Policeman embarks on ‘Watch Your Tongue’ campaign

A peace campaign, “Watch Your Tongue” (WYT) which aims at highlighting the negative effects of bad utterances on people and society at large has begun.

The initiator of the campaign, Corporal Daniel Ofori-Appiah, a court warrant officer stationed at the Accra Circuit Court seven, told the Daily Graphic last Tuesday that the campaign was birthed from a peace campaign he started during the 2016 elections to promote peace and unity.

The campaign was dubbed: “Biako Y3” peace campaign.

However, he said his objective now was to scale up the campaign to all year round.

He said with support from the police administration, he would be collaborating with Protoga Foundation, a non- governmental organisation with focus on championing patriotism, to promote the campaign.

The three-year campaign with the motto :  “Pleasant words; safe world” aims at building a caution system to remind people to be mindful of how they use words irrespective of their mood.

Watch Your Tongue

Touching more on the campaign, he said the campaign would focus on three main areas, which include, ”human utterances, human actions and the use of social media.”

“We want Ghana to be seen globally as a peaceful country. So we want to educate people to be wary of their utterances, actions and their use of social media as that could destroy their lives and other innocent people,” he said.

He added that, “the desire to continue the awareness creation is to save majority of innocent people who have been jailed due to their utterances.”

He said the campaign was targeted at all ages and tribes; against the use of abusive languages, discriminatory utterances, hate speech, insults, among others.

Additionally, he said, the campaign was crucial to maintain peace across the country, especially as the country was nearing the 2020 general elections.

He added that although awareness creation had begun, the campaign would be launched officially in 2019.
 
Implications

Citing instances that resulted from negative utterances, he mentioned the first and second world wars, the Rwanda genocide, and many others that came as a result of what someone said.

He finally urged journalists to be mindful of the choice of words in their reportage to avoid creating needless tension in the country.