Associate Professor at the School of Law, University of Ghana Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua has chastised the Ghana Police Service for its officers' action on Thursday, September 21 as a group of Ghanaians gathered to demonstrate.
He said the police acted in clear violation of the constitution by their action.
He was speaking on TV3‘s Ghana Tonight on Thursday, September 21 after a clash between the police and protesters led to arrests and brutalities.
About 56 of the protesters were arrested even when they had not begun to march to the Jubilee House as planned.
According to the police, an application had been filed earlier in the week to stop the demonstration. They had warned the public not to join any call to demonstrate, for that matter.
The organisers, however, denied being served any application, and even with that, they claimed the case has to be moved by the court first.
This Prof Appiagyei-Atua agrees with.
“The whole thing is that the case has not been called, service has not been effected, so let's supposed that service has been effected, the case has not been heard in court, so injunction has not been issued,” he argued, emphasising that going ahead with the demonstration, therefore, is not in violation of the law.
“You have to also look at the action of the police. If the injunction has not been issued and they feel that the demonstrators shouldn't have gone on demonstration, they cannot take the law into their own hands and prevent them, arrest them, molest them and so on.
“They have to go back to court for the court to make a determination that probably the demonstrators are in contempt of court, for example.”
He said for journalists, lawyers and other bystanders to be assaulted is a clear violation of their rights.
“So, it clearly tells you that the police acted in violation of the constitution and in violation of the Public Order Act.”
All those arrested on Thursday were released, according to one of the lawyers, Prince Gadaku.
Meanwhile, they have served notice of continuing the demonstration on Friday, September 22 as originally planned.
The group, Democracy Hub, had set three days – from Thursday, September 21 to Saturday, September 23 – to picket at the seat of government.