Death of Dr. Chris Asher

The death is reported of Dr. Chris Asher (Snr,) one time Editor-in- Chief of the Palaver Newspaper, on the17th of April 2008 at around 10.00am at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra, Ghana. The erudite journalist, lawyer and ardent critique of military adventurism in Ghana and Africa succumbed to heart disease and gout. He was 72.

He his children include Zilpa Mimi Asher, Interior Decorator, London UK; Barbara Asher Principal, Commercial Service Institute, Cape Coast Ghana; Bernard Asher, Lecturer at Guildford College of Higher Education, Surrey, England UK (a Columnist on Ghanaweb and Modernghana.com); Christian Asher, Accra Ghana and Louisa Asher of Sierra Leone.

Dr. Asher, a citizen of Agona Nsaba and Osurase in the Central Region of Ghana, founded and published the Palaver Newspaper and the Western Tribune in the late 1960s.

As a champion of democracy and freedom of the press he had more than his fair share of run-ins with the Acheampong government in the 70s which led to his imprisonment and upon his release (without charge) was mordantly critical of the subsequent AFRC putsch. He was instrumental in the ushering in of democratic dispensation of the Limann government at which time his rift with Jerry Rawlings deepened as a result of his increasingly vitriolic condemnation of military interference in Ghanaian politics in general and Rawlings in particular.

Understandably, Asher was one of the first targets of the sophomore putsch by Rawlings in 1981. His residence at Kanda in Accra was raided at the small hours of the morning on the 4th December 1982 amidst a hail of gunfire but he had managed to flee the country, first to Togo and then into exile in the UK. Inadvertently the UK became his country of domicile for the next 22 years where he also founded and published a weekly: The Africa Weekly and World Report. He returned to Ghana in 2003 after being invited by the National Reconciliation Committee to testify against the atrocities of the P(NDC) and the confiscation of his assets. Sadly as at his death the compensation due him, amounting to some 500,000,000 old Ghana cedis being the approximated total of his confiscated assets, had still not been remitted to him by the NPP government. In Ghana, Asher again revived his Palaver newspaper under the new name The Original Palaver in 2004 and continued as its Editor-in Chief until his death in April 2008.

Dr. Chris Asher’s less noble brother, Mr. Chris Asher Jnr, also a lawyer, who also testified at the NRC in Ghana about the killing of the three Ghanaian judges in the early days of the so-called Rawlings Revolution has, however, a checkered history. After his, dramatic performance at the NRC under the aegis of the NPP government and under the so-called “safe passage” that allowed him to return to the country under immunity, an outcry for his indictment and trial for the alleged murder of one Ebenezer Ofori Atta over a land dispute in the 1980s by the latter’s family led to his rather unceremonious elopement to his place of domicile. Since then the family of the deceased has called for his extradition into Ghana to stand trial. Mr. Asher Jnr, who broke jail in the 1980s from the Nsawam High Security Prison under circumstances that was nothing short of the miraculous, is reported to be domiciled in either UK or the USA.

In 2005 the Legal Aid Committee filed a writ for Asher Jnr’s indictment at an Accra High Court and an arrest warrant is pending against him to this day. It remains to be seen if he will return to Ghana on the occasion of his brother’s death and whether the NPP government will welcome his arrival with handcuffs or an olive branch.

In the meantime the mortal remains of Dr. Chris Asher have been deposited at the 37 Military Hospital morgue in Accra whiles preparations are made by his family for his burial.

MAY HIS LONGSUFFERING SOUL REST IN PEACE!

BY EMMANUEL PENNY FREELANCE JOURNALIST ACCRA, GHANA.