Two soldiers from the Fourth Infantry Battalion (4BN) “descended” on the Ashanti Regional Correspondent of the Ghanaian Times, Kingsley E. Hope, snatching his camera from him.
The military men accused Mr Hope of taking a picture of them, at the Prempeh II high street, at Adum.
The incident took place last Friday, at about 4:20PM.
Bubbling with fury, the soldier, identified as WO Owusu, who snatched the device, threatened to smash it on the ground.
He ordered the journalist to leave the place or risk being heckled.
“You are invading my territory, if you don’t leave here I will push you away”, he threatened as he pointed his gun at the journalist.
According to Mr Hope, he took a picture of a barricade at the Prempeh II high street.
Moments afterward, he heard a shout from behind and when he turned the soldiers called him.
He said when he approached them they asked why he had taken a picture of them, to which he responded in the negative.
Mr Hope who is also the chairman of the Ashanti Regional branch of the Ghana journalists Association said in an attempt to show them the picture as they demanded, WO Owusu angrily snatched the portable KODAK camera from him.
He said he called the 4BN’s Public Relations Officer, Captain Osei-Duah, who made efforts to talk to the soldiers to scrutinise the pictures taken if they were indeed shot.
But WO Owusu told him, “I am not an expert in photography and so I cannot do that, I cannot even see a picture and so, I am taking it to the experts”.
Capt. Osei-Duah, he said, called a senior officer the soldiers report to, and he decided to come to the scene, but while waiting the two soldiers joined a military truck that popped up and filed off.
A follow up to the 4BN at about 5: 15PM was an exercise in futility as, after some 45 minutes the journalist was turned away by the Command
to come the following day.
This is not the first time the military have “descended” on journalists during the lockdown directive.
On April 5, this year, at Aboabo Akurem community in south-central Kumasi, a group of soldiers attacked and briefly detained Yussif Abdul Ganiyu, a reporter with the German government-funded Deutsche Welle news agency and the local owned Zuria FM radio station.
Similarly, on April 10, 2020, soldiers enforcing pandemic restrictions assaulted Samuel Adobah, a journalist with the privately owned TV Africa, while he was reporting on a fire in the Ablekuma District of the Greater Accra Region.
In another development, the Northern Regional Correspondent of TV Africa, Baba Kamil suffered a head injury when a stray object hit his head.
The incident took place at Changli a suburb of Tamale where he was said to be reporting on a clash between the police and the residents.
According to the reporter, there were a number of warning shots fired by the police to disperse the crowd.
FROM TIMES REPORTER, KUMASI
