Three Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) IMANI Africa, CDD-Ghana, and ACILA have called on the Attorney General to abandon the criminal prosecution of the Executive Director of the Alliance for Social Equity and Public Accountability (ASEPA) Mensah Thompson.
Mensah Thompson was arrested last week by the police after claiming that the relatives of the first family used the President Jet for shopping in London during the Christmas holidays.
However, the CSOs believe that, there are civil remedies for such infractions of the law and that criminalizing speech amounts to the reintroduction of the criminal libel regime, which had been abolished.
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“We implore the Attorney-General to discontinue the prosecution of Mr. Thompson and take steps to stop all persons acting under his authority from re-introducing in another guise the long-discredited and abolished criminal libel regime,” a press release from the CSOs said.
“We are deeply troubled by the growing use of the prosecutorial and judicial power of the State to punish criminally speech that allegedly falsely injures or damages the reputation of other persons or of an institution of state”, the statement added.
“Instructively, during the heyday of the criminal libel law in the 1990s, the criminal law was used in precisely the way it is now being used: to prosecute and punish journalists and public speakers for allegedly false or defamatory statements against certain family members or associates of the President”, the CSOs further added
The CSOs, however, warned the media and individuals “to tone down the inflammatory rhetoric that has contaminated our public square and airwaves, desist from knowingly or recklessly making or publishing false statements, and use, to the extent possible, the Right to Information Act and its processes to access information from public authorities”.”
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