Amnesty Int. insists soldiers “tortured” Wa SHS students

Human Rights group Amnesty International has challenged the outcome of a military investigation that cleared some soldiers accused of brutalising students of the Wa Islamic Senior High School.

The group has insisted in an interview with Starr news that some “torturing” must have gone on.

Two students of the School were injured last month after a police and military team stormed the school to prevent a clash between students and school authorities.

The students were protesting an intended increase in fees. They alleged the Military brutalised them in their attempt to quell the confusion.

However, the Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Armed Forces Col. Aggrey Quashie told Starr news the military did nothing wrong.

“No soldier touched anybody…the soldiers went there on the invitation of civil authorities and they helped to resolve a problem in the school…” Col Aggrey Quashie insisted.

Quashir, however, conceded that the soldiers asked the students to lie on the ground, as part of their efforts to bring the situation under control.

But the country director of Amnesty International, Lawrence Amesu told Starr news the “unobjective result” of the investigation was to be expected, describing the act as a “total abuse of human rights”.

“I think it is a total human rights abuse if children who do not have arms, for soldiers to go in and let them lie on the ground and molest them…Ii believe that there must be some torturing that went on that is why some of the children were hurt and had to go to the hospital…I don’t even think soldiers need to come in in this kind of case, police should be able to handle the situation,” Amesu said Friday.

According to him, there should have been an independent body such as the Parliamentary select committee on defence and interior to have investigated the matter.