The Ranking Member of Parliament Committee on Defense and Interior, Honorable James Agalga has questioned why the state is still keeping some victims of the Garu and Tempane military invasion and brutalities in Accra without giving access to their lawyers.
According to the Member of Parliament for Builsa North Constituency in the Upper East Region, the denial of lawyers for those individuals arrested by state institutions is a clear infringement of their fundamental right as enshrined in the 1992 constitution of Ghana.
He thus called on the Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Honourable Alban Kingsford Sumana Bagbin to order the release of the individuals who were reportedly arrested and brought to Accra.
“Mr. Speaker, listening to the Honorable Mahama Ayariga for a moment, I thought he was making a prayer for bail for the victims who were brutalized by the military and airlifted to Accra. Even though Mr Speaker is not sitting as a judge I will urge him to grant his prayer. You have the power to do so given that the suspects who were flown from Garu to Accra have been victims of brutality. I think Mr Speaker have the power to order that they be released immediately”.
James Agalga
James Agalga Condemns Military Brutalities Against Civilians
The former Deputy Minister for Interior under the erstwhile John Mahama and the National Democratic Congress administration from 2013 to 2017 further bemoaned the rampant incidents of military brutality against civilians in recent times.
Again, Honorable James Agalga expressed regret at how the Ghana armed forces have won all the accolades internationally owing to the kind of leadership they mostly displaced when they are deployed to international peacekeeping operations but are not able to replicate the same kind of leadership, discipline, professionalism when they are engaged on internal operations.
According to him the reason for the inability of the members of the Ghana Armed Forces to live up to expectations when engaged in internal operations is as a result of the types of orders that are issued to them.
“First of all who are the people that issued these orders; Mr Speaker listening to the fact? Was it necessary to deploy the army to Garu in the first place? A vehicle was fired at a Police Station, and the Police returned fire and the people who had gathered around the Police Station took to their heels, so therefore the threat have been effectively neutralised. So the question is who issued the order for the military to besiege Garu, Tempane, and Puri? Who issued those orders”.
James Agalga
Moreover, the Builsa North legislator indicated that the District Chief Executive of the Garu District Assembly who is the Chairperson of the District Security Council was completely not aware of the operation carried out by the military officers in his jurisdiction, a situation he described as very ‘bizarre’.
He expressed his disdain at the level of brutalities and assault that were meted out to the residents of Garu, Tempane in the Upper East Region.
“But even we all know that even in a warzone if the people of Garu were designated as such, there are certain principles that ought to have guided the operation of our armed forces. The principle of proportionality. A weapon was fired at a distance, nobody died, and nobody sustained injuries. Now look at the pictures the Honorable Lardy displayed, and look at the level of injuries suffered by the people of Garu.
“Mr. Speaker those acts are despicable. The Honorable Mahama Ayariga talked about the Bill of Rights in our constitution, it is not for nothing. Our Constitution is supposed to be a living organism which ought to be respected by all including the Ghana Armed Forces and I know that in their training there are components of human rights, so whoever ordered them to go to Garu ought to have known this”.
James Agalga
He thus urged the Speaker of Parliament to order for investigations to be conducted by the House to fine-tune those who are responsible for the unfortunate incident that happened in Garu and Tempane on Sunday, October 29 2023.
The military brutalities occurred in the early hours of Sunday, October 29, in retaliation for an earlier attack on national security officers deployed to the area on a counterterrorism operation by the residents of the communities.
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