Kusasi youth leaders have called for dialogue with the Mamprusi youth as part of efforts to ensure lasting peace in Bawku. Such a dialogue, the leaders contend, will help to identify the perpetrators of criminal activities being committed in the name of chieftaincy disputes and ethnic conflicts. The spokesperson for the youth, Mr Adam Amadu Kwatiga, told the Daily Graphic in Accra Sunday that "we do not seek to deny that there have been some disturbances in Bawku. We, however, want to stress that the situation in Bawku is not as bad as has been exaggerated and presented to the rest of the country". He said the violent incidents in Bawku were not about chieftaincy but rather the result of the activities of criminal gangs on both sides who were being shielded. He said the youth with access to weapons were engaged in armed robbery activities on the outskirts of Bawku. The situation, he said, had created an unfortunate impression of a deliberate co-ordinated attack on people who ventured out of the town, prompting some leading Mamprusis who lived mainly within the town to engage in reprisals. Mr Kwatiga said some youth resident within the town had also formed armed criminal gangs to rob households during curfew hours. He said "these armed robbers within the town mischievously speak a certain language during their operations in order that their acts of criminality will be attributed to a particular ethnic group". "The foregoing, therefore, shows that criminal gangs with access to automatic rifles and instruments of violence have taken advantage of the situation in Bawku to needlessly draw the youth of both sides - [that is] Kusasis and Mamprusis - into frequent violent clashes even before the causes of the clashes are ascertained," he said. According to Mr Kwatiga, the Kusasi youth, in line with the recent call made by the Bawku Naaba, Asigri Abugrago Azoka also extended a hand of friendship to the "Mamprusis so that they could co-operate with the security agencies to weed out the criminal elements within us and restore lasting peace to Bawku". "We the Kusasi youth, therefore, propose an open and honest dialogue and co-operation with Mamprusis of Bawku and in the Diaspora in a true spirit of brotherhood to deal with this issue of criminality which is threatening to make the once commercially prosperous Bawku a sad story," he said. He said while acknowledging media freedom, the youth would like to entreat the media to be circumspect and display a high sense of professionalism and responsibility in their reportage on Bawku. He said there was the tendency of the media to focus their reportage on the negative issues about Bawku. Source: Daily Graphic