Cantonment Shootout: "Divine" Priestesses Go On Naked Demo

There was drama at the Cantonments Police Station on Saturday afternoon when some elderly women of the Osu Stool called the �Divine Priestesses� stripped at the station in protest of the arrest of some 40 alleged land guards. The priestesses, mostly old women clad in only cloths covering their chests, went totally naked amidst wails of protests and chanting, as personnel from the Accra regional Police Command attempted preventing them from assaulting and harassing cane artisans who were doing what the police described as �legitimate business� on the disputed 1.5 acre property around the Switchback road within the Cantonments. The women trooped to the area in anger, to solidarise with 40 of their colleagues who were arrested and detained a day earlier after they had engaged rival claimants of the property in a fierce gun fight. The 40 persons were arrested by the Police on Friday after a shootout over a plot of land in the Cantonment residential area. According to the elderly women, the 40 arrested persons were not land guards. �They are members of the Osu stool; they are not land guards, they are watching our land. The land belongs to Osu people so they are watching our land.� According to the leadership of the �Divine Priestesses� they stripped to invoke the intervention of the gods. �When something happens, we remove our clothes and become naked to call the gods.� Despite the rivalry over the property, a horde of cane artisans have, for many years, used the property as their site of business. They produce and sell cane furniture there. The artisans have for the past few days been the target of �harassment� at the hands of the Osu Claimants of the disputed land. Former first Lady Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings is said to be one of the claimants of the premium property. The La Stool is also laying claim to the same property.