Don’t expect normal procedures when the military is called into action – Brigadier Aggrey Quarshie
The Director General of Public Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), Brigadier Eric Aggrey Quarshie has said that personnel from his outfit cannot be expected to act according ‘normal procedures’ when called into action.
According to him, the main objective when the military is deployed to troubled areas is to subdue the cause.
“I can assure you when you call the military in, don’t expect normal procedures. So the best thing is, don’t do things that will bring the military there. The military is not now coming to ask you ‘oh please why didn’t you respect the police’.”
“If you wanted to respect you would have respected the police and so, when I come in, issue of respect doesn’t come in anymore. Because we want to subdue whatever issues that are coming up,” he noted on Thursday while speaking at the National Public Relations and Communication Summit organized by the Institute of Public Relations (IPR), Ghana at Kwahu-Nkwatia in the Eastern Region.
The event was held under the theme ‘Staying Credible Through Rough Patches’.
It will be recalled that the military was condemned after some officers on Tuesday, March 7, stormed Ashiaman a suburb of Accra following the alleged stabbing to the death of their colleague by unknown assailants in the area.
In many videos shared on social media, Ghanaians saw some civilians flogged or manhandled by the military.
After the outrage on social media, the Ghana Armed Forces said the operation was merely a swoop in a man-hunt for the suspects responsible for the soldier’s death and not an act of vengeance.
A week later the Ghana Police Service revealed that the main suspects behind the murder had been arrested through their own intelligence operations.
Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of Ghana, Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua who condemned the military said the military’s abuse of residents in the Accra suburb goes against the country’s laws especially when the constitution clearly stipulates how citizens should be treated.
The lawyer of one of the victims of the military brutality in Ashaiman, Emmanuel Kumador, on March 16, said his client had died.
Also, the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana) entreated the government to investigate and sanction soldiers culpable in the ‘swoop’ at Ashaiman.
Meanwhile, Brigadier General Quarshie wants citizens to abide by the laws of the country in order to prevent a recurrence of the Ashaiman incident where military officers allegedly arrested and brutalized some residents following the killing of a soldier there.
“Most times getting people to lie down-and unfortunately that is what happened – is a way of segregating hardcore troublesome people from innocent ones. The idea is that the people who are causing the trouble will not lie down.”
“They will not, because they won’t take that instruction. In the case of Ashaiman, because it had rained once you go down, you are going inside the water. It was bad but it was one of the ways to separate the innocent ones from them,” he said.
Source: Ghana News
