The lawyer for the 46 Stop Galamsey protesters who were arrested on September 23, 2024, has revealed that an order from above to the Ghana Police Service is preventing him from seeing his clients.
Prince Ganaku expressed that law and order are not at play in the arrest of the protesters but a show of power that has relegated the essence of the law.
He said “Lawyers have gone to the police station to see their clients, and there’s an order from above that nobody should be allowed to see anybody. This is not about enforcing the law. It has never been about enforcing the law”.
The lawyer pointed out that the police already planned to act in bad faith towards the demonstrators hence the reason it secured an ex parte injunction two days to the protest.
According to him “If they were acting in good faith, they would have gone to court three months ago. What they chose to do was wait, act in bad faith, and go to court two days before the protest to get an ex parte injunction.”
Lawyer Ganaku emphasized that the police service are more of abusing fundamental human rights and unlawful practices than any other institution in the country.
Speaking JoyNews yesterday he added “If I should mention the institution that abuses their power in this country, you know who comes to mind? It is the Ghana Police Service. So this is not about enforcing the law because there is nobody more lawless than the Ghana Police Service.”
He roped in the court saying “The courts are, in a sense, complicit in endorsing the tactics of the police. The Supreme Court has already settled the issue of the right to protest, yet we still have the police overreaching and trying to make themselves regulators of a right that’s inherent in all of us, with the tacit and express endorsement of the court.”
He stressed it is a way employed by the government of the day to silence Ghanaians, warning that military interventions are always triggered by a culture of silence.
“You don’t want a system where people internalize their frustration and feel as though the entire government machinery is against them. That is a recipe for disaster” he noted.
