Zambian Rights Groups Fight the Death Penalty

Jun 10,2002

Dickson Jere,OneWorld Africa

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, a leading opponent of the death penalty in Zambia, says radio programs scheduled to start Wednesday--along with meetings for lawmakers, government officials, and the public--will aim to raise awareness of the steep rise in the number of prisoners on death row.

Human rights lawyers, religious leaders, and acquitted death-row prisoners will be invited to take part in the live broadcasts which will include opportunities for listeners to phone in with questions for the panelists. Wednesday's program will pose the question, "Should death penalty be abolished?"

"We want everyone to get involved in the fight for the fundamental right to life," said Chishimba Milongo, information officer for the Commission, a Lusaka-based justice group working closely with the Law Association of Zambia and other human rights advocates. Milongo said this week's radio broadcasts aimed to win public support for abolishing capital punishment.

 More than 200 people are currently on Zambia's death row, including 59 former soldiers sentenced for their role in a failed 1997 military coup. Last month alone, six people were sentenced to death for their involvement in a range of aggravated robbery cases.

 Treason, murder, and aggravated robbery are the only three capital crimes in Zambia. While 500 convicts were hanged between 1964, when Zambia gained independence from Britain, and the mid-1990s, no one has been executed since 1997, when former president Frederick Chiluba signed the death warrants of eight convicts.

 "The fact that executions are not being carried out is reason enough to abolish the death penalty," Milongo said, noting that there was little evidence supporting the view, held by advocates of capital punishment, that the death penalty acts as a deterrent against the potential perpetrators of brutal crimes.

 Zambia's President Levy Mwanawasa, a human rights lawyer who took office after elections last December, says he is opposed to capital punishment. He was recently quoted as saying, "Some of the convicts reform while in prison. So why should you kill somebody who has reformed?"

 The Mwanawasa government, however, has declined to take a firm stance either favoring or against capital punishment. "There are always two views, extreme views, that need to be satisfied," according to a spokesman from the legal affairs department, "and as a government we can't just take one side to please it."

 This week's media offensive to sway the government on the issue comes in advance of a High Court ruling on a petition filed last year by prominent Zambian lawyer Kelvin Hangandu which challenged the constitutional basis of the death penalty. Hangandu also argued that the executions violate several international human rights accords to which Zambia is a signatory.

 The government is currently considering constitutional and law reforms, and the death penalty is expected to be among other contentious issues to be tabled for discussion.