Arise Ghana demo: We are not afraid of guns, we are not afraid of anything – Gyamfi
Arise Ghana demo: We agreed with the Police to close demo at 8 pm – Gyamfi
Govt attempting to frustrate Arise Ghana demo – Samy Gyamfi alleges
National Communications Officer of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Sammy Gyamfi, has said that the Arise Ghana Coalition will resist any attempts by the Ghana Police Service to impede its intended demonstration.
According to him, the Police and the organisers of the demonstration, including himself, had an agreement on the demonstration, only for the Police to come out with a statement saying something different.
Speaking in a 3news interview monitored by GhanaWeb, Sammy Gyamfi added that Arise Ghana was cooperating with the Police and had made several compromises to agree with the Police on ending their demonstration at 8:00 pm.
“… we told the Police that because of the length of our speeches, the demonstration may go beyond 6:00 pm and we have made ample arrangement for lighting… and you (the Police) have agreed with us that we should close at 8:00 pm. If DCOP Suraj (Director of Operations at the Police) is listing to me, come out and deny whether you are not the one who proposed 8:00 pm as closure time for this demonstration.
“The demonstration will come off, and it will be peaceful. If Dampare wants to be violent, if he wants to be unprofessional like some have been, and he wants to attack peaceful demonstrators, we are not afraid of guns. We are not afraid of anything.
“If he (IGP George Akuffo Dampare) likes, he should kill all of us. Mark my words, this demonstration will come on… (if not) then they should prepare for a massacre – a broad daylight massacre,” he said.
He alleged that the government was behind the change in behaviour of the Police to frustrate the demonstration.
The Ghana Police Service has indicated that it has filed a suit in court for the determination of the duration of the planned demonstration by Arise Ghana Coalition.
According to the Police, the suit it filed was necessitated by the lack of agreement with the organisers of the demonstration on when the protest should start, and the time it should end.
In a statement released on June 26, 2022, the Police indicated that it wanted the demonstration to start early so that it could end before nightfall which the organisers were not in agreement with.
Main issues underpinning the protest
According to a recent statement by Arise Ghana, its historic two-day demonstration, which is scheduled for Tuesday, June 28, is primarily to protest persistent and astronomical hikes in fuel prices by the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government that has imposed excruciating economic hardships on Ghanaians.
It said it was also to protest the imposition of the obnoxious E-Levy on the already-burdened Ghanaian people by the insensitive Akufo-Addo/Bawumia Government and demand a full-scale and bi-partisan parliamentary probe into COVID-19 expenditures.
Others are to protest the grabbing of State lands by officials of the Akufo-Addo/Bawumia government, particularly the de-classification of huge portions of the Achimota Forest Reserve.
The rest are to protest the increased rate of police brutalities and state-sponsored killing of innocent Ghanaians, as well as the growing culture of human rights abuses under the watch of President Akufo-Addo and Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia and demand the total cancellation of the fraudulent “Agyapa” deal.
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