Attacks On Journalists

HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTERS’ NETWORK (HRRN)-BRONG AHAFO SECRETARIAT

Attacks On Journalists

The Human Rights Reporters’ Network (HRRN), Brong Ahafo Regional Secretariat, wishes

to register its disgust about the recent attacks on law abiding journalists who have

been subjected to several forms of attacks in the course of discharging their

constitutional obligations.

The HRRN has followed these negative developments with keen interest where a

resemblance of the outlawed Criminal Libel Law now decorated as the “Law of Causing

Panic and Fear” is beginning to rear its ugly head in the laws of the land. Many

journalists have since fell prey to this law which tends to cripple press freedom in

Ghana.

Recently, there was another report of an unspeakable attack on an innocent

journalist surprisingly orchestrated by no other persons than the police. The

police, by the laws of the land, are to keep the peace and protect the citizenry.

Though we are yet to hear from the police what led to the assault on the journalist,

the incident is unheard of no matter how the police explain their side of the story.

Mr. Raphael Godlove Ahenu Jnr, an award-wining journalist and Brong Ahafo Regional

Secretary of the HRRN was on Sunday, 25th of July, 2010, violently manhandled by the

Maabang Police in the Ahafo Ano North of Ashanti in his attempt to defend a

vulnerable poor farmer who had been wrongfully arrested by the police.

What the HRRN gathered was that Mr. Ahenu visited his village during the period and

was later informed that a farmer by name Emmanuel Gbadasu had been unlawfully

arrested by the police on the grounds that he refused to sell his farm produce to

some buyers.

The farmer, we were told, had negotiated with a buyer at Bechem who expressed

interest in buying his cabbage at a certain price. But the proposed buyer could not

make it to the farm and rather sent some people to meet the farmer.

However, the new buyers came with a new price lower that the proposed one, a

situation which put the farmer off and decided not to sell the items again. In order

to bully the farmer, the buyers who came from Bechem then claimed they came from

Accra and so demanded that the farmer should give them GH¢90 for transportation,

which the farmer refused leading to his arrest and detention at the Maabang Police

Station.

When Mr. Ahenu attempted to come in to intervene for the poor farmer, the Station

Officer of the Maabang Police Station, Inspector Addo and his men, one Charles,

attacked and manhandled him. It took the intervention of some people around to save

him from the hands of the police men.

As human rights watchers and defenders, the HRRN cannot sit aloof to let these forms

of injustices and assaults on innocent journalists sweep under the carpet. We are

calling on the Police Administration, the Interior Minister, the Ashanti Regional

Police Commander and the Tepa District Police Commander to investigate the matter

and sanction the officers involved to serve as a deterrent to would be officers.

Signed:

Fred Tettey Alarti-Amoako

Brong Ahafo Regional President, Human Rights Reporters’ Network (HRRN)