WE feel both Justice Minister Mulambo Haimbe and his Home Affairs and Internal Security counterpart Jack Mwiimbu have a flawed argument in dismissing observations by the Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) raising concern about increased human rights abuses and violations under the UPND government.
Both Mr Haimbe and Mr Mwiimbu claim that the new dawn administration has an open-door policy, in essence meaning LAZ and anyone aggrieved, should engage the government than raise issues in public.
But having an open-door policy should not mean that people should turn a blind eye when things go wrong in the country.
LAZ, in expressing its concern about the worsening incidents of police brutality against citizens was merely reacting to the concerns raised and are in the public domain. They are based on facts.
If anything, LAZ should not be a closed shop for the elite in society but should respond to concerns raised by the public especially those bordering on the rule of law.
It should not be “business as usual” when citizens are abducted by heavily armed men in plain clothes only to resurface hours later at a police station where they had been arrested.
That is not right.
Yet, this is the ordeal that Emmanuel Mwamba, the Patriotic Front deputy chairman for information and publicity suffered recently when about nine plain-clothed police officers seized him from a car wash in Lusaka.
For over 24 hours, his family, friends, and lawyers did not know where he was, running from one police station to another through the night looking for him.
At the end of it all, he was charged with assaulting a police officer.
In Petauke, a PF blogger, Rizwan Patel, disappeared for over a week without his family knowing his whereabouts until the police owned up that he was in custody.
There are numerous incidents in which those who served in the PF regime, accused of looting public resources have been arrested in a manner clearly designed to humiliate them.
As we have argued before, yes, the police have the mandate to arrest those suspected of committing crimes. But it is the manner in which that mandate is being abused that people are complaining about.
LAZ president Lungisani Zulu said the association was deeply concerned with the increasing trends of police brutality and therefore strongly condemned the recent incidences of police cruelty against persons believed to be members of opposition political parties.
Mr Zulu said that LAZ found it unfortunate that the Zambia Police was brutalizing citizens and that the association was concerned as such human rights violations had the potential of eroding democratic gains the country continued making.
Moreover, Mr Zulu’s statement came in the wake of a statement by Inspector General of Police Graphael Musamba who threatened opposition political party leaders with the unconventional minimum force during arrests if they will not tone down in criticizing the new dawn administration or cooperate with the Zambia Police.
The two statements should have been condemned by both Mr Haimbe and Mr Mwiimbu for they clearly go against the tenets of a democratic society.
It should not be for the Inspector General of police to decide how the opposition should criticize the government, certainly not when they do so within the confines of the law, threatening them with “appropriate” punishment if they do not tow the line..
LAZ is right to take the new dawn administration to task over human rights violations especially that it campaigned on the ticket of restoring the rule of law.
And Mr Haimbe and Mr Mwiimbu, as senior lawyers are among those who were forthright in decrying the lawlessness perpetrated under the former regime, including a compromised Zambia Police Service.
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