(MFWA/IFEX) – Ghana’s Inspector General of Police (IGP), Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong, assured Ghanaian journalists on 17 February 2007 that the police service would give them the necessary protection to enable them to discharge their constitutional mandate of demanding accountability from public office holders. At a press briefing in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, Acheampong urged […]
(MFWA/IFEX) – Ghana’s Inspector General of Police (IGP), Patrick Kwarteng Acheampong, assured Ghanaian journalists on 17 February 2007 that the police service would give them the necessary protection to enable them to discharge their constitutional mandate of demanding accountability from public office holders.
At a press briefing in Kumasi, Ghana’s second largest city, Acheampong urged journalists to be fearless in going about their duties.
The IGP’s assurance comes at a time when Ghanaian journalists are under severe attack from various quarters, including non-state actors.
During 2006, the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) recorded at least 17 physical attacks on journalists in the country.
On 17 January 2007, Henry Addo, an investigative reporter for Metropolitan Television, an independent television station in Accra, was violently attacked by a group of “land guards” (a vigilante group), in Chorkor, a suburb of Accra (see IFEX alert of 14 February 2007).
On 9 February, Samuel Ennin, Ashanti Regional Chairman of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), and news editor of the local Ash FM radio station, was murdered in cold blood by unidentified gunmen. No arrests have been made and the motives of the killers are yet to be established (see alert of 12 February 2007).
