Some youth in the Ejisu Municipality of the Ashanti Region of Ghana have expressed gratitude to the Member of Parliament for Ejisu Constituency, John Kumah for saving them from unlawful police custody.
Speaking to Crime Check Foundation (CCF) in Ejisu, the homeless unemployed youth bemoaned regular police arrests, which they say constitute a violation of their rights as the act affects their livelihoods and survival.
The young men narrated their discontentment to Crime Check Foundation (CCF) on 26 January 26 2022 during a community monitoring exercise in the Municipality with a Community Monitoring Team (CMT) constituted for the Municipality.
The exercise formed part of the “Decriminalizing Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy” project supported by the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA).
Narrating their story further, they said the police swoops on them are so rampant that on one occasion, they were at a drinking spot when the police suddenly appeared in a truck, and all they heard was that “catch them, catch them, catch them.”
They told the team all of them present at the time were rounded up into the moving truck and were taken to the Municipal Police station where they were remanded into custody.
They said took the intervention of the MP for Ejisu, John Kumah to rescue them from police custody as nothing incriminatory was found on them.
According to them, their only ‘crime’ perhaps, is that they have “guilty-looking faces or they hang around a drinking bar where they wait for opportunity to serve as assistants for commercial drivers or for some other menial jobs in the community.”
About the CCF-OSIWA Project:
The “Decriminalizing Vagrancy Laws and Advocacy project is being implemented in twelve (12) Metropolitan, Municipal and Districts Assemblies (MMDAs) across Greater Accra, Central and the Ashanti Regions of Ghana. The main aim of the project is to create an enabling environment for vagrants (including the homeless and other voiceless persons) to know, claim and exercise their rights to end criminalization of homelessness and poverty in Ghana. The intervention is consistent with Sustainable Development Goal #16.3: Justice for All by 2030 and an opinion ruling on 4th December, 2020, by the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights, that vagrancy laws or laws which tend to affect mainly the poor and homeless persons contravene the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.
About OSIWA:
Established in 2000, the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA) is a grant-making and advocacy organization focused on equality, justice, democratic governance, human rights and knowledge generation. It is part of the global network of Open Society Foundations spread across 37 countries around the world.
By Cosmos Akorli
