ZWEDRU – Thirty-one Burkinabé cocoa farmers have been jailed for allegedly clearing forestry concessions in Grand Gedeh County to plant cocoa.
By Varney Kamara, with The DayLight
The lads, with ages starting from youngsters to the 50s, have been rounded up by rangers of the Forestry Improvement Authority (FDA) throughout a routine patrol. They have been lately arrested at two forestry contract areas.
“The Burkinabés are damaging these locations with cocoa farming. We met them brushing within the park. We additionally caught a few of them slicing demarcation within the FMCs,” Yei Neagor, FDA’s head for that area, advised The DayLight on the Zwedru Metropolis Magisterial Court docket. Photos shared by the FDA present the person organising camps and setting timber ablaze.
“I can inform you that the state of affairs is alarming. They’re destroying the forest. It’s on an enormous scale,” added Neagor.
The suspects have been arrested within the Gbarzon District at two places. Fifteen have been picked up at Marbo 1 Neighborhood Forest and 16 at a dormant concession referred to as Forest Administration Contract Space Ok or FMC ‘Ok’.
That they had been arraigned on the FDA’s regional workplace in Zwedru and later taken to the police station earlier than being forwarded to court docket. They’ve been charged with legal trespassing and legal mischief, court docket paperwork present. They have been jailed on the Zwedru Correction Palace after failing to put up bail.
‘The land belongs to us’
In an interview with The DayLight, the suspects admitted to the costs however blamed their Liberian hosts for the state of affairs.
“We fell into this drawback as a result of our host didn’t present us the precise demarcation of the boundary,” mentioned Soré Sayouba, a spokesman for the Burkinabés.
Sayouba, 57, mentioned he and the opposite males crossed the Ivorian border into Grand Gedeh by native folks or hosts. Immigration information record Bamba Paye, a Gbarzon resident, as certainly one of their hosts.
Paye denies any wrongdoing, saying his household farmed on the controversial land for many years. “I don’t perceive why they arrested my Burkinabé employees as a result of my mother and father planted cocoa and orange method again on this land. In our conventional setting, life crops signify inheritance,” Paye mentioned by way of telephone.
“The land belongs to us.”
The suspects have been freed on bond and are anticipated to reappear in court docket on Tuesday.
Cocoa court docket circumstances
The case provides to a number of lawsuits involving Burkinabés, the FDA and people in Grand Gedeh, relating to cocoa cultivation.
Burkinabés started flocking into Liberia within the 2010s, after a cross-border agreement between then-President Sirleaf and Ivoirian chief Alhassan Ouattara, in response to immigration authorities.
“From that point, we seen that folks began coming in. However they weren’t coming as agriculturists. Now, as we converse, they’re all alongside the Cavalla belt,” mentioned Alex Kpakolo, Grand Gedeh’s Assistant Comptroller of Immigration.
Final yr, France 24 reported 25,000, capitalizing on Liberia’s weak regulation enforcement, massive rainforests and excessive cocoa costs.
Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer, has misplaced 90 p.c of its forest to “brown gold” farming within the final six many years, the report mentioned.
This development continues in Liberia, which lost 386,000 hectares of main forests between 2002 and 2024, in response to International Forest Watch.
This story was a manufacturing of the Neighborhood of Forest and Environmental Journalists of Liberia (CoFEJ). It first appeared in The DayLight and has been revealed right here as a part of an editorial collaboration.
