How the Tribe Became Enslaved

Asante was conquered and annexed into the Gold Coast colony when British gold prospectors stumbled upon the goldfields of Adansiland after the 1870s when Asante was finally subdued and the region opened up for British colonial exploration and exploitation. Britain had hitherto not expressed any desire in bringing the forest peoples north of the River Pra under their rule. After the discovery of huge gold deposits at Funtumase (now known as Obuasi) in the heart of Adansiland however, British businessmen put pressure on the Gold Coast Colony to break Asante power once and for all and bring Asante and the entire River Pra basin under British rule to facilitate the exploitation of the gold deposits discovered in Adansi. Britain burned down the Asante capital, Kumasi, in 1896, exiled the Asante king (Asantehene) and his court, and declared metropolitan Asante as well as all the surrounding states including Adansi a British protectorate.

Adansi extend from the Pra River northwards to the Asante state of Bekwai. Gold has been panned in their territory since the 13th century by indigenous, artisanal miners. It is principally because of their land that the Europeans named the area of the West African coast now occupied by Ghana the “Gold Coast”. The abundant gold that nature has endowed this small tribe with has unfortunately created enemies for them in that their stronger rival tribe—Asante—has enslaved and amalgamated them into their own tribe in order to claim and pass off the goldfields of the weaker, smaller Adansi tribe as their own.

The Nature of the Enslavement

The Adansi people—like all the other Akan tribes around the dominant, war-like Asante tribe—have been subject to the stronger Asante Confederacy even since before this confederacy was formed in the first decade of the 18th century. The Adansi tribe has five paramountcies namely Fomena, Ayaase, Dompoase, Akrokyere, and New Edubiase. All but one of the paramount chiefs of these paramountcies have the status of a paramount chief—the other four have been demoted to the status of common chiefs by the Asantehene, the king of Asante.This has greatly militated against the development of the tribe.These paramountcies are have remained underdeveloped; they are virtualy still villages.This practice is explicitly against the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 of which the rights described in its 30 articles include the right to liberty. The right to liberty of the Adansi tribe has been taken away by the Asantehene for over four centuries. The identity of the Adansi tribe as a distinct tribe on its own has been taken away; the list of tribes in Ghana does not include Adansi at all. The children in Adansi are indoctrinated from their childhood with the false teaching that they are of the Asante tribe. All Adansi people have therefore grown up with a tribal identity as Asante. This has been the handiwork of the Asantehenes of four centuries ago and it is still upheld by the succeeding ones, including the current one.

Obuasi—The El Dorado of the World?

In March 1890 British businessmen negotiated the mining concession for 25,900 hectares (100 square miles) of land in the Obuasi District. The concession for the land of Obuasi was given by the paramount chief of Bekwai, a paramountcy of Asante. The paramount chief of Bekwai does not own the land of Adansiland but the king of Fomena does; Adansi was then a vassal of Asante. The Adansihene at Fomena should have granted that concession. In 1897—one year after the Asantehene and his court was exiled—the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation was formed. By 1995 25 million ounces of gold—estimated to be worth $10 billion—had been mined from Obuasi. The Obuasi mine is now one of the world’s ten largest gold mines. Obuasi has since grown to have a population of 115,568 (2000 estimate); is a municipality; and is the 9th biggest urban settlement in Ghana.

The Asantehene, the International Criminal Court, and Ghana

The Asantehene as well as the paramount chiefs of all the paramountcies of the Asante kingdom have benefitted from the enslavement of the Adansi state and are in violation of the Rome Statute that established the International Criminal Court. They are guilty of the crime of enslavement—a crime against humanity. The goal of the Ghana Human Rights Initiative is to petition the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, The Netherlands, with a complaint by July, 2011 to press charges against the Asantehene and all the paramount chiefs of Asante.We shall pray the Court to make the Asantehene renounce any control they hold on all the tribes they have enslaved and have them face justice at the Court. The Ghana Human Rights Initiative hopes to do this with the support of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative in Accra.

The International Criminal Court—How Relevant Is It To The Attainment Of Freedom And Justice In Ghana?

Introduction

The International Criminal Court came into existence on July 1, 2002 when the 60th member of the United Nations Organisation ratified the Rome Statute—the agreement establishing it.

The International Criminal Court is based in The Hague, The Netherlands. Ghana is a signatory to the Treaty of Rome, having signed the treaty on 18th of July, 1998 with a state party number of 6. Ghana received its state accession number on 20th December 1999. This means Ghanaians guilty of crimes under the jurisdiction of the court or Ghanaians who commit crimes in countries that are signatory to the Treaty of Rome could be prosecuted by the court.

A world criminal court became necessary to punish individuals or groups of individuals guilty of particularly grave crimes against humanity but who, by virtue of their status or clout in society, could remain free from punishment by the criminal system of their countries. The court is particularly vital for the developing world because the justice system there tends to be skewed in favour of the rich and powerful—they tend to be above the law.

Pursuant of this objective, the court has indicted some key Kenyan politicians—including the deputy prime minister—responsible for the post electoral violence in the east African country in 2007, a key blow to the culture of impunity that African politicians enjoy and a giant leap towards obliterating this culture.

