Andrew M Potts
StarOnlineThu, 21 Jul 2011 14:28 UTC
© UnknownGhana
Ghana's Western Region Minister, Paul Evans Aidoo MP has ordered the immediate arrest of all homosexuals in the country's west.
Aidooo has tasked Ghana's Bureau of National Investigations and security forces to round up the country's gay population and has called on landlords and tenants to inform on people they suspect of being homosexuals.
"All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in the society," he said.
The move by the Minister follows months of campaigning by the Christian Council of Ghana which last week called on Ghanaians not to vote for any politician who believes in the rights of homosexuals.
Muslims and Christians in the Western Region have been staging protests ever since a local media report claimed there were around 8000 homosexuals and lesbians in the district.
However, a lawyer at Kwame Nkrumah University, Ernest Kofi Abotsie, questioned the legality of the move.
Abotsie said laws outlawing "unnatural canal knowledge" in the Ghanaian criminal code were ambiguous and had not been defined to mean homosexuality, and it was wrong for politicians to be telling police how to carry out their duties.
Comment: This is a response by an individual from Ghana:
I'm a Ghanaian journalist, let me clear a few things.
As the last paragraph says, Ghana's constitution does not outlaw homosexuality in its explicit sense, just an ambiguous statement of "unnatural carnal knowledge".
The first comment here asked how the govt knows of the 8000 gay people in that region. It's because those 8000 people registered themselves into a grouping and a newspaper found out.
Ghana's religious population (christian and muslim) have a powerful voice. And they are against the homosexuals getting recognition. Their favorite quote is "God loves the sinner including the homosexuals but hates sin and homosexuality"
What's the mood like? It will soon get bloody. It's an extremely touchy issue.
Hope this clears things up.
Who says Christians and Muslims can't get along? It just takes the power of hate to lead them to common ground. .
Without religion good people do good and evil people do evil. It takes religion to make good people do evil. Yay, God!