No hope in probes: Chasowa’s father fears culprits may never be brought to justice

The father of Robert Chasowa, a Polytechnic student found dead on campus in September 2011 at the height of anti government protests, says he fears the culprits may never be brought to justice.

“There is no movement on the matter,” lamented Austin Kings Chasowa in a telephone interview last week. “I have been travelling from Lilongwe to Blantyre to pursue the matter but now I am tired because the police were just wasting my time.”

Chasowa said what has happened so far is that there was a time the police told his family that some people had been arrested in connection with Robert’s murder and that government instituted an inquiry in 2012 which linked the death to a criminal act.

Apart from the case, there are also several inconclusive investigations on others with political connotations that took place in the past 15 years.

They include Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) senior officer Issa Njauju’s murder in July 2015, the disappearance of former Admarc boss Peter Mulamba in 2004 and inquests into the deaths of former banking executive Kalonga Stambuli in 2003 and singer Evison Matafale in 2001.

The others are Sunni Muslim cleric Sheikh Bugidad from Liwonde and politician Charles Waya, both of whom died over 15 years ago in mysterious circumstances.

For over four years, there has been silence on police probe into the burning of a house in Balaka belonging to an Anglican cleric MacDonald Sembereka, the burning of a house and computers of human rights activist Rafik Hajat of the Institute for Policy Interaction (IPI) in Blantyre.

There has also been an outcry to investigate and prosecute police officers who gunned down 20 unarmed civilians during anti-government protests on July 20 2011 in Mzuzu.

Also on the list are investigations into fire incidents that destroyed the Electricty Supply Corporation of Malawi (Escom) House in Blantyre in 2013 and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) warehouse in Lilongwe in 2015 which was keeping ballot papers for the 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections.

The lack of progress on the investigations of these cases has prompted both the Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) and the Malawi Law Society (MLS) to warn that the police risk losing peoples’ confidence if they fail to conclude the cases.

Since last year, the Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) and Centre for the Development of People (Cedep) have twice petitioned the United Nations (UN) to take the Malawi Government to task over the stalled cases.

The first petition was on February 9 2015 after which the UN wrote the Malawi Government to act on the cases. The second petition on August 31 2016 addressed to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland, also reports on intimidation of human rights defenders in the country.

Mid last month Cedep executive director Gift Trapence said after petitioning the UN on the issues, government was supposed to give a response to the world body.

But so far there has been none. Sembereka and Hajat said last week they were frustrated by the police’s failure to track down perpetrators of the arson that destroyed their properties.

“When the incident happened, I was only told that the case file which was being handled by the Eastern Region Police went missing and that no arrest was made,” said Sembereka.

“I am currently consulting my lawyers on the next course of action on the matter.”

Sembereka’s house was torched after former president Bingu wa Mutharika told staff of the Malawi Prison Service (MPS) during a passing out parade at Mapanga in Blantyre that he would smoke out all his critics.

The statement ignited a crackdown on fierce government critics. Hajat, whose office was petrol-bombed, said his claim to the Attorney General (AG) was rebuffed.

“The matter is still in police hands and they are still playing games with us. But when I lodged a claim with the AG, I was told they were only dealing with matters of personal injury and not property damage. I am told that no one was arrested,” he said.

But National Police deputy spokesperson Thomeck Nyaude defended their handling of the cases, saying investigations are “long and rigorous” processes which require time.

Nyaude said: “We would like to inform you that there are no deadlines or rules that stipulate a period within which an investigation must take place. By this I mean that no time frames have been set in both the Constitution of the Republic of Malawi and the Malawi Police Act. “

The slow pace or failure to complete the investigations is mainly due to unavailability of relevant information that could help the police complete the The 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP22) in Marrakesh Morocco started off this week with African countries making a strong case for the continent to lead in actualising the Paris Agreement signed last year in France.

The Paris Agreement is an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) dealing with greenhouse gases emissions mitigation, adaptation and finance starting in the year 2020.

The language of the agreement was negotiated by representatives of 195 countries at the COP 21 in Paris and adopted by consensus on December 12.

Its goal is to see global temperature lowered to habitable 1.5 degrees Celcius. President Peter Mutharika ratified the agreement during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September this year.

Speaking during the opening of the conference on Wednesday, COP22 president Salahedinne Mezouar called on all participants to commit to concrete climate initiatives and actions to support the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change especially in Africa, least developed and small island developing States.

He also announced that during COP22, Morocco, along with other partners, will launch the National Determined Contributions (NDC) Partnership to build capacity and direct climate finance flows towards the most vulnerable.

He reiterated the importance of accelerating climate finance, innovation, transfer and capacity building to create the low-carbon economy the planet needs to stay below the two degree Celsius mark of global warming.

“Paris gave us a global commitment to climate change and COP22 in Marrakesh will give us more ambitious climate action. We must all rise to the challenge in support of the most vulnerable countries in the fight against climate change,” he said.

So far a delegation of 15 people, led by the Environmental Affairs Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Energy and Mining, is representing Malawi’s interest at this year’s COP.

It includes government officials, development partners and civil society organisations investigations.

But I can assure you that no case is closed before completion.”

However, Malawi Law Society (MLS) president, John SuziBanda in an e-mailed response last week described the situation as worrisome.

“To me, the last categories of matters [in which criminality was confirmed] is very worrisome as it is an indictment of the institutions that were established to protect us by not only preventing crime but by professionally and meticulously investigating crimes and bringing to book all those suspected of having committed offences without fear or favour,” said SuziBanda.