The prosecutor has also opened investigations into the activities of Laurent Gbabgo; he could be indicted of war crimes for ordering his troops to kill Ivorian civilians in the ended political impasse that could be blamed on his obstinacy. The prosecutor is also investigating both sides of the current war in Libya for possible war crimes—Muammar al Qaddafi could be prosecuted for crimes against humanity for his killing of Libyan pro-democracy demonstrators prior to the war.

Individuals currently on trial at the court include the Congolese warlord Jean-Pierre Bemba for atrocities committed in the Central African republic.

Structure of the Court

The court has three functional divisions, or organs—the prosecutors, the judges and the registry.

The Office of the Prosecutor is headed Louis Moreno-Ocampo, who took office in June 2003. The other three organs are the Prosecutions Division, headed by Fatou Bensouda, the deputy prosecutor; the Investigations Divisions headed by Michel de Smedt; and the Jurisdiction, Complementarity and Co-operative Divisions headed by Phakiso Mochochoko. It serves a single nine-year term. The Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for investigating and initiating trials at the court and receives petitions from aggrieved individuals, organizations and national judicial authorities.

Eighteen judges constitute the Judges organ and they are elected by the Assembly of States Parties in a secret ballot. Judges have tenure of nine years and may not be re-elected; and no two judges may be of the same nationality. The Judges organ is headed by the Presidency; a group of three judges which is responsible for the judicial administration of the court and this consist of the president, the 1st vice president and the 2nd vice president. The Presidency is elected by the eighteen judges and it serves a term of three years.

The Registry is the administrative arm of the court and is responsible for non-judicial administrative matters.

The major source of funding of the court is dues from states that are party to the Rome Statute.

Jurisdictions and Crimes Prosecuted by the Court

The Treaty of Rome confers the power on the court to prosecute crimes of international concern committed by an individual of a signatory state or an individual from a non-signatory state who commits such a crime on the territory of a signatory state. Heads of state, members of legislature as well as government functionaries are not exempt from prosecution; and crimes are not subject to a statute of limitations.

The UN Security Council may refer a case to the prosecutor even when the state is not a signatory to the Rome Statute.

Crimes under the court’s jurisdiction fall into four categories: genocide; crimes against humanity; war crimes; and crimes of aggression.

Crimes against humanity, as defined by the Statute of Rome, “are particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are a part of a systematic or widespread practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion. On the other hand, an individual may be guilty of crimes against humanity even if he perpetrates one or two of the offences mentioned above, or engages in one such offence against only a few civilians, provided those offences are part of a consistent pattern of misbehavior by a number of persons linked to that offender (for example, because they engage in armed action on the same side or because they are parties to a common plan or for any similar reason). Consequently when one or more individuals are not accused of planning or carrying out a policy of inhumanity, but simply of perpetrating specific atrocities or vicious acts, in order to determine whether the necessary threshold is met one should use the following test: one ought to look at these atrocities or acts in their context and verify whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of inhumanity, or whether they may be regarded as part of an overall policy or a consistent pattern of an inhumanity, or whether they instead constitute isolated or sporadic acts of cruelty and wickedness.”

For the purpose of the Statute of Rome, “crimes against humanity” means any of the following acts when committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against any civilian population, with knowledge of the attack:

1. Murder;
2. Extermination;
3. Enslavement;
4. Deportation or forcible transfer of population;
5. Imprisonment or other severe deprivation of physical liberty in violation of fundamental rules of international law;
6. Torture;
7. Rape, sexual slavery, enforced prostitution, forced pregnancy, enforced sterilization, or any other form of sexual violence of comparable gravity;
8. persecution against any identifiable group or collectivity on political, racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious, gender as defined in paragraph 3, or other grounds that are universally recognised as impermissible under international law, in connection with any act referred to in this paragraph or any crime within the jurisdiction of the Court;
9. Enforced disappearance of persons;
10. The crime of apartheid;
11. Other inhumane acts of a similar character intentionally causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or to mental or physical health.

Of What Relevance Should The Court Be To Ghana?

Ghana should be of concern to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court because of the well-known and tolerated practice of systematic enslavement of one weak tribe by the other that goes back centuries. Ghana was the centre of an empire in the 18th century and the last vestiges of this empire remain in the continued political and economic enslavement being endured by the tribes surrounding the Asante kingdom. In January 2008, the president of the Asanteman Council of this country, Otumfour Osei Tutu, boasted in a council meeting that the tribes surrounding his tribe, Asante, “belonged” to him. An example of the tribes he claimed ownership of is Adansi, which has Africa’s second richest gold mine and whose paramount chiefs he has demoted to the status of common chiefs in order to facilitate the exploitation of the mineral resources of this distinct tribe. This denial of political and economic freedom is a grave incidence of enslavement—a crime against humanity—and it is one of the crimes that falls under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. It is well within the rights of the affected tribes to petition the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to have the perpetrators of this anachronistic crime prosecuted and to have them restored to sovereign status.