NRC Denies Assisting Kweku Baako

The Public Affairs Director of the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), Ms. Annie Anipa, says the commission did not in any way give publicity to Mr. Sam Kweku Kakraba Baako, editor-in-chief of the Crusading Guide, when he appeared before it to testify last month.

It will therefore be misguided for anyone to say that the large turnout of people who thronged the Old Parliament House to listen to him was the handiwork of the commission.

Ms. Anipa corrected the impression, while answering questions during a one-day workshop on ''Community Mobilisation and Support for Victims and Survivors of Human Rights Abuses'' at Ho last Tuesday. According to the visibly disturbed director, ''the NRC does not even post names of witness on its notice board, let alone announce it.''

The director stressed, ''Let me correct this impression. Members of the commission were even surprised at the attendance that day. We don’t announce names of witnesses before they appear.''

Mr. Demanya, who is chairman of the Volta regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), had earlier insisted that he heard an announcement on Ghana Television (GTV) Breakfast Show programme prior to the NRC sitting earlier that day. Secondly, he said that the witness was given a far longer time on stage to give his account than others and felt it was not fair.

To these, Miss Anipa responded that it was likely one of Mr. Baako’s colleagues might have carried the news on air but certainly it was not the commission that did it. She also stated that all witnesses are allowed to vent out what is on their heart and that no time limit is given to witnesses.

Apart from that, the director revealed that the commission is particularly interested in specifics like whether someone’s human rights were abused and not the long account or narrative that goes with it.

Ms. Anipa was part of a team from Accra that attended the Ho workshop, where she gave a talk on ''National Reconciliation; the process so far.'' In her speech, she outlined the objectives, structure, functions, powers, benefits and time frame of the NRC.

Readers will recall that about five weeks ago, the Crusading Guide editor-in-chief gave an account of how Mawuli Goka, Kyereme Gyan and others narrated to him at the Usher Fort prison about how the tips of their genitals were either burnt or slit open in order to extract facts from them.

His revelation, which was corroborated by another editor, Ben Ephson, of the Daily Dispatch, has it that at a point, the flesh at the back of one of the suspects was allegedly cut and given to Mawuli Goka to eat. The chilling accounts and the kind of responses that greeted their narrations and the publications that followed them were given different interpretations in various quarters.