Punish those who mistakenly deported Aisha Huang – Kwaku Azar

Lawyer and Professor of Accounting, Kwaku Asare( Kwaku Azar) has argued that if the people who mistakenly deported the galamsey queen, Aisha Huang are not punished, the President’s admission that her deportation was a mistake is needless.

“Admitting that ‘Aishanomics’ was a mistake is meaningless unless those who made the mistake, which was a serious affront to the criminal justice system, are held accountable…,” he wrote in a Facebook post sighted by MyNewsGh.com.

Responding to a question from a Ghanaian resident in the US state of Colorado at a Princeton University forum during his visit to the United States of America, the President admitted that the deportation of the Chinese national who has alleged ravaged forests and polluted rivers through her illegal mining activities was a mistake.

“So, it’s a first step… I think the decision that was made to deport the Aisha woman on hindsight was a mistake and that is why that procedure has been stopped,” the President stated.

But for Professor Kwaku Asare, the persons involved in the deportation of Aisha Huang have to be punished otherwise the President’s admission is meaningless.

Aisha Huang was arrested in May 2017 by officials of the Ghana Immigration Service in a raid on her illegal activities at Bopotenten in the Ashanti region.

She was charged with three counts of contravening Ghana’s mining laws. But in December 2018, she was deported after the State filed a nolle prosequi so as to discontinue the case.

She was deported via an Ethiopian Airways flight after government said she had been living in Ghana with forged travel documents.

Justifying why the state had to deport the Chinese national, the Senior Minister Yaw Osarfo Marfo while, addressing some concerns of Ghanaians in the diaspora at a town hall meeting on April 18, 2019, revealed that, “Putting [Aisha Huang] in jail in Ghana is not going to solve your money problem. It is not going to make you happy or me happy.”

“We have a very good relationship with China. The main company that is helping develop the infrastructure system in Ghana is Sinohydro, it is a Chinese Company. It is the one that is going to help process our bauxite and provide about $2 billion to us. So when there are these kinds of arrangements there are other things behind the scenes. There are many other things beyond what we see in these matters and everybody is wide awake. The most important thing is that we established regulations and we are protecting our environment. That is far more important than one Chinese woman who has been deported back to her country,” he explained further.