SOLDIERS BRUTALIZING, KILLING CIVILIANS - A DANGER TO ALL GHANAIANS 2ND JULY, 2021

Almost every few months, we hear of soldiers brutalizing someone. In more recent times, military brutality, certainly now isolated, rather than systemic, has crept back into the country with some predictable certainty.

Two people died while four others got injured after some protesting youth of Ejura Sekyedumase in the Ashanti Region clashed with the military and police this Tuesday morning.

Three days later, a viral video on social media yesterday showed armed military officers brutalising some residents of Wa, the Upper West Regional capital, allegedly over a missing mobile phone.

The Public Relations Officer of the Upper West Regional Coordinating Council, Cletus Awuni was also beaten by the officers.

“They hit my head about three times and my back, because they used the taser on my hands and my chest”, he said.

In another incident, an alleged military assault on some civilians in Damongo in the West Gonja municipality of the Savannah Region on June 1, 2021 left one person in critical condition and 17 others, including a military officer, with minor injuries.

It would be recalled that a similar incident occurred in 2016 in the Northern Region, where a 16-year-old errand boy of some soldiers at the military quarters at Shishegu was beaten to a pulp by two officers.

The officers claimed that the boy had stolen their mobile phone.

On Sunday, April 6, 2020, Eric Ofotsu, also known as No Yawa, a resident of Taabo Line in the Ashaiman municipality, was fatally shot by a soldier.

Eric Ofotsu was allegedly killed by a soldier who was part of a combined military and police team detailed at Ashaiman to enforce a lockdown

Ofotsu's death prompted the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) to commence investigations into the incident.

On April 5, in the Aboaba Akurem community in south-central Kumasi city, a group of soldiers attacked and briefly detained Yussif Abdul Ganiyu, a reporter with the German government-funded Deutsche Welle news agency and the local privately owned Zuria FM.

This must not be allowed to go unchecked.

When our fellow citizens are brutalised by those who are supposed to protect them, we must demand justice.

This is because silence in the face of brutality only goes to embolden the aggressor.

If a tally were made of the number of deaths, that number will overwhelmingly reveal that helpless civilians have withstood the brunt.

We cannot, as a nation, look on unconcerned when soldiers brutalise people, no matter how difficult the assignments we give them.

The military ought to be perhaps one of the very few, if not the only, disciplined institutions where people know what their purpose is or ought to be and work singularly toward that purpose.

The military brass needs to realise that the military as an institution loses its legitimacy when it allows the miscreants in their midst to turn their guns and fists on people whose very sweat and toil buys them their free uniform, boots, and guns and also feeds them.

Soldiers are combatants trained for battle. Using them for duties such as crowd control and demonstrations exposes their combatant nature.

The Finder is of the opinion that we must avoid using soldiers, who lack the skills, during demonstrations.

 Source; ELVIS DARKO - Editor, The Finder Newspaper