THE police and the students of Commonwealth Hall, University of Ghana, have given different accounts of a confrontation that ensued on Saturday when the students organised a float in Accra Central to mark their Hall Week.
The students have alleged that they were shot at by the police in the confrontation, maiming one student, while others were brutally molested. They are calling on the Minister of the Interior to institute an investigation into the confrontation.
"Some students were dragged 200 metres on the ground to the police station," the students said at a news conference on campus yesterday.
They described the explanation of the Accra Regional Police Commander, ACP Douglas Akrofi Asiedu, as a misrepresentation of the events that led to a clash and asked him to render "an unqualified and naked apology to the hall".
The president of the Junior Common Room (JCR), Evans Owusu Amankwah, who addressed the news conference, said ACP Asiedu’s comments on an Accra-based radio station, that the students pounced on an ice water seller leading to the clash, amounted to dragging the hard won reputation of the hall in the mud and also throwing dust into the eyes of the public by "misleading, misinforming and misrepresenting facts."
The JCR President while conceding that a student made what could have passed as a harmless statement said the policeman took issue with the student and arrested him.
He said as the policeman was finding it difficult to control the other students who insisted on getting their colleague released, he called for reinforcement rather than employing "a high level of professionalism to calm tempers."
Mr. Amankwah alleged that as soon as the reinforcement got to the scene, they started beating anyone in red Areeba T-shirts.
"They police amazingly started firing live bullets to disperse the unarmed students who were quietly waiting anxiously for the release of their colleagues who had been detained," he said adding that many students who were brutally molested were detained until the intervention of some state officials.
Mr. Amankwah called on the Minister of the Interior to institute an independent investigation into events that led to the clash.
However, the Accra Regional Police Public Affairs Officer, Inspector Clement Kweku Dompreh, told the Times yesterday that when a Police officer detailed to prevent hawking on the streets questioned why the students treated the water seller that way, one of the students hurled insults at him.
According to him, in the ensuing exchange of words between the students and the police, some of the students, threw stones at the police and in the process damaged the windscreen of a Mercedes Benz vehicle.
This, he said, angered the police who intervened and arrested and detained 30 of the students.
However, he said, they were released following the intervention of the Minister of the Interior, Albert Kan Dapaah, the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Joe Ghartey, who met with the Accra Regional Police Commander, Douglas Akrofi Asiedu, a representative of the University and the students leaders.
Inspector Dompreh said that although individuals and groups have the right to go on a float they must also respect the rights of others, especially security agencies who are there to maintain law and order.
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