newspapers and prostitutes

big news! My article on the right to information was printed in the Daily Chronicle, p.3! They didn't print my picture (the newspapers tend to fill space with pictures of whatever, including the authors), but it did get a whole page (thanks to the very large pictures of the Minister of Information and the Attorney General). They also quoted a big chunk of it on the editorial page and said that it "clearly should have been the clarion call of particularly media practitioners and all lovers of democracy who crave for openness in governance and democracy." I'm a star! It's possible that the newspaper will put it online sometime today or tomorrow: http://www.ghanaian-chronicle.com/

Also, yesterday I visited a Ghanaian jail for the first time. My boss is (rightly) very upset because when 9 alleged prostitutes were picked up by the police and then brought before the judge for indictment, he ordered that they be given HIV tests without their consent and then announced the results in open court without telling them first. Seven of them were HIV+. Some of them were pregnant, too, but the judge called them liars and refused to grant them bail. So yesterday we went to a jail to meet them, so that today we interns plus a woman from my office, Cynthia, the-always-fabulously-coiffured, could go interview them about what exactly happened, starting from when the police picked them up till the whole business with the HIV.

So I saw the jail, and a little bit of a holding cell, which was dark and crammed full of people. My boss told me that people being held in jail do not eat unless their family brings them food. She also told me that a third of the prisoners in Ghana are people awaiting trial, and some of them have waited much longer than they would have been in jail had they been speedily tried and found guilty. Shocking. Anyway, the police wouldn't let us see the prostitutes, because the case has been in the news and he was concerned about PR problems, especially since one of the people was my boss (as I said, she's famous--two complete strangers greeted her by name at the jail), and four (me and 3 other interns) of them were clearly foreign. So since his boss wasn't there, he wouldn't let us talk to them. But my boss supposedly cleared it for us to go again today, so we'll see. I don't know how she decides which unbelievable human rights violation to try and improve. Seems like the jails and prisons are ripe for it. I think I will see more of them later, which I am a little apprehensive about.

I am going back to court this morning for the next part of the Rawlings trial. It should be very exciting, although it's raining cats and dogs right now, so maybe the protesters will be discouraged.

I wrote the next post, about mangoes, a couple of days ago on my computer and just uploaded it today.
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