General News of Saturday, 21 April 2018

Source: ghanaguardian.com

Amoaning slams Theresa May, UN Rapporteur over Ghana gay rights demands

Senior Lecturer, UG - Moses Foh-Amoaning Senior Lecturer, UG - Moses Foh-Amoaning

A senior lecturer at the Ghana School of Law, Moses Foh Amoaning, has descended heavily on UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Philip Alston, for “insulting” the Speaker of Parliament for his anti-gay stance.

According to him, the UN expert is “stupid”, further describing him as “an idiot” for not respecting the views of the Speaker of Parliament and Ghanaians.

This comes after Mr. Alston referred to Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Ocquaye, as “delusional” for consistently declaring his anti-gay stance.

In an address following a fact-finding visit to Ghana, the UN official went in hard on the Speaker, insisting he (Prof. Ocquaye) cannot wish away what is a fact when it comes to accommodating gays in Ghana.

“I believe that if he thinks there is not a very significant proportion of gay people in Ghana, he is deluding himself. You cannot wish away a physical fact. The percentage of gay people in any population is significant,” he opined.

However, Mr. Foh Amoaning believes such comments constitute an insult to the Speaker and should not be tolerated at all.

He, therefore, described the UN expert as a “bigot”, “stupid” and “an idiot” after losing his cool on live radio.

“My dear how would I respond to this idiot. He is so bigoted and to be honest very stupid. I mean every word of it,” he said on Accra-based Starr FM.

“Do you understand the word delusion… to be deluded? Do you understand that word? You tell me, you are a journalist, what is the meaning of deluded?

“You sit there for a Caucasian to call the speaker of your parliament deluded and you are fine with it my dear. When I say he is an idiot…look, I intentionally used that word because I wanted to provoke you, because you see he doesn’t provoke you because the language is coming from a white person so you don’t see anything wrong with it.”



He added that the West should not be allowed dictate what we should accept and what she should not accept, insisting the issue of homosexuality cannot be “poked down” on Ghana.



“I am sick and tired of this arrogant bigotry being thrown around by Europeans and because we ourselves are not thinking through these things, we allow them to insult us… poke down upon us and to say anything they like… even Ghanaian journalists don’t seem to appreciate what is happening,” he added.