On Thursday, Police in Ghana detained 49 demonstrators protesting the cost of living and the economic crisis gripping the country. Among those held by the police were activists and some journalists who were covering the protests, which took place outside the main government building. Two BBC journalists said they were among several journalists detained by police, and have since been released.
The protesters dressed in black and red colours associated with the anti-government accused police of disrupting and abusing peaceful demonstrators as well as passers-by. Police said the protesters were banned from assembling there.
Economic crises and the worsening cost of living in the last five years have sparked mass upset in Ghana, a country once cast as a model economy in Africa.
However, security forces have often clamped down on protests that have been taking place with increasing frequency over the past two years.
Hundreds of protesters massed around the Jubilee House, Ghana’s presidential palace in the capital Accra were greeted by heavily armed officers.
A lawyer at a police station where protesters were held, who asked not to be named for security reasons, says the protesters were arrested purely for exercising their democratic right.
“The insanity is, the president comes from a legal background and has been involved in at least one very well-known demonstration,” the lawyer told pressmen, referring to President Nana Akufo-Addo’s past as a human rights lawyer and involvement in protests before he became president in 2016.
President Akufo-Addo’s government has blamed the country’s economic woes on the impact of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has contributed to rising inflation in several countries around the world.
