The global rights body says Ghana’s government has failed to ensure that people with psychosocial disabilities are not kept in inhumane conditions.
Human Rights Watch has said that Ghana should take “urgent steps” to end the shackling and inhumane treatment of people with actual or perceived mental health conditions, a practice that continues despite legislation against it.
“Shackling people with psychosocial disabilities in prayer camps and treatment centers is a form of torture,” Shanta Rau Barriga, disability rights director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Thursday.
The global rights body said that 10 years after the adoption of the Mental Health Act that established that people with psychosocial disabilities should not be treated inhumanely, the government was not doing enough to ensure implementation.
Based on research conducted by the group in 2011, found that families often refer people with mental health conditions to faith-based or traditional healers because psychosocial disabilities are widely believed to be the result of curses or evil spirits. There is a reason.
In previous reports, the group said people who were tied often suffered from post-traumatic stress, malnutrition, infection, nerve damage, muscle atrophy and cardiovascular problems.
The group said that between November 28 and 30, HRW researchers visited five prayer camps and traditional healing centres in Ghana’s eastern and central regions and interviewed more than 50 people.
In all the places visited, people were confined in small cages, “in some cases for more than seven months”.
HRW said researchers found “more than 60 people chained or in cages, including some children”.
Two men are chained by their ankles at a prayer centre in eastern Ghana.
At a herbal centre in Senya Beraku, 22 men were found closely confined in a dark, stuffy room, all of them chained around their ankles, more than half a meter long. “They are forced to urinate and defecate in a small bucket passed around the room. Despite the hot conditions, they are only allowed to bathe every two weeks,” HRW said.
“Please help us,” one man reportedly told researchers, “We have a human right to freedom.”
The group said it witnessed serious human rights abuses at all locations, including a lack of adequate food, unhygienic conditions, lack of sanitation, lack of freedom of movement, and one case of repeated sexual violence.
The group also said, “In all five camps, people were held in indefinite detention against their will.”
According to the Mental Health Act of Ghana (PDF), people with psychosocial disabilities shall not be subjected to “torture, cruelty, forced labor and any other inhuman treatment”, including a chainsaw.
Nevertheless, HRW’s Barriga said: “Despite Ghana’s ban on chaining, the government has failed to ensure that people with psychosocial disabilities no longer live in such inhumane conditions.”
Speaking to AFP news agency, Ghana’s Deputy Health Minister Tina Gifty Mensah said the government was not happy with the practice of handcuffing and detaining people.
“This is Ghana’s constitution and the government and other stakeholders have done a lot through education to make people aware of it,” Mensah told AFP.
“We will look into the report from Human Rights Watch, and the appropriate agencies will do what needs to be done to address this development.”
Credit: Aljazeera
