The Movement for Change, a group of young ladies in the Nkwanta Community Senior High School has joined the chorus of condemnation over the lynching of the 90-year-old Akua Denteh in the West Gonja District of the Savannah Region.
Akua Denteh was on last Thursday, June 23, 2020 beaten to death by some member of the Kafaba community accusing her of being a witch who is responsible for the lack of development in the area.
In the Press Statement copied Awake News, the Movement of Change said “It is sardonic how the glorious gift of old age from God has become a curse in our ‘modern’ society and the heavy cross of cruelty that is laced with it.”
The Movement has since called on the traditional authorities and the various sector leaders to act aptly to “curb this happening. We cannot wait , fold our arms and allow the lives of the aged women to be taken by baseless divination.”
Read the full statement:
It is sardonic how the glorious gift of old age from God has become a curse in our ‘modern’ society and the heavy cross of cruelty that is laced with it.
How strange it is that Kafaba society has hanged menacingly the burden of old age which ought to be a blessing on the neck of the 90-year-old Akua Denteh? Is life no longer a gift from God? Why has this precious jewel become a curse? This is borne out of superstition. Our society needs a practical re-orientation! Superstitious beliefs need to be worked on. It has now become a threat to human race. Hmm!
On Thursday 23rd July, 2020, the nonagenarian was lynched by the sadistic hands of the inhabitants of Kafaba. The angry women killed her in a gruesome glee state. On that fateful day, a fetish priestess (a re-branded witch) divined and called her a witch which culminated in her lynching.
Probably, to them, she has overstayed her existence on the blue marble planet earth. This heinous and unwarranted divination brought like-minded people to the scene who watched this poor woman die as a helpless underdog. The hapless and helpless underdog was left stranded. She did not know her end was near. She became a scapegoat and the vindictive women molested, dehumanized and flashed life out of her like a miscarriage. She was kicked, slapped and flogged mercilessly in a gruesome. This unfortunate statement of the fetish priestess is at best a rape on human right. This act is inhuman, abhorrent, heinous and barbaric. Strange enough, the very women we defend, fight for equal rights are themselves enemies to this call.
One will want to know if spiritual matters are handled physically? If truly Grandma Akua Denteh is a witch, aren’t other spiritual leaders like pastors in that community who can deliver her from witchcraft? Who forms opinions on one statement? What is the veracity of the statement? Is the priestess herself not using witchcraft? If she is indeed a witch, is the constitution no longer supreme? Did our constitution allow witches to be killed? This baseless divination is borne out of superstition. How can one witch condemn another witch? Why was the woman not given time to defend herself?
It stands to reasons that there are myriads of helpless old women who have suffered this obnoxious fraudulent divinations form of treatment in other societies.
Shall we as a country then sit and watch many lives suffer? Never! We enjoin the law enforcement agencies to bring the culprits to book and equally strengthen their education
The traditional authorities and the various sector leaders must act aptly to curb this happening. We cannot wait , fold our arms and allow the lives of the aged women to be taken by baseless divinations.
We urge relatives to aptly cater for and defend the aged. We want to put on record though it is audibly audible to the deaf and visible to the blind that once people grow old, they tend to behave childlike and such behaviours should never be taken for sorcery.
Movement for change as a group bleeds profusely because it is our core mandate to put smiles on faces of the helpless, seek justice for the vulnerable and defend the weak.
We make a clarion call on society to desist from these acts. Life is a gift from God.
By: Efo Korsi Senyo / awakenewsroom.com