Military swoop at Ashaiman 'doesn't make sense' - Kwesi Pratt on brutalities

Editor-in-Chief of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr. has resented the Military High Command sanctioning Tuesday’s operation at Ashaiman following the killing of a soldier, 22-year-old Imoro Sherrif.

The young recruit's body was found in a pool of blood in the Ashaiman community on Tuesday.

His death caused the Military to invade the community, beating the residents mercilessly and capturing over 100 of them to their base.

Reacting to the military action, Kwesi Pratt emphasized that it was not their duty to storm the community and that their operation was absolutely needless.

To him, such operations shouldn't be encouraged stating it doesn't augur well for the nation.

"If we are to go by this principle that because a soldier has been killed and we find his corpse somewhere, soldiers have the right to go there and do what these soldiers went to do and so we extend this principle, can we live in Ghana? We can't live here. What if we also find a doctor dead somewhere, does it mean doctors also have a right to load their syringes with poison and poison patients? Does it make sense?", he snapped.

"In fact, the whole operation shouldn't have taken place. They should have used proper investigative institutions and systems to investigate the matter," he asserted.

To those arguing in favour of the Military exerting what they term as "minimum force" on the residents, Mr. Pratt asked; "Where from the minimum force? What's the need for this minimum force when the person has surrendered, when the person is lying on the ground, when the person is not resisting?"

"Minimum force is applied when the person is resisting," he stressed.