{"id":68097,"date":"2018-07-05T11:15:22","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T09:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=68097"},"modified":"2018-07-05T11:15:22","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T09:15:22","slug":"deport-racist-expatriate-hrcc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2018\/07\/05\/deport-racist-expatriate-hrcc\/","title":{"rendered":"Deport racist expatriate\u2014HRCC"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY FAITH KAMTAMBE:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Human rights activists have said they are disappointed with Mike Harper, an expatriate who is said to have called a worker of a fellow expatriate \u201ca slave\u201d on the social media.<\/p>\n

The Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) has asked the government to deport Harper following the remark.<\/p>\n

Apparently, one expatriate, Pennie Ginn, wrote on a Facebook group of expatriates, named \u2018Lilongwe Expat Leaving\/Arriving\u2019\u2014 on which they update each other on who is leaving Malawi and who is coming to the country\u2014that she was sad to be leaving behind her house helper as she is going back to her country.<\/p>\n

\u201cHey why don\u2019t you take your slave with you? Just a thought,\u201d Harper wrote.<\/p>\n

Another person on the forum told Harper that calling the maid a slave is an insult to all Malawians.<\/p>\n

HRCC Chairperson, Robert Mkwezalamba, said in an interview on Tuesday that Harper\u2019s remarks should not be condoned and has since called for the expatriate\u2019s deportation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is against the principles of decent work, and degrading treatment, for any worker to be classified as a slave. Simply put, slave trade was banned and any person practising it is supposed to be arrested.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not want to be taken back to the years when there was slave trade. Under the abolition of slave trade, the United Nations resolved and annulled the selling, or making available for use, of any human being in conditions of slavery. HRCC will be pushing government to deport him,\u201d Mkwezalamba said.<\/p>\n

But gender and child rights activist, Emily Banda, who engaged Harper on the issue, said he apologised.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the issue came up, I sent a message to him, explained that what he had done was bad. It didn\u2019t take an effort. He apologised. You know these things, he could have easily said someone hacked his Facebook account. He owned the account and apologised. I think we should just give him the benefit of doubt,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n

Harper\u2019s apology, as posted on Banda\u2019s page reads: \u201cI am truly sorry my post has offended [people] and I apologised unreservedly on the page and apologise to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

While saying that he has not heard about the issue, Minister of Information and Communications Technology, Nicholas Dausi, said the government would investigate the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cGovernment is going to look into that issue. We can\u2019t allow our own people to be called slaves in their own country. We are going to investigate this and we will take appropriate action when we are satisfied that he really said that,\u201d Dausi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY FAITH KAMTAMBE: Human rights activists have said they are disappointed with Mike Harper, an expatriate who is said to have called a worker of a fellow expatriate \u201ca slave\u201d on the social media. The Human Rights Consultative Committee (HRCC) has asked the government to deport Harper following the remark. Apparently, one expatriate, Pennie Ginn, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":68105,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68097","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\/68097","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=68097"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68106,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68097\/revisions\/68106"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}