Ghana: why the killings go on
Following the mysterious death of Catholic Father Charles Kukah and the speculation as to the motives for his death, our Special Correspondent explains the modus operandi of the official hit-squad in Ghana today.The PNDC accepts abduction, murder and executions as extensions of its policies by other means. Chairman Rawlings presides over a particularly violent regime. To anyone familiar with his views and the ideas of the key people around him, this should come as no surprise. They all believe in the use of violence as a means of coercive control.
Before he seized power in December 1981, Rawlings often stressed the need for any government he led to kill as many Ghanaians as possible; not only to rid the regime of actual and potential critics but also to create a climate of fear which would allow him and his cronies to do as they pleased.
Therefore when he overthrew the civilian government on 31st December 1981, one of his first actions was to set up special squads under the late Warrant Officer Kingston of Airforce Station, Accra, to eliminate Military Intelligence personnel, soldiers and civilians suspected of being "enemies of the Revolution" and people unfortunate enough to have incurred Rawlings and some of his powerful supporters displeasure. In the early days of the Rawlings revolution, the order "Send him to Kingston" was the pre-arranged signal that whoever it was, was to be sent to the airforce base to be killed by Kingston's men.
It was one of these squads under a Sergeant-Major Konu of the Recce Regi-ment which went to the headquarters of the First Brigade to abduct Major Nangtogma, kill him in an armoured car and then dump his body on the road to the Airforce Station, Accra, from Arakan Barracks. Until his own rather mysterious death, said to be at the hands of other soldiers, Kingston was the chief executioner of the PNDC.
This article is not designed to call names (that will come much later) but to describe in general terms the reign of terror which Rawlings and his minions have created in Ghana.
After Kingston's death, the special squads were reorganised and placed directly under the Operations Branch of the PNDC Headquarters. Extra men and women were recruited from the Armed Forces, Police and the civilian popu- lation. The criterion for admission into these groups was proven loyalty to Rawlings and Kojo Tsikata. There were indications to suggest that only Rawlings, Kojo Tsikata and the Chief Operations Officer at the PNDC Headquarters, could authorise their "special operations".
Armed with their AK 47s and machine. pistols, they killed and spread fear throughout the country. It was from one of such groups that the men who kidnapped and killed the judges and the retired Army officer came. They could be easily identified as they made no attempt to hide what they were doing.
This was soon to change. Following the enquiry which probed the abduction and Panasonic NV630 Multi System Infra r c murder of the judges, the activities of these groups came under increasing criticism; especially from the group of Ghanaians who had been invited by Rawlings to join his government to save the sinking ship. They argued that the PNDC would not obtain the assistance it urgently required then if the murder squads were allowed to operate so openly. There were also signs that members of these squads were not as professional as their bosses desired. Their handiwork was easily traceable. Rawlings and his cronies therefore decided that:
The level of activity of the groups should be scaled down until the deal with the IMF was secured.
Members of these groups should be retrained locally and in such places as Libya and Bulgaria.
Foreign assistance should be sought from East Germany and Libya in the running of their operations.
Until further notice, the PNDC was to make friendly noises about reconciliation and the need for discipline; and be prepared to sacrifice a few of their own zealots, if the need arose.
The new operational policy of the special squads should be to concentrate operations against the less well known rather than prominent Ghanaians; therefore unlikely to attract attention and create the kind of problems which might prejudice the PNDC's ability to obtain the assistance it required. It was however obvious that if Rawlings and his cronies were sufficiently riled, they could order the murder of any prominent Ghanaian they perceived to be a threat.
During the period of reduced activity, Rawlings and his gang intensified their efforts to recruit foreign gunmen to deal with Ghanaian dissidents abroad. But approaches to the Libyans, Cubans, East Germans and other countries in the Soviet Bloc did not appear to yield the results desired; presumably because they were not prepared to do the regime's dirty work for them. The East Germans and the Bulgarians, however, agreed to train and help advise the security machine Kojo Tsikata was creating at considerable financial cost to the country. But action by the PNDC against dissidents abroad should not be entirely discounted. It could come if the regime is under considerable internal pressure; and might well be carried out either by trained Ghanaians or hired guns.
