Pressure mounts on Minister Chimwendo to act on police officers who abused women

Home Affairs Minister Richard Chimwendo Banda  has come under immense pressure from several sectors of the general public, demanding him to act on a video showing police officers forcing women to whip each other.

According to video circulating on social media, police officers, who guards forests, found women collecting firewood in a reserve and, as punishment, they forced the women to whip each other mercilessly.

In the video, the women are seen whipping each other and there is one crying immensely and visibly in deep pain under the watchful instruction of the officers.

Writing on his Facebook page, renowned human rights lawyer Bright Theu said he is livid about the video.

Though he acknowledge the offence—picking dead wood from the reserve, Theu none of this [offence] begins to justify what was done to that woman.

“Hon. Richard Chimwendo Banda get on this and address the nation. The narrative from your office is as important as the action to be taken,” he said.

Theu questioned how, as a nation, can we debase and degrade our own kind and women for that matter in that way?

“What a callous and vile bunch of hoodlums masquerading as security officers! Those officers must be brought to book yesterday,” he said.

Another social media commentator Thandie wa Pulimuheya was charged why men have gone silent in rebuking the atrocities the officers have wrecked on women.

“So Honourable Ministers Nancy Tembo and Chimwendo Richard William Banda ngati kuli kotheka [if possible] please investigate who the policemen are that were forcing a woman to whip another woman apparently for being found in a protected forest burning charcoal,” she said.

She has since called for the suspension, arrest and imprisonment of the cops.