Police Again Disallows #FixTheCountry Protest Against Police Brutality On Journalists, Citizens

The Ghana Police Service (GPS) has for the second time in less than one month refused to allow the youth group planning to organise a protest against police brutality of Ghanaian journalists and extrajudicial execution and punishment of citizens.

The group had scheduled May 22, 2021, for the planned protest dubbed “March With Caleb”, but the Police in an official response to the convenors of the protest said they cannot provide security to the group during the protest and hence they cannot mount a demonstration which had invoked the constitutional rights of citizens to protest oppression in the society.

Also, the Police claim one of the reasons for preventing the group from protesting was because another mushroom youth group, #FixTheCountry, was in the Supreme Court contesting the security agency’s refusal to allow them to protest against poor management of the Ghanaians economy.

“We are convinced and reliably advised that the Police do not have the authority to grant or reject our right to protest under the Constitution. We are also convinced and reliably advised that the Police cannot use their responsibilities under Section 2 of the Public Order Act to “direct the routes of the event…to prevent obstruction of pedestrian or vehicular traffic,” the conveners of the “March With Caleb” stated in a release condemning the despotic action of the Ghana Police Service.

The youth movement has threatened to take up the matter legally. “…We have advised our lawyers to reply to the Police,” the statement hinted. 

The now-popular organic youth movement under the auspice of a heterogeneous youth movement called #FixTheCountry had scheduled the “March With Caleb” latest torture of Caleb Kudah, the Accra-based CITI FM presenter who was ruthlessly tortured by operatives of the National Security Agency for secretly taking pictures of abandoned vehicles procured with public funds.

The March With Caleb is based on a plethora of cases of brutality against journalists and citizens, including some 38 cases of torture, attacks and hounding of journalists by security agents since 2015. 

The attacks on journalists in their line of duty include the assassination of Ahmed Hussein Suale who was shot at close range by assassins after the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong had put a bounty on his head.

Suale was an undercover journalist who was investigating a multi-million-dollar bribery scandal involving the Jubilee House. The undercover piece captured in the

Number 12 documentary revealed that the disgraced former President of the Ghana Football Association, Kwasi Nyantakyi has hinted at a US$5million bribed destined for President Akufo Addo, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and some ministers. 

The group also cited the gunpoint arrest on April 1, 2021, of Whatsup News Editor-in-Chieh, David Tamakloe, who was investigating a sensitive national interest story. 

They also catalogued over two dozen extra-judicial killings and prosecution of perceived criminals by the security agencies within the same period.

Meanwhile, the fluid nature of the powerful youth movement has sent shivers through the corridors of power, as an earlier demonstration by the group this month was clandestinely suppressed by the Ghana Police Service. But the angry youth went ahead to the biggest online protest in Ghana and one of the biggest in Africa.

The youth group made up of a voluntary collation of people from all walks of life that are aggrieved with the messy socio-political situation in the country, have vowed not to relent in their plans to stage sustained protests to have the mess in the country fixed.