The Upper East regional director for the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), Jalaldeen Abdulai, has appealed to President Nana Akufo-Addo to assent to the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2022.
Following the accusation of witchcraft and attempted lynching of 61-year-old Ayidaana Abotisei, Upper East Region, Abdulai appealed that passing this bill would allow perpetrators of such horrendous crimes to be dealt with comprehensively.
It should be recalled that nine individuals were remanded by the Bongo District Court in the Upper East Region for their alleged involvement in the “maltreatment” of 61-year-old Ayidaana Abotisei, whom community members claim is a witch.
The Upper East regional director for CHRAJ, Jalaldeen Abdulai, explained that, there are no laws that directly deal with people who accuse others of witchcraft.
“If you take our law as it is now, you will not find a specific provision talking about witchcraft. As it stands now, when an incident occurs, there are certain processes that lead to the incident, and for me, we can always get criminal intent or criminal action,” he said.
Parliament last year passed a bill to protect people accused of witchcraft, making it a crime to abuse them or send them away from communities. The new law was suggested after a 90-year-old woman was lynched in Kafaba in the East Gonja Municipality of the Savannah Region in July 2020.
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo explained that even though he supports the contents of the Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2022, (Witchcraft bill), he cannot assent to them because of constitutional issues.
According to Jalaldeen, the bill coming into force is what would help deal with the situation.
“The bill is very elaborate. If you carry the person to a soothsayer, you are also guilty of an offence. The one who tries the person, anyone who sits there and calls himself a witch doctor—not even that you have taken someone through an ordeal, but just calling yourself a witch doctor—the law deals with that. We pray that, within the shortest possible time, the president would take a second look at it.”
The Criminal Offences (Amendment) Bill, 2022, which is now popularly referred to as the Witchcraft Bill, explicitly criminalises the practice of witchcraft accusation and proscribes the declaration, accusation, naming or labelling of another person as a witch, and its related matters.
The object of the bill is to amend the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), to prohibit the practice by any person as a witch doctor or witch finder.
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