Once the deal with the IMF was secured and the Paris Club committed itself to assist Ghana, the abductions and killings resumed with ferocious intensity. The victims were seized at night or at places where their seizure would not excite comment. They were taken to one of the designated execution grounds scattered all over the country and simply done away with. Or they were abducted from the prisons or their places of detention and shot. Lately the modus operandi seems to be to take the unfortunate man or woman to a remote place in Ghana, kill them and leave them to rot here.
To deflect undue attention from the activities of the murder squads, the PNDC would, from time to time, announce the death penalty for Ghanaians for serious criminal offences. This was usually followed by reports of attempted coups, the arrest and the execution of Suspects.
What the outsider did not know was that these announcements were often the signal for the kidnapping and the murder of Ghanaians targeted by the Security machine. The purpose of these announcements had a two-fold objective: to create the feeling abroad that executions and murder were the norm in Ghana; and to discount reports of secret killings so as to prevent a noisy foreign press from poking its nose into what was happening in Ghana.
Paid apologists of the PNDC were then used to peddle the line that executions were the sort of thing to be expected in Ghana anyway.
Because Rawlings and his cronies have sanctioned kidnappings and executions, some of their more powerful supporters have taken the law into their hands. Soldiers who see their superiors routinely despatch Ghanaians to the world beyond, have also done so; knowing that if they are lucky and have the right connections, they will not be punished. Of course occasionally a few have been sacrificed for public relations purposes.
Estimates of the numbers of Ghanaians who have been killed vary. One puts the figure at 3,000 but I prefer to accept the figure of 5,000 which a reliable source has claimed as a realistic toll. On the basis of what is happening, this figure could be a conservative estimate.
Various places all over Ghana have been identified as locations for executions. A sample of some of these places in the Accra area is set out below to give readers an indication of the extent to which the Rawlings regime is prepared to go to kill its own people:
- Airforce Station.
- Taungup Range behind Burma Camp.
- The vast area behind the Airforce Station and Arakan Barracks.
- The area behind Recce Regiment.
- The Labadi and Black Star Square beaches.
- Michel Camp.
The sad part of this whole affair is that there are families in Ghana today who do not know where their relations are, believing that once they do not see them, they have fled the country.Very often those who are killed are taken to be buried in prison cemeteries. For the Accra area, Nsawam Prison cemetery is a convenient location. In the early days of the "revolution", the dead were sometimes buried behind the Military Hospital. When tongues started to wag, this was stopped. Many were dumped into the sea but the Atlantic Ocean had a way of returning bodies to the shore. Some were also caught in fishermen's nets.
When this happened, the dead were taken to mortuaries and certified as drowned. The families were notified to collect the bodies. If this was not possible, the mortuaries were simply ordered to make arrangements for burial. Recently the victims have just been left in some remote bush to rot.
The sad part of this whole affair is that there are families in Ghana today who do not know where their relations are, believing that once they do not see them, they have fled the country. They will only know the truth when the pervasive climate of fear is removed. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence, for the moment, in the country.
But there is another shameful aspect to this situation. It is the role of the diplomats representing the donor countries. It is one of acquiescence. Some have even been reported as claiming that the repression is the only way of getting the country going. This attitude is an intriguing echo of the kind of support Obote received when he accepted to work the IMF Model, even when it was evident that he was massacring his countrymen. It was only when he fell that the gruesome stories which had floated around for some time and which diplomats had described as exaggerated, began to emerge.
Which leaves one wondering whether the moral posturings of accredited representatives of the same countries elsewhere have no relevance in Ghana or The vast area between the Airforce in Africa. The answer must be yes if a comment attributed to a British diplomat in Uganda is true, that "This is Africa. Things are different. You cannot apply human rights standards here." But then they never learn. Just as Obote failed to create prosperity in an atmosphere of fear, so has the PNDC. Meanwhile the silly charade in which Rawlings and his blood- thirsty crew are praised as reformers, goes on. It has gone on for so long that people you expect to know better are beginning to believe this obvious propaganda.
The abductions and killings, however, do not stop; and the PNDC gets away with them. It has been lucky in this sense. But this cannot hold forever. One of these days its goons are going to make the sort of mistake which will blow the whole lid off its darker sides. And who knows what will happen? Perhaps then the donor countries may realise that they are providing the regime with blood money and be persuaded to condemn its actions at least.
