(Leader of Land of People Organisation Vinja Mpolitiki is protesting his incarceration and wants the People’s Tribunal to stop the Nyasaland government from interfering in the affairs of his purported free area)
Vinja Mpolitiki: My Lord, we at the Land of People Organisation, think that government of Mapuya in Nyasaland does not have the jurisdiction to arraign us over what we think is a rightful action we took to give our people something that we think was stolen from us.
For your information, My Lord, we have said time and again that we are an independent kingdom that decided to free ourselves from both the political and economic servitude of the Mapuya regime.
Why should people force us to belong to a country we don’t want to be part of?
My Lord, they arrested some of us on a foreign soil where we had gone to do some business and this was in violation of international treaties and it was an act of deliberate provocation of peace-seeking citizens of our kingdom.
We believe we have inalienable rights to travel from our kingdom to any country without having to look over the shoulder every now and then. I hope the United Nations is taking note of this.
My Lord, where do we get the motivation to tell the Mapuya government to leave us alone? Well, we are not the first to claim that we are independent of this landlocked country of Nyasaland.
Isn’t it common knowledge that others have claimed a bigger part of Lake Nyasa as theirs so much that a map depicting this new boundary is officially being circulated nationwide in that country. Why then didn’t they go there to arrest those who are claiming to own that part of Lake Nyasa?
The authorities, in their defence of inaction over the lake boundary, were busy quoting the Heligoland Treaty as evidence that they still have control over it.
But when I, Vinja Mpolitiki, decided to claim a small part of adulterated land and not even the lake, and cited some international treaty, I was called names and eventually arrested as a confusionist.
You don’t need a better definition of double standards, My Lord, than this.
My Lord, a precedent was set in that others who have claimed part of the country have not been taken to task while I was unceremoniously put into their custody.
We believe the case against us can only have merit when government explains itself on the lake boundary issue first.
We are not talking about how the majority of the people in our kingdom were literally squeezed between a rock and hard place by coffee plantations because that would be a case for another day.
I am not going to even mention that Mapuya is supposed to be a citizen of our kingdom; hence, he cannot arrest fellow citizens without valid reasons.
By the way, we also have courts in our kingdom that are presided by Mwene Mulipale. If they can’t take this matter to the International Court of Justice because of the territorial import then transfer it to the court of Mwene Mulipale. Thank you My Lord.
Judge Mbadwa: This court has been made aware that Land of the People Organisation is not the first to claim ownership of part of Nyasaland; hence, it is not satisfied with the explanation government has given on the claims that others are making that they own part of the lake. It is only when The People’s Tribunal is furnished with genuine grounds that Nyasaland hasn’t lost that part that I would allow the case against Vinja Mpolitiki to continue.n
