{"id":76708,"date":"2019-04-11T11:54:48","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T09:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.times.mw\/?p=76708"},"modified":"2019-04-11T11:54:48","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T09:54:48","slug":"csos-condemn-intimidatory-arrest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/2019\/04\/11\/csos-condemn-intimidatory-arrest\/","title":{"rendered":"CSOs condemn \u2018intimidatory\u2019 arrest"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jameson Chauluka:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
HAS NOT SAID ANYTHING\u2014First Lady Mutharika<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Civil society organisations (CSOs) under the banner Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) have condemned the arrest of a man for allegedly posting a meme on Facebook which juxtaposed First Lady Gertrude Mutharika and a movie cartoon character, Rango.<\/p>\n

HRDC Chairperson, Timothy Mtambo, described the arrest of Tumpale Mwakibinga as an attempt to intimidate people from expressing thoughts in creative ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn this case, the one who was supposed to complain to police would be the designer of the glasses not the first lady. The police have a lot of more important cases they should be looking at such as the killing and abduction of people with albinism,\u201d<\/em> Mtambo said referring to the meme that had a caption: \u201cWhen the designer has watched too much Rango\u201d,<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Meanwhile, Blantyre First Grade Magistrate Court has set today for a ruling on bail application made Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Mwakibinga has been charged with insulting the modesty of a woman, cyber violation and offensive communication but he denied all the charges.<\/p>\n

Applying for bail, Mwakibinga\u2019s lawyer Gloria Mbendera said all the alleged offences were bailable.<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, Section 42 (2e) provides for a right to bail to all accused persons. The State has not demonstrated how releasing him would jeorpadise their investigations. Besides, he has already demonstrated that he is a law-abiding citizen by presenting himself to court when he heard that they were looking for him,\u201d<\/em> she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Regional Prosecutions Officer, Dickens Mwambazi, who is representing the State, asked the court to allow the State keep Mwakibinga for seven more days for them to complete investigations.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe matter is under investigation as we have to establish how the communication was made, among others,\u201d<\/em> he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mwambazi could, however, not comment on the submission by Mbendera that Mwakibinga presented himself to police, saying he was only told that the police had arrested him.<\/p>\n

Before adjourning the matter, Magistrate Soka Banda posed a series of preliminary questions on the state\u2019s case which Mwambazi declined to answer, saying they were bordering on evidence and that the matter was still being investigated.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know some cases are accentuated because of the personalities that are involved. RPO [ Regional Prosecutions Officer] you are saying that he put that status so that the First Lady should see? Are you sure the First Lady has access to his [Mwakibinga\u2019s] WhatsApp page? I don\u2019t know but did the First Lady come to Blantyre Police to complain of the status? Is this the first time we are seeing such pictures on social media?\u201d<\/em> queried Banda.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jameson Chauluka: Civil society organisations (CSOs) under the banner Human Rights Defenders Coalition (HRDC) have condemned the arrest of a man for allegedly posting a meme on Facebook which juxtaposed First Lady Gertrude Mutharika and a movie cartoon character, Rango. HRDC Chairperson, Timothy Mtambo, described the arrest of Tumpale Mwakibinga as an attempt to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76708","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\/76708","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=76708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76713,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76708\/revisions\/76713"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}