Ho, Jan. 24, GNA- The NRC would make recommendations for payment of reparations for some of the petitioners and that the important thing was for the petitioners to come to terms with what happened to them and put the past behind them.
Bishop Charles Palmer-Buckle, a member of the Commission said this on Friday at its fourth day of the nine-day sitting of National Reconciliation Commission (NRC) sitting in Ho.
Bishop Palmer-Buckle said evidence before the NRC that people still feel hurt which many people now were not aware of, gave credence to the objective of the NRC.
In his petition Mr Kwaku Ansah Tsiagbe, from Taviefe-Aviefe said his deceased father, Lawrence Kumatse Tsiagbe, had to flee to Kpalime in Togo under threats of being arrested under the Preventive Detention Act in the First Republic.
He alleged that his father’s name was submitted to the authorities by members of the defunct Young Pioneers, a Mass Youth Movement in the Nkrumah regime for the part he played in a movement that sought independence for the Trans Volta Togoland.
Mr Tsiagbe said his fathers absence in exile brought hardship to the family as many of the children could not pursue education to the levels they would have wished.
Mr Newlove Kweku Asiedu, who is unemployed and lives in Aflao said as the Depot Supervisor of the erstwhile Timber Marketing Board at Aflao in May 1982, he was molested by six Border Guards as a result of a misunderstanding over inspection of timber products for export. Mr Asiedu who said he was left in such a bad shape that his wife failed to recognise him told the NRC that he lost a teeth and had to be transferred from the Saint Anthony’s Hospital at Dzodze to a private clinic in Accra.
He said he was currently intermittently unable to walk and could hardly do any meaningful work.
Mr Asiedu said in another incident in 1978, a Captain Sam, then at Aflao ordered that he should be beaten for improper conduct when he was being quizzed over movement of some boards towards the Aflao town. He said those who molested him in the first instance were put in a Guard Room for sometime and released.
Source: GhanaWeb
