Thirty-Five Years Ago Yesterday

The voices of the persons who came knocking on the doors of the three high court judges and a retired Army Major were not those of ordinary citizens.

They were indeed persons with the authority to move about at a time when a curfew was in force. It was on June 30 June, 1982 and their objectives were clear as it is in military orders. Companies, Platoons and Sections are given orders to carry out. In the case of these men, they were asked to abduct the three high court judges and the retired Major and eliminate them.

They succeeded in doing so on the aforementioned date. It was a date in the country's history unlike any other by its sheer callousness and the great efforts employed to throw dust into the eyes of Ghanaians so the telltale pointers could be erased completely.

Yesterday's commemoration of the murder of these distinguished personalities especially the judges has a great significance on the national calendar.

It is over three decades since it took place. Children born in that year, now senior adults with vague or no memories at all about what took place except what they pick from history books and oral tradition.

As for the members of the bench, it is a day they can never forget as would the rest of the nation safe those with a hand in what happened.

There is no country without blots in their histories but the magnitude of such aberration varies. What happened in our case was laden in usual callousness especially when we consider the fact that one of the victims was breastfeeding her baby when she was abducted never to be seen again.

Her husband, a respectable lawyer, Koranteng Addow was certainly devastated when eventually it dawned upon him that his beloved wife had paid the ultimate price of death at the hands of devious persons acting upon the orders of persons at the helm.

We are told about how when the killers knocked on the door of the lactating woman, a house-help not sensing danger nodded that her madam was at home. If she had known she would have feigned, perhaps, any knowledge of that name. She did not know that those were killers sent by persons in authority to abduct and kill.

What a world. The setting up of a commission of enquiry into what happened neither placated the troubled hearts of Ghanaians nor the bereaved families.

Passwords required for curfew time movements were known only to persons associated with the junta. This and many other questions continue to agitate the minds of Ghanaians. The answers are available but that is all there is to it. God has a way of dealing with such situations.

It might take several years to come. Since our sense of time as mortals differ from God's we might be drawn into thinking that a thousand years is such a long time. The time shall come when the truth will be out.

If they had their way, those behind the murders would have abolished the celebration of the lives of the martyrs. They laid down their lives just so the rule of law shall endure.

Let our children and their children's offspring be taught the real history of the country – not the so-called pretentious rhetoric of a few persons who think they constitute the sole repository of the history of the nation.

Yesterday's commemoration was outstanding because for the first time since the date became part of the national calendar a sitting President and his Vice were in attendance.

The date has a special place in the heart of President Akufo-Addo knowing personally the victims of the murder, 35 years ago and indeed the real story.

Not even the efforts of the National Reconciliation Commission can launder their bad deeds. Let them come out and confess so perhaps they can enjoy some relief from the mental torture they are suffering unknowingly.

To murder human beings in such a manner and deny their remains any dignity is to state the least; so wicked an action, not belonging to the human kind. After several hours with no traces about their whereabouts and a source of embarrassment to the junta, the bodies were eventually found on July 1 1982 on the verge of decomposition.

God who moves in mysterious ways sent down a rain which did not make it possible for the fire set to consume their remains to do so.

Their bodies had been doused with petrol and set on fire but by divine intervention, raindrops that night quenched the burning bodies before they were discovered.

The late Chief Superintendent JJ Yidana who investigated the case suffered for doing his work so well. He too was sent to jail for trumped up charges.

As for the prosecution of Joachim Amartey Kwei, a member of the PNDC, L/Cpls Samuel Amedeka, Samuel Michael Senyah, Johnny Dzandu and Tekpor, the action prompts more questions whose answers are nowhere available for now.

The sermon by Very Reverend Emmanuel Aryee the Methodist Minister at the Ridge Church was fantastic when he said “Our well crafted constitution stipulates that the rule of law should be the bedrock of our democracy; however mob and instant justice continues to undermine the administration of justice in the country.

“Ghana is a naturally well resourced country with a lot of things to be pound of as a nation, we also have a myriad of challenges that militates against our national cohesion, progress and peace.

“Our casual attitude to work and our lateness to functions and places of work leave much to be desired, indiscipline on our roads; poor sanitation practices and the poor stewardship of our environment are all weakness in the national psyche of the Ghanaian,” Very Rev. Aryee stated.

By A.R. Gomda