

routine patrol by the anti-galamsey task force collided with residents when the team attempted

to halt illegal mining activity. During that confrontation, two police officers were shot. It was

recorded that head, mouth, and leg injuries were reported by those opposing the enforcement.

Four people were arrested, including a local assembly member

If the government is serious, it must shift strategy. Yes, it must enforce the law, but with police

and courts, not firing squads. Investing in alternative livelihoods for the desperate young men

risking their lives in muddy pits will bring a positive turn, and they will have another way to

survive. It must expose and prosecute the political “big men” and business elites who bankroll

galamsey operations, not just their poor foot soldiers.

A nation cannot cure environmental injustice. When peace keepers kill citizens in the name of

saving rivers, the rivers may one day flow clean, but the community will carry the memory of

blood. It is time for us to decide as Ghanaians, as to whether we want a greener land at the cost

of a blood-soaked democracy? The fight against galamsey must be strategically aggressive, but

it must also be fair, lawful, and humane. Anything less is not a war on galamsey, it is a war on

Ghanaians.