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Cyrus Degraft-Johnson and Alhassan Suhuyini, journalists of two Accra-based radio stations were on the night of July 9, 2009 violently assaulted by security personnel working for the city authority, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the incident occurred at about 21: 30 GMT in Shiashi, a suburb in the eastern part of Accra, where Degraft-Johnson, reporter of Joy FM, had gone to cover an ongoing demolition exercise by a combined team of AMA guards and police officers to rid the city of illegal structures.

Cyrus Degraft-Johnson and Alhassan Suhuyini, journalists of two Accra-based radio stations were on the night of July 9, 2009 violently assaulted by security personnel working for the city authority, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA).

Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA)’s correspondent reported that the incident occurred at about 21: 30 GMT in Shiashi, a suburb in the eastern part of Accra, where Degraft-Johnson, reporter of Joy FM, had gone to cover an ongoing demolition exercise by a combined team of AMA guards and police officers to rid the city of illegal structures.

Degraft-Johnson told the correspondent: “I was reporting live to the station, when the guards pounced on me and accused me of bringing the exercise to the public’s attention so that they would disrupt it.

Degraft-Johnson said the guards seized his equipment including his cellular phone, in addition to his wallet containing a number of identity cards and an amount of fifty Ghana cedis (about US$ 73).

Degraft-Johnson said he was surprised that about the attitude of the police who looked on and that “one of them even pushed me around”.

Rowland Acquah Stevens, news editor of Radio Gold told MFWA that Suhuyini witnessed the incident and began filing a live-report to the station. When the AMA guards saw him reporting they also started attacking him.

“They slapped him, held his neck before seizing cellular phone” he had since being treated and discharged from the hospital.

There has been high official condemnation of the attack on the journalists. Ghana’s President John Atta-Mills on July 11 personally offered apologies to the journalists and ordered the Mayor of Accra to investigate the matter and bring the perpetrators to book.

Meanwhile, the mayor has returned Degraft-Johnson’s equipment to him.

Prof. Kwame Karikari
Executive Director
MFWA
Accra, Ghana
Tel 233-21 242470
Fax 233 -21 221084
Email: [email][email protected]
Website: www.mediafound.org