US report on Trokosi is misleading - fetish priest

The United State Embassy in Ghana was on Wednesday called upon to re-institute a research into the trokosi institution in Ghana following its misleading information on their website.

Togbe Eklo, Chief Priest of the Togbe Adzima Shrine at the Tsata Bame in the Akatsi District of the Volta said in an interview that: "the US Embassy's report on Ghana's religious freedom is confusing, misleading and a disservice to Ghana's effort to stop harmful cultural practices such as the trokosi system".

According to a GNA report the US Department of State's report on International Religious Freedom released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour and posted on its website stated that trokosi existed in Ghana but on a very limited scale.

The report also noted that there were not more than 100 trokosi women in the whole of the Volta Region. A research by the Department of Religion of the University of Ghana also stated that there were over 5,000 women and children still under bondage in shrines in the Volta and Greater Accra regions.

Togbe Eklo said "in undertaking a research exercise when you meet only four women in a shrine at the time of visit does not mean that there were only four of such women under bondage in that particular shrine."

Togbe Eklo said there was the need for researchers to go beyond what was perceived on the surface to get to the truth of any institution that existed in Ghana.

Asked about the number of women in Trokosi shrines, Togbe Eklo said he knew there could be as many as 100 or more in one major shrine, even though, some of the Trokosis might not be residing there. He could not give the number of shrines operating at present.

Togbe Eklo said the definition of trokosi by the US Embassy was misleading. The report defined trokosi ''as a system in which virgin girls, sometimes under the age of 10, is given by her family to work and be trained in traditional religion at a fetish shrine for up to three years as a means of atonement for a serious crime as rape and murder allegedly committed by a member of the girl's family."

Togbe Eklo said girls are sent to shrines "even for petty thievery, adultery and even mere quarrelling. "Before the start of trokosi, which involved the sending of young virgins as objects of sacrifice and atonement to the gods, our forefathers were using animals.

Receiving human beings was a corruption of the practice and, therefore, not part of our religion," he said. Mr Christian Morti of the Human Rights Organisation of Ghana, an NGO, said the practice of Trokosi should be kept out of religion because it is a pure human rights issue. "The shrines worshipped without taking girls in the beginning".

He said the best thing any person could do for Ghana was to ask the government to enforce the law on Trokosi and aid the organisations working to help the poor women and children instead of trying to destroy their work.