Parish Priest of St. Patrick Catholic Church, Kwabenya-Atomic, Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Salifu has condemned the killing of a young soldier and last Tuesday’s military exercise at Taifa, a suburb of Ashaiman in the Greater Accra region.
Military personnel stormed Ashaiman on Tuesday, March 7, and brutalised anyone they came across following the supposed murder of a military officer in the area.
The military further rounded off over one hundred individuals who the Ghana Armed Forces described as suspects in connection with the murder of a 22-year-old service man Sherrif Imoro.
The priest in a Facebook post noted that both the killing of the young soldier and the response by the military cannot be right.
“What happened in Ashaiman cannot be right. It just cannot,” he said.
Although the action by the military was widely considered as a move to avenge the slain soldier, the Ghana Armed Forces in a statement released to the press explained that the exercise was an “intelligence-led operation.”
Meanwhile, the Commission for Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has condemned the move by the military discribing it as dehumanising.
Commissioner for Human Rights and Administrative Justice told Joy News’ Blessed Sogah that the exercise does not pass the test for an intelligence-led operation while adding that the military acted wrongly.
“Because of their personal interest they come (to Ashaiman), takeover the law and do what they want. I completely condemn it. It is degrading and dehumanizing treatment to put such persons who are going to their work arrest them, make them do press ups in mud, sitting down with all their clothing removed apart from some briefs is completely unacceptable and that this is exacted by the army of Ghana? It’s completely unacceptable,” he said.
Director of the Faculty of Academic Affairs and Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre, Professor Kwesi Aning has also slammed the Ghana Armed Forces for unleashing mayhem on residents of Ashaiman.
Speaking on Citi Prime News, the security analyst said “all crimes are punishable by law, but in punishing those crimes, we cannot take the law into our own hands.”
