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We Are Not Savages - Chief Nana Kwa Bonko V
The Chief of Biriwa near Saltpond, Nana Kwa Bonko V, angrily
declared in New York that his people, and indeed Ghanaians are not
savages, and that he takes personal exception to the lies being
peddled in the news media in the U.S. about Ghanaians.
In an exclusive interview with this correspondent, Nana Kwa Bonko V
looking visibly angry at the horde of reporters who descended on him
during his appearance at the US Supreme Court in Brooklyn last week,
defended the honour of his town and Ghanaians by telling reporters
that Ghanaians are civilized people who do not practice human
sacrifices, neither do they engage in Female Genital Mutilation
(FGM) as a way of punishment.
"As a matter of fact, we Fantes do not practice female genital
mutilation either as a custom, or as a way of punishing anybody," he
said. "We are peace-loving people who believe in the sanctity of
human beings, and I cannot imagine anybody slandering Ghanaians for
a practice that is foreign to my tribe. I do not wish for her to be
punished for blasphemy, but I take exception to a lie of this
magnitude, where a whole community and country are portrayed as
cannibals," he concluded.
Nana Kwa Bonko V was in New York to testify in an immigration case
involving Regina Danson, a native of Biriwa in the Central Region
who claimed in an asylum petition that she was a disgraced Princess
of Biriwa and that she would face sexual mutilation if deported to
Ghana. Ms. Regina Danson arrived in the U.S. in April 1997 with a
false passport bearing the name of Adelaide Abankwah, a name she
swore was her true name until 2000 when her true identity was
unmasked.
At her asylum hearing in 1997, Ms. Danson, 33, claimed that as a
Queen mother-to-be, she violated the laws of her village by
converting into Christianity and losing her virginity by engaging in
premarital sex. If she were returned to Ghana, elders of her village
would punish her by cutting her clitoris and possibly killing her,
she said.
"I will be mutilated, and my boyfriend will be executed," she
claimed. "After that, I will have to live the rest of my life in
perpetual shame."
Narrating how she ended up in New York, Ms. Danson claimed that she
was accused of theft at her place of work but since she could not
refund the money, she fled her village to Accra where she took
refuge with a friend.
In addition, she was afraid to go back to her village, where she
feared she would be killed because she refused to be made Queen
mother of her village.
While in Accra, her host gave her a passport that bore her true name
of Adelaide Abankwah, but with someone else's picture to travel to
the US.
Unknown to her however, the US Immigration Service had Adelaide
Abankwah in their database as someone who had been to the US on
several occasions, and when she was asked the last time she was in
the US, she claimed that April of 1977 was her first time.
This inconsistency in her story coupled with the falsified picture
in the passport sent a red flag to the Immigration officials at JFK
International Airport, who detained Ms. Danson for further
questioning.
Ms. Danson however swore during persistent questioning with
Immigration officials and in court that her real name was Adelaide
Abankwah.
Her sordid tale of killings by her tribal village with human heads
dripping blood being paraded in her village, coupled with forced
female genital mutilations of young girls, outraged the U.S. public,
some of who saw Ghana as another backward, barbaric society where
even cannibalism was being practiced.
As a result, feminists in the US, including Gloria Steinem, actress
Julia Roberts and the former first lady, Hillary Rodman Clinton,
took on her case, and hit the airwaves denouncing Ghanaians for
barbarism, while rallying to Ms. Danson's cause.
Ms. Danson's appeal for asylum was denied in 1997, when the judge
noted that Ghana had outlawed genital mutilation in 1994, and that
her identity was in question. An appeals court however caved in to
political pressure from the feminists and Mrs. Clinton, and reversed
the decision in 1999.
In 2000 however, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service
concluded that Ms. Danson's story was a figment of her imagination.
The INS investigators alleged that she was a former hotel worker who
assumed the identity of another person named Adelaide Abankwah, and
that her real name is Regina Danson.
Ms. Danson was indicted last year for perjury, making false
statement and obtaining passport through fraudulent means.
On January of this year, Ms. Danson was brought to the US Supreme
Court to face criminal charges, during which Nana Kwa Bonko
testified that Ms. Danson was not part of the town's royal family
and that female genital mutilation is foreign to the customs and
practices of his village.
A Federal grand jury in Brooklyn last week found her guilty of lying
and falsifying official document, after deliberating for only five
hours.
Ms. Danson is free on $200,000 bond, but she will be sentenced on
March 23 of this year for up to 16 months in prison, after which she
will be deported to Ghana.
A cross section of Ghanaians who were in court to witness the trial,
heaved a sigh of relief and started clapping and dancing when Ms.
Danson was found guilty.
One Ekow who claimed he hails from Biriwa, praised his Chief for
restoring honour and dignity to his town.
"I am proud of my Chief, and today, I feel exonerated because
tenants in my apartment complex have been teasing me and asking me
whether I have a human head under my bed," he said. "You have no
idea how shameful we felt as Ghanaians when this woman's story broke
in the newspapers and on the various TV networks, but today, they
will all eat their words," he concluded.
Source: Accra Mail
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