The Human Rights Advocacy Centre (HRAC) wants the Ministry of Education to as a matter of urgency sack the headmistress of Abetifi Presbyterian Senior High School in the Eastern Region, Charlotte Asante, for the torture and inhuman treatment meted out to 13 male students of the school.
[contextly_sidebar id=”bNZKg2iWkVvNC7EDDmgZG3Y3pMxyRO57″]The students were alleged to have been paraded in their boxer shorts before the Assembly for reportedly staying in their dormitories while their colleagues were attending the school’s morning devotion.
The Headmistress is also said to have instructed the House Master to take photographs of the students in their boxer shorts and further ordered three teachers to give the almost naked male students ten lashes each before their colleagues, including females, of over 1,500 students.
The HRAC in a statement issued a while ago and signed by its executive director Robert Akoto Amoafo strongly condemned the act and called for the dismissal of Madam Charlotte Asante saying “Her action against the students is degrading and inhumane. She has defamed and brought the human dignity of these boys in to disrepute. Madam Charlotte in her attempt to met-out disciplinary measure to these students has rather caused potential psychological trauma to these boys which may take several years to erase. We therefore call on the Ghana Education Service to dismiss Madam Charlotte Asante from the Ghana Education Service to serve as a deterrent to other personnel in the service.”
The HRAC also wants the Abetifi Senior high School headmistress arrested and prosecuted “for contravening section 13 (1) and (2) of the Children’s Act 1998 (Act 560) which states:
Protection from torture and degrading treatment. (1) No person shall subject a child to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment including any cultural practice, which dehumanizes or is injurious to the physical and mental well-being of a child.
(2) No correction of a child is justifiable which is unreasonable in kind or in degree according to the age, physical and mental condition of the child and no correction is justifiable if the child by reason of tender age or otherwise is incapable of understanding the purpose of the correction.”
The HRAC further catalogued what they consider to be a worrying trend of increasing abuses of the rights of the young people in our Senior high Schools.”
Several similar cases of human rights abuse against students by teachers and head teachers have been recorded within the GES from the beginning of this year.
Popular among them are the teacher in the Western Region who stepped on two boys for not doing their homework and the female student who was instructed by a teacher to strip naked in public which caused a riot in the Tuna Senior High Technical School in the Northern Region of Ghana,” the statement explained.
They also want the GES to carry out further investigations and put in measures to ensure that the school is not a den of child abuse. “The Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service are to ensure that children in school are safe and have a sound environment for teaching and learning. Inconsiderate persons like Madam Charlotte Asante who have attained her current level in the education service as a headmistress should know better and rather guide teachers to carry out appropriate, productive, non-violent and humane disciplinary measures to students”. They also expressed their disquiet over the “unheard and unreported abuses which may be going on within our schools.”
–
By: Raymond Acquah/citifmonline.com/Ghana