CAMPAIGN TO CLOSE WITCH CAMPS IN GHANA INITIATED
The Humanity Magazine,Ogondtour and Radio Kejetia have called on northern leaders and civil societies to join the campaign for the closure of witch camps in the northern parts of Ghana to end the maltreatment and abuse of innocent women who are wrongly accused of being witches and to reunite them with their communities.
Witch camps are common in the Northern part of Ghana. These camps are settlements where old women alleged to be possessing supernatural powers for harming people are kept after they have been banished from their communities.
Speaking in an interview, Mr. Nurudeen Thompson said, the avoidable death of Madam Akua Danteh who was accused of witchcraft was unfortunate, stressing that ‘its pure ignorance that led to the lynching of the 90-year-old Grandmother Akua Denteh and others and it’s about time for the public to appreciate the reality of how the brain slows down after being subjected to shock, trauma, stress, and other related challenges’’
Mr. Nurudeen Thompson, a social activist, who is currently using the power of sports to create the awareness and prevention of Dementia on social media explained that dementia affects everyone differently, but it commonly diminishes the victim’s abilities such as language, recognition, memory, purposeful movement, sensory perception, and reasoning. Any changes in these psychomotor skills can signal damage to the brain.
He further admonished what he referred to as ‘profiling our precious but innocent mothers as witches’. According to him, the confessions as claimed by their assailants are all borne by the victim’s inability to connect with the right frame of mind because of dementia with some mentally ill which is a problem in Ghana.
The most accused people of being witches are widows who are accused by relatives of killing their husbands through their witchcraft to take control of their husband’s possessions. Whilst others have been accused of using black magic to cause misfortunes in their community and barren women are blamed for eating the flesh of their babies.
Most of the accused are older women, single mothers, widows and unmarried women who do not fit the category that their community identifies as desirable. Besides lacking a male figure or husband to protect them making it easy for their communities to cast them out to these cruel camps.
The programs manager of Radio Kejetia Hawawu Majeeda called on civil societies to help sensitize the public on the non-existence of witchcraft.
We believe this campaign will help protect the rights and lives of innocent and vulnerable people in our society. Therefore, I would like to implore the powerful media, community leaders, and civil societies to strengthen the campaign against witchcraft and instant justice or mob attacks in Africa. Adding that ’ ’programs are made to create witch camp shops to empower the women into beads, bracelets, necklace, baskets making to support their livelihood as way of accepting back to their community.