Ghana: News editor charged for “publishing false information”

Ato Kwamena Dadzie, news editor of Joy FM, an Accra-based independent radio station, was on July 15, 2010 charged with a criminal offence for refusing to reveal the station’s sources of information on a July 5 news item. The station had carried report to the effect that an umbrella body of local contractors, Ghana Real Estates Developers Association (GREDA), had been issued death threats to withdraw a petition that it had sent to Ghana’s parliament to oppose a controversial housing deal that the government of Ghana had entered into with a Korean company .

Dadzie told Media Foundation for West (MFWA) that he has been charged with “publishing information with the intention to cause fear or harm to the public or to disturb the public peace”, under Section 208 of the country’s Criminal Code of 1960.

The charge followed an interrogation by police personnel drawn from the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of the Ghana Police.

Dadzie is expected   to appear in court on July 21.

This is the second time that the police are preferring an outmoded charge of “publishing false information” against two citizens this year. On February 18, Nana Darkwa, an opposition  sympathizer  and   radio commentator,   was arrested by the police and remanded in prison custody for two weeks over comments he made on a radio station allegedly accusing Ghana’s former President Jerry John Rawlings  of  setting fire to his (Rawlings’s) own house. The case is in court.

MFWA is sad that the police is using this law which is inconsistent with the 1992 Constitution, which guarantees free expression of citizens. We demand that the charge against Dadzie should be dropped immediately and unconditionally.

MFWA reiterates our   call on all supporters of free speech to protest against the use of archaic laws to stifle free speech in Ghana by the country’s police.

For more information please contact:

Kwame Karikari (Prof)
Executive Director
MFWA
Accra
Tel: 233-30-22 4 24 70
Fax: 233-302-22 10 84
Email: mfwa@africaonline.com.ghThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , alerts@mediafound.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Website: www.mediafound.org 

- July 20, 2010 by Media Foundation For West Africa
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Source: www.mediafound.org/index.php (accessed on 21.07.10)