July 20 2011 will go down into our annals of history as a day when a duly elected government in this democratic dispensation unleashed one of its armed forces to gun down in cold blood its own defenceless and unarmed citizens.<\/p>\n
Most of the 20 people who died in Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantyre were young men in their early 20s.<\/p>\n
While the majority of the dead were part of the multitudes of Malawians who were protesting the misrule under the DPP after the power that that the people of this country gave it during the 2009 elections went into its head, I know for a fact that one or two who were just at a wrong place and at a wrong time and they lost their lives.<\/p>\n
Most of them were sons, brothers, fathers and even husbands to some people but the DPP government under former president the late Bingu wa Mutharika decided to end their lives through use of lethal force by Police.<\/p>\n
The police decided to act against their own operational guidelines to apply more force that was not proportional to the threat if any and in the course of doing so bona fide Malawians lost their dear lives by the bullets of the State.<\/p>\n
Sadly, and five years down the line, nobody has been held to account for this massacre of innocent citizens.<\/p>\n
Nothing has been heard of cases that were opened to hoodwink Malawians that something was happening involving some of the policemen and women who murdered these Malawians on behalf of the DPP government.<\/p>\n
All we hear are relatives of the dead engaging in an endless battle seeking closure of the matter by demanding compensation from the present DPP government.<\/p>\n
Instead all they have gotten are lies from the Attorney General\u2019s office in an attempt to stop them from taking government to court.<\/p>\n
During the 5th Anniversary commemoration of the deaths on Wednesday, no government official, let alone President Peter Mutharika or any of his ministers, was brave enough to face the relatives in Mzuzu where they reminded the administration of its promises to build tombstones of their fallen relatives which have come to nothing.<\/p>\n
Where could they get the courage to look straight into the eyes of the bereaved families when they know they were part of a government that sent those young men and women to their early graves?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Was it not only last week when the country was commemorating another mysterious death, this time linked to the fight against corruption?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
What about Robert Chasowa, the Polytechnic student who was murdered in 2011 at the college\u2019s campus with Police initially saying the boy committed suicide when all indications were there that he was killed mercilessly?<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The DPP government could start by compensating the bereaved families of the July 20 victims if only to bring closure to this matter. 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.<\/p>\n
Lest we forget, DPP decided to unleash Police guns on its own people in 2011 for demonstrating against its bad rule.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
July 20 2011 will go down into our annals of history as a day when a duly elected government in this democratic dispensation unleashed one of its armed forces to gun down in cold blood its own defenceless and unarmed citizens. Most of the 20 people who died in Lilongwe, Mzuzu and Blantyre were young […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28607"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28607\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28610,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28607\/revisions\/28610"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}