Law students petition CHRAJ, IGP over police brutalities

The national association of law students has called on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Commission on Human Right and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ) to investigate the  police brutalities meted out to its members during Monday’s demonstration.

The demonstration dubbed ‘open up legal education’ was to demand reforms in Ghana’s legal education system after another mass failure of the law exams was recorded this year.

According to the police, they had no knowledge the protesters will be heading to the Jubilee House in Accra to present a petition to the Presidency. 13 of the protesters were however arrested and released subsequently, with others getting injured.

Police fired rubber bullets and sprayed water from their cannons to disperse the crowd.

In a statement, the police justified their actions saying the demonstrators pelted them with offensive weapons. But in a sharp rebuttal, the students have however denied this claim.

The students want disciplinary actions taken against any officer who is found culpable in the brutality.

Meanwhile the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) has condemned the actions of the police against the protesters.

In a statement signed by the NPP General Secretary, John Boadu,

“while we accept the position of the Police that the demonstrators may have strayed outside the law, and were disrupting the normal usage of the public thoroughfare that passes in front of Jubilee House, we are, however, not convinced that the Police had to resort to such use of force and crowd controlling techniques to manage a crowd, mainly of students.

“The police must realize that, just like every other Ghanaian, they are also subject to law and ought to give confidence to the populace at all times that, in applying the law, they do so fairly to all manner of persons.”