GJA blasts police for protecting personnel over Journalist brutality

The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) is livid with the Ghana Police Service for failing to punish its personnel who brutally assaulted a Multimedia Journalist in March.

Latif Iddrisu was assaulted while covering the arrest of the Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Koku Anyidoho at the police headquarters.

Anyidoho was picked by the police on March 27 following his declaration that there will be a civil coup to remove President Akufo-Addo in the heat of the public outcry over the military cooperation agreement Ghana entered into with the United States. Parliament ratified the agreement with the US to man some installations in Ghana and also allow unrestricted access to a host of facilities and wide-ranging tax exemptions to the United States Military.

“Somebody should tell Nana Akufo-Addo that history has a very interesting way of repeating itself. On January 13, 1972 a certain Col. Ignatius Kutu Acheampong led a movement that removed the Progress Party from power. Busia was the Prime Minister and Akufo-Addo’s father was a ceremonial president. Somebody should tell Nana Akufo-Addo that history has a very interesting way of repeating itself,” the former presidential spokesperson threatened.

After four X-Ray examinations and a CT scan, doctors concluded that Latif Iddrisu had a fractured skull.

Addressing the media at a forum organized by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), the president of GJA Affail Monney disclosed that the association will petition the presidency over the matter.

He said the relationship between the police and the GJA is at lowest point because of the failure of the hierarchy of the Ghana Police to punish assaulters of Latif Iddrisu.

“In order to build and promote positive relations between the police and the media in the future, the two parties agreed at a meeting to organize joint training workshops and other programmes to enable journalists and police officers to appreciate each other’s roles better. Indeed, discussions at the meeting were very warm and the prospects of healthy police, media relations were very bright,” said Monney.

“However, those bright lights have been dimmed significantly because almost three months after the meeting with the police administration and four months after Latif had been assaulted the police are yet to report on the outcome of its investigations into the matter given the national and international interest this case had generated and more importantly the precarious health condition of Latif, we find the approach of the police investigation in this matter tardy,” he added.