When I saw that yesterday’s HL prompt was focused on freedom of speech, I told myself “Ahhh beautiful day to bring my country’s problems to public attention”.
If you’re very active especially in the political community on X, it is very likely that you have recently seen the #freethecitizens movement that Ghanaians have been making noise about recently. Maybe you didn’t know the basis or context of that movement, but it has been for very good reason.
The #freethecitizens movement was preceded by #stopgalamseynow movement. Galamsey is basically illegal mining of gold. It’s a local word coined from “gather them and sell”. It’s been going on for years in Ghana. However, its effects have not been as visible as it is now. The only source of drinking water to the communities in which this mining activities take place have been completely destroyed.
Their water has become both dirty and poisoned in the literal sense of the word. Even worse, the destruction to their water bodies is not just ending there, but because water bodies are connected, the dirt and brownness is spreading to larger water bodies, among which the Weija Dam which is the main water treatment plant for Accra is a notable mention. Pregnant women are giving birth to children with deformities because of these poisoned waters they consume, and the communities are starving because their waters that used to be inhabited by fish is barren now.
This is what led to the #stopgalamseynow movement. Citizens came out to peacefully protest, and our government had them arrested and locked up. This move of oppression of their freedom of speech led to the #freethecitizens movement. More peaceful demonstrations are still happening and unfortunately, so are incarcerations, but the Ghanaian people are not fazed anymore because we’ve had enough!
I am sure that our government believed arresting the first batch of protesters would’ve intimidated and hushed people up, but we thank him a lot for fueling people’s anger even more to demand what should be given them normally. That arrest has fueled an uproar which I believe will eventually result in strategic steps being taken to address the matter. It has awoken Ghanaians up to the fact that staying quiet is no longer an option.
Quite honestly, the incident makes you question whether our government has forgotten what freedom of speech is. Constitution aside, should we be arresting human beings who are peacefully demanding to be treated better? For their most basic human right to be protected.
In an entirely different light, it is important to note that whiles we have our rights to free speech, other people have it too. That aside, it is also within people’s rights and capacities to sue you for exercising your freedom of speech carelessly. That is the basis of the popular saying that your freedom OF speech is guaranteed, but your freedom AFTER speech is not.
I’ll use Bongo Ideas again as the scape goat for this point. He made a reputation for himself in the Ghanaian X community as the person who said everything and everything to anyone without any sort of repercussions. Our own Verydarkman. Lol. Anyways, some months ago he made a controversial X post about the first lady of Ghana and that apparently turned out to have been the last controversy he would talk about for a short while.😂😂
Even this example still demonstrates that our freedom of speech can not be taken from us. Buuuuuut…. We can be held accountable for exercising our freedom of speech. Sometimes this accountability can translate to your future freedom of speech being taken from you, like we saw in Bongo’s case.😂😂
All images here are mine
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