The Ghana flag
On 27 July 2023, the Parliament of Ghana passed a law criminalising the declaration, accusation and naming or labelling of another person as a “witch.”
Less than a month later (on 24 August 2023, to be exact) Joy News reported that the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, had been taken to task by the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAG), for not yet signing the bill into law by giving it his “assent”.
I marvelled when I saw the report criticising the President for being tardy with his assent.
I told myself: “Yieee! What a strange country we live in!"
What had astounded me was that for over ten years, I had been conducting a campaign to get the Ghana Police Service and the Attorney-General’s office to explain to the Ghanaian public, why the prosecution of a group of individuals for burning alive, a 72-year-old woman, had been stopped. CHRAJ had not uttered a word on the issue, as far as I knew!
The old woman, Madam Ama Hemma, had been accused of witchcraft after being found on a bed, in a house where no one knew her.
Obviously, she suffered from DEMENTIA and had lost her way (something common with dementia patients).
She had gone into the wrong house while looking for her son!
And for that, kerosene was poured on her and she was set alight. She died 24 hours later.
Madam Ama Hemma's death occurred on 20 November 2010. The details of the story were so horrific that the Daily Graphic led its front page with the story. The report was illustrated with a terrifying, picture of her half-naked body, (with her burns showing.)
The details can be retrieved from www.wikipedia.com, where a whole page is devoted to the awful story).
The Ghana Police Service were admirably prompt in arresting those who took part in the murder and giving the public information about what had emerged from their investigation into the incident.
But after taking the suspects to court thrice or so, the public heard ABSOLUTELY NOTHING MORE about the case.
Never, in the almost six decades that I’ve practised journalism, have I seen a more blatant disregard for public opinion, than I have seen with the cessation of prosecution on this matter.
Outraged, I have, since 2010, written a host of articles, both in the local and overseas media, deploring the police silence on the issue.
My reason is that a great opportunity has been missed for educating the public on alleged witchcraft, as well as dementia.
Not only that: the matter ticks all the boxes that signify contempt for public opinion by officialdom.
The police and the prosecution service do exercise their prosecutorial powers in a manner that seems to them to be proper, yes.
But they also have a clear DUTY to inform the public about why they have acted in a particular way. Otherwise, they PUZZLE the public.
You see when the public has no inkling of the thought processes of the prosecutors, they INVENT untrue stories about their motives! Is that in the public interest?
I have kept asking the police and the AG’s Department to, at the very least, state their side of the matter. The public might not agree with them, but in a democracy, we cannot all think alike, can we?
I have been hoping that there would be a public outcry, calling out the Minister of the Interior, the Attorney-General, and the Inspector-General of Police, over their silence on the issue.
But most of the otherwise vociferous "leaders of public opinion", have ignored my campaign.
What about my journalistic colleagues? Nothing doing, I am afraid!
But it was CHRAJ whose silence shocked me the most.
About the Commission, I said this to CHRAJ:
“If no public explanation of the cessation of the prosecution is forthcoming, then, in committing similar crimes, the criminals can assure themselves that they are doing something that an amorphous group of “higher authorities” in the society would approve of! In other words, a climate of tacit connivance would come to exist between members of society and potential criminals. Vigilantism against so-called witchcraft could threaten public order.
"Thus, the possibility of thereby encouraging imitative or “mimic” crimes, cannot be dismissed.
"That is why I've written and written and written about the dangers of not prosecuting Madam Hemma's alleged murderers and bringing them to justice".
l described as "bizarre", the fact that although Madam Hemma's case had been well publicised, the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) which was created in 1993 as an independent institution designed to “protect fundamental human rights and freedoms in Ghana”, had not, to my knowledge, asked the police anything about Madam Hemma's case!
“If CHRAJ really “exists to build on and improve on governance, democracy, integrity, peace and social development across the nation”, does it think that looking on unconcerned when acts of murder are not adequately prosecuted, can guarantee the human rights of Ghanaians? Isn't the right to life the most important of all human rights?" I asked.
CHRAJ and the other organisations that often go to the aid of educated members of the society whose rights are trampled upon should make their work also relevant to the disadvantaged sections of our society, I maintain.
It appears, thank God, that Parliament has realised that the maltreatment of alleged witches is losing Ghana the respect of the international community. Government
That’s why a Bill has been passed making it an offence to label people as “witches” and maltreat them.
Hooray! The Bill was, as I have stated above, passed by Parliament on 27 July 2023. However, in less than a month, CHRAJ was already criticising the President for not giving his assent to it!
In 13 years, CHRAJ did not find the voice to even ask the Ghana prosecution authorities to explain why they had stopped prosecuting the alleged murderers of Madam Ama Hemma, but in one month, it has felt concerned enough to criticise the President for not assenting to the Bill, whom is CHRAG kidding? Should we commend CHRAJ?
Only the Ga language can adequately give expression to what I think of that notion: Anokwale mpo! [Oh yeah?]
