Women accused of being witches at the Gambaga Witch Camp have disagreed with calls on the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social protection to forcefully close down all witch camps in Ghana.
They instead want the government to conduct proper sensitisation at the various communities to ensure peaceful reintegration of their members.
The women, numbering about 80, made their views known on the sidelines of a press conference organised at Gambaga in the North East Region to commiserate with the family of Akua Denteh, a 90-year-old woman who was lynched at Kafaba after being accused of being a witch.
Speaking to Citi News, one of the alleged witches, Kolgu Tindana, said she could relate totally to the experience meted to Akua Denteh as she nearly died out of similar torture eight years ago.
“Since I heard the killing of that woman, I have been sad all this while. I was sad because that is how they torture us in the communities. They accuse us of witchcraft. Did anyone see her cooking human meat to eat? What wickedness is that? I was nearly lynched. I was beaten with sticks and metals. On the way to this camp, some threatened to shoot me with a gun. Halfway of the journey, another brought out a knife to slaughter me. I survived it by the grace of God.”
She, however, said, due to the hostile nature of some of the communities, it was not conducive to close all the camps without proper dialogue with the communities.
“We cannot all go home like that. We all didn’t come together, why should we go home together. The government has to educate our communities for us to be sure that we will be safe when we go home. If we go home and they refuse, where will we enter?”
On his part, Sampson Laar, the project coordinator of the Go Home project, an initiative of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana also disagrees with the minister’s call to close the camps arguing that, the attacks on Akua Denteh and many others were not carried at the camps.
He wants the government to pay more attention to dissuading communities from attacking alleged witches than insisting to send the women home.
“What we are calling for is more community sensitisation programmes. For instance, we are doing the advocacy at the communities and it is giving us good results. So we are rather calling on the ministry to help us in this fight.”