Another anti-govt demo planned: DPP ‘does not respect human life’, Malawi News columnist says

Its the demonstration season, one after another against the Peter Mutharika led government. The latest being organised is by July 20 bereaved families in Mzuzu.

The families of the martyers killed in  the July 20 2011 nationwide demonstrations against late Bingu wa Mutharika regime  want to express concern over government’s failure to compensate them about K32 million for the lives that were lost but also loss of expectations.

A  member of the committee organising the demonstration, Juma Umali said families want to protest government’s reluctance to compensate them.

“It is worrisome that government agreed to pay the people after the court ordered that they should be compensated but the same government has failed to show commitment,” said Umali.

He said the court ordered that the families be compensated.

Lawyer for the families, Leonard Mbulo has since endorsed the move by the families to demonstrate next week saying it is their constitutional right.

The plan for demonstration of the July 20 bereaved families comes after a columnist in the influential Malawi News,  accused Mutharika’s party of not respecting human life.

“ DPP as a party in power does not respect human life. In fact, there are people that have died mysteriously on its watch and no probe, no trial and deadlock,” wrote George Kasakula on his ‘Hitting the Nail’ in Malawi News.

“Was it not only last week when the country was commemorating another mysterious death, this time linked to the fight against corruption?

“One year down the line the police have already raised their arms in defeat, telling us the other day they cannot make progress on the investigations involving ACB former director Issa Njaunju who was brutally murdered for reasons that are best known by those behind the act,” his column reads in part.

“What about Robert Chasowa, the Polytechnic student who was murdered in 2011 at the college’s campus with Police initially saying the boy committed suicide when all indications were there that he was killed mercilessly?

“Put plainly, the DPP has a bad history as far as deaths of innocent citizens who it deems to have crossed its paths is concerned and unless they address this issue, it should be a cause of worry to Malawians that wish this country should be governed by the rule of law.”

The columnist who is also editor-in-chief of the media giant , Times Group, said  the DPP government could start by compensating the bereaved families of the July 20 victims “if only to bring closure to this matter.”

He wrote: “ Not that it can bring back those young men who perished at the hands of police who they were supposed to defend in the first place but it could bring closure to the matter.”

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