The Western Region Alliance for Sustainable Development says it sees as a great show of responsible leadership the swift move by the Liberian Leader, Joseph Nyuma Boakai, setting up a professional team of security experts and other officials of government, constituting a special committee, to independently probe into the recent citizens’ action in the operational area of the Bea Mountain concession company.
WRASD questions the legitimacy of Representative Mohammed Dosii of District 2, Grand Cape County, to support the protestors.
The Alliance particularly thanked President Boakai for including the Ministries of Mines and Energy, Justice, Labor, the National Bureau of Concession, and the Liberia National Police (LNP).
While commending the President for his patriotic concern about the disturbance at Bea Mountain as father of the Nation, the Western Region Alliance entreated the fact-finding committee to be impartial in unearthing the actual reasons behind the protest action, as espoused by the President, who wants full-scale information about the situation, including casualties and remedial actions, to prevent a recurrence.
The Alliance further said that while it thinks that some of the citizens’ petitions are genuine, it however condemns their approach, which was not in the interest of peaceful coexistence and the overall peace of the country.
The group said they believe that there were many rooms for negotiation with local authorities, the Legislative Caucus, and Elder Council, as well as mainstream government, to find an amicable solution to their concerns about the company’s adherence to its corporate social responsibility, as agreed upon in its mineral development agreement (MDA).
The Western Region Alliance said they want new Police Inspector-General, Gregory Coleman, to ensure that the new dynamism he has brought to the Liberian National Police (LNP) is reflected in this situation.
“Western Region Alliance condemns this unprofessional use of government-assigned firearms and calls on all others to refrain from such acts which take away the lives of innocent people,” the release said.
The Alliance, at the same time, frowned on what it called insecurity to the concession climate of the country: citizens taking the law into their own hands, destroying valuable properties of concessionaires, such as the Bea Mountain recent saga.
The Alliance said it sees it wrong for citizens protesting to attack and allegedly brutalize some security personnel assigned to the concession company.
