Tema, July 16, - The Commission
on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) has asked officers of the
Ghana Police Service and other national security agencies not to torture suspects.
Dr Isaac Annan, Director, Human
Rights, CHRAJ, giving the advice, said security officials must be mindful and
be guided by the Rwandan Guidelines on Human Rights in arresting, detaining and
arraigning suspects before the court.
Dr Annan gave the advice on the
sidelines of a day’s sensitization programme for 105 police personnel in the
Tema Police Region on Human Rights Intervention for Key Populations, People
Living with HIV (PLHIV) and Tuberculosis (TB) Patients.
He said Ghana was a signatory to
the United Nations Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or
degrading Treatment or Punishment, therefore officers must endeavour not to
contravene it.
Article one of the Convention
states in part, “Torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether
physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as
obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him
for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having
committed, or intimidating or coercing him..”
He noted that torture in this
context was the exercise of coercive power of state by the police or any
security officer indicating that any act from the officers that took away the
dignity of the suspects constituted torture.
According to him, “As a public
officer, you have the power to do your work but in doing so, you must make sure
that you don’t infringe on the rights of persons,” adding that “If you slap the
person, use unreasonable force and put the person in a situation, maybe in a
corner and do not have access to basic things, no access to food, medication or
his lawyers, that is torture”.
Dr Annan urged any person who had
been tortured in any form to seek redress at the courts or lodge a report at
CHRAJ as it was against the laws of Ghana.
He also encouraged public
officers especially police officers to report to his outfit when discriminated
against or some administrative injustice are meted against them by their
superiors or civilians.
There has a number of alleged
torture cases against the police, the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI)
and other state officers with the recent one being the accusation of torture of
ModernGhana. Com journalists by the BNI.
GNA
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