Lukulu military offensive condemned

Tue, 04 Dec 2012 15:21:28 +0000

President Sata’s decision to send military personnel to Western Province to deal with the people of Lukulu district is unfortunate, says ADD president Charles Milupi.

Commenting on President Sata’s directives on Friday during the 15th defence services command and staff college graduation ceremony to  Zambia Air Force Commander Eric Chimese to go and sort out people in Lukulu, Mr. Milupi said that President Sata’s directives was highly frightening.

“It is very frightening to hear a head of state arbitrary making such orders especially where it points to people living in a particular area and in this case in Lukulu. It is very unfortunate that he has decided to unleash the military to deal and sort out people in Lukulu,” said Mr. Milupi.

Mr. Milupi who questioned information being given to President Sata said that, “it was high time the head of state established what the major problem was inWesternProvincerather than sending troops against the people.”

He said that in so far as the intelligence information was not credible, citing the allegations that some retired generals and some opposition political party leaders were scheming an attempt on President Sata’s life was not true

Mr. Milupi said that unverified information President Sata was using to act against people in Lukulu was a threat to national unity, as it was now clear that people in that district were peaceful and hard working.

“It is over a year now when we were told that some people were planning to assassinate President Sata, We don’t know how far that matter has gone. We were also told by this same government that people in Kaoma were being recruited to cause a revolt in the country. We also don’t know how far investigations in this matter have gone.

“We also heard that Mr. Sata wanted to protect the Litunga. And now we are hearing that Mr. Sata is talking about the recruitment of 275 and 628 military personnel for the Barotse Liberation Army. Looking at those figures one can doubt its authenticity because of the high levels of poverty and that huge number of people will come from when they are busy trying to trot for their survival,” he said.

It was sad that President Sata had ordered military personnel to sort out the people in the area when what they were calling for was to revert to the original status of the agreement of 1964 and not a creation of another country as misunderstood by the PF government.

Mr. Milupi urged President Sata to stop such orders as it would culminate into tribal cleansing and end up in the International Criminal Court of Justice which he said would be an embarrassment to the country and the region.