The Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) has condemned in the strongest terms the raid carried out on the offices of modernghana.com on Thursday by men who described themselves as National Security Operatives.
MFWA is therefore demanding the immediate release of the arrested journalists of the online media outfit.
It has also called on the Minister of National Security and the National Security Co-ordinator to clarify the motive and circumstances surrounding the raid, who the perpetrators are and whether they were officially mandated to carry out the operation.
The editor of modernghana.com, William Nana Beeko, who confirmed the raid to MFWA, said the intruders did not present any warrant, adding that they seized laptops from the media organisation and arrested his deputy editor, Emmanuel Ajarfor Abugri, as well as Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum, a reporter.
Nana Beeko believes the action is linked to a critical article his outfit published about the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah, and the ruling party’s Member of Parliament for Effutu constituency, Alexander Afenyo-Markin.
The Chief Executive Officer of modernghana.com, Bright Owusu, has also told the MFWA that he does not know where his arrested staff are being held and has not been able to reach them because their phones had been seized.
The continued detention of the journalists in an unknown location is a violation of their rights and the whole incident casts a slur on Ghana’s press freedom credentials as a country where the state generally refrains from interfering in the media.
In a statement, the group also urge the management of modernghana.com to report the matter to the police for investigations and possible prosecution of the perpetrators should they be found to be impersonators or to have acted independently.