Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament Prof Mike Oquaye has said Amnesty International (AI) may soon start pushing for the legalisation of bestiality in Ghana judging from the way the rights advocacy group has been campaigning for the decriminalisation of homosexuality and the abolishment of the death penalty in the name of human rights.
Prof Oquaye expressed the fear when Amnesty international visited Ghana’s parliament with a call on the legislature to repeal capital punishment from its statutes.
According to the Advocator Adviser to Amnesty International, Oluwatosin Popoola, the death penalty has not been and is not a deterrent enough to crime in the country and the world at large.
Speaking at the courtesy call on the Speaker on Tuesday 11 July, 2017, Mr Popoola said 105 countries have so far signed to join the campaign for the abolition of the death penalty.
“We are here to urge you and parliament to take steps to abolish the death penalty in existing laws while we wait for the constitutional process to fully abolish this horrible punishment. Last year, a delegation from Amnesty International conducted research in Ghana on the use of the death penalty. We visited the death row section in the Nsawam Prison and tomorrow by God’s grace we will be launching our report on our observations and we are here to not only express our concerns but to share advance copies of the report with you and we hope to have a constructive discussion with you,” Mr Popoola said.
In response, Prof Oquaye questioned why a murderer’s right to life should be protected when he or she takes another’s from them.
He said: “It takes persuasion for people to totally abandon matters relating to aims of punishment. In terms of that which is correct, that which is a deterrent…and also the juxtaposition of rights, the murderer has a right to life but the victim had a right to life in the first place and taken away by the murderer. Why should the murderer insist on his right to life and society protects his/her right to life when he violently abuses and takes away unilaterally without justification the life of another? I’m throwing these at you because you said you want to have a discussion with us and definitely these are the issues that will come out of any attempt to formally abolish the death penalty.”
The Speaker noted that on the issue of human rights, if care is not taken, Amnesty International will make another future request for the country to accept homosexuality since it is an acceptable practice in some countries.
He said: “The way human rights conceptualisations are going these days, if we don’t take care, before we realise very soon everything has become human rights, even the right to have sex with animals…following what Tony Blair said, regarding which I personally wrote him a letter that if we did not go the homosexual way it was going to affect their aid to us. Honestly, in view of this, we Africans should have a concern about certain things that may appear merely intellectual but it becomes very practical. Is Amnesty International going to tell us many countries are doing that so you too now have to do homosexuality? You too have to do bestiality because it’s becoming a human rights issue in some countries and the right to do homosexuality is also becoming a human right? The right for a human being to sleep with an animal is becoming a human right. We are tired of some of these things and we must be frank about it. …I think these matters need to be seriously interrogated and then you may appreciate the thing more, but let me add that clemency is not coterminous with a right as we speak. This is one aspect of the jurisprudence that must also be clearly noted.”
