That won’t cause unrest -British High Commissioner responds to Ghana Police caution letter
British High Commissioner to Ghana, Harriet Thompson has responded to the letter by the Ghana Police Service which sought to caution her to stay within her limits after the diplomats made comments following the arrest of #FixTheCountry convenor Oliver Barker-Vormawor on Tuesday, May 17, 2022.
Miss Thompson stated that her tweet was harmless and would not have gotten people onto the streets as suggested in the letter by the police.
The Ghana Police Service in a statement on May 20, 2022, to the High Commissioner, cautioned her that the comments were against the dictates of the Vienna Convention of 1961
“What is more, we consider your tweet a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations 1961 which enjoins diplomatic missions not to interfere in the internal affairs of their host countries.
“Your Excellency, the fact that you use the phrase ‘arrested again, we believe, must mean you were referring to previous occasions Mr Barker-Vormawor was arrested for threatening the security of the state and recently for motor traffic offences,” parts of the statement read.
The IGP cited some precedents in Britain where some religious leaders were picked up for pronouncements considered threatening to the state.
“This, we believe, your country did in its quest to safeguard the security of the state and ensure the sustenance of the peace the inhabitants enjoy.”
But in an interview on GHOne Television on Tuesday, May 31, Harriet Thompson said her intention was not to spark any trouble.
“My experience[s] of Ghana, are a peace-loving nation where people do have the right to express themselves, where they do have the right to come and protest things that matter to them.
“A tweet like that is not going to be the thing that will get people onto the streets, in my view. If I had thought that there was the remotest chance of that, I wouldn’t be tweeting things like. That is not my intention,” she said during the interview.
Read below the letter from the Ghana Police Service to the High Commissioner.
