By Daily Revelation Editor
Copperbelt police commissioner Peacewell Mweemba says the police presence at Holy Trinity Catholic Parish in Masala, Ndola was aimed at offering protection and not to block former president Edgar Lungu and other opposition leaders from attending the Church service.
Opposition leaders have given an account of the challenges they experienced on the Copperbelt with the police seeking to monitor and frustrate their movements.
Clearly, Peacewell is lying when he says the police were at the Church to protect Edgar and the other opposition leaders, because that is not true. They were there to stop the opposition from attending Church so that they could not interact with other Zambians in a Church set-up. Of course that has become one of the most efficient ways for those in the opposition to maintain their visibility and to communicate thought, given the deliberate roadblocks the UPND administration, through the police have put in place to clamp down on the opposition’s freedoms of movement, association and expression of thought.
Some in the ruling party have argued that the opposition leaders are not attending these church services with genuine intentions to worship God, but for political purposes, citing the recent Church meeting at Danny Pule’s Dunamis Christian ministries. However, whether their Church attendance is genuine or not genuine, is none of the ruling party’s business, neither the police’s business. If they are going to Church to play politics, they are answerable to God and not the police and the ruling party, unless the UPND has taken upon itself to be a god, which of course can’t be entertained.
Clearly, Hakainde Hichilema, despite his many promises to the contrary, is up to no good in terms of promoting democracy in this country. And he must not be allowed to obliterate the democratic credentials this country fought for so hard leading to the reintroduction of multipartism in this country in the very early 1990s. We encourage the opposition leaders not to give in to the intimidation and heavy handedness from the police. And this abuse is not only against the opposition leaders who are being denied their rights. This is an assault against all the democracy loving Zambians.
Zambians have shown over the years that they will not allow anyone to take away their hard fought democracy. They came out in their numbers first when they fought the British for their independence in 1964. They also came out in the droves to effect change of government in 1991, 2011 and most recently in 2021. We encourage Hakainde to abide by what he promised and prove to Zambians this time around that he is not just all talk and no action. He promised Zambians to revolutionalise the way the government should operate, saying the abuses he himself experienced of having his freedoms abused were going to be a thing of the past. The same Hakainde who claimed so is presiding over one of the worst police services the country has ever seen. Since when did it become normal in this country to deny people from worshiping at their own churches of choice? Why should the police be used to deny people from worshipping their God? And it doesn’t matter whether they are going there for true worship or politics. They have the right to worship, to freely associate and to move wherever they want to.
Please stop this police madness!
Related
By Daily Revelation Editor
Copperbelt police commissioner Peacewell Mweemba says the police presence at Holy Trinity Catholic Parish in Masala, Ndola was aimed at offering protection and not to block former president Edgar Lungu and other opposition leaders from attending the Church service.
Opposition leaders have given an account of the challenges they experienced on the Copperbelt with the police seeking to monitor and frustrate their movements.
Clearly, Peacewell is lying when he says the police were at the Church to protect Edgar and the other opposition leaders, because that is not true. They were there to stop the opposition from attending Church so that they could not interact with other Zambians in a Church set-up. Of course that has become one of the most efficient ways for those in the opposition to maintain their visibility and to communicate thought, given the deliberate roadblocks the UPND administration, through the police have put in place to clamp down on the opposition’s freedoms of movement, association and expression of thought.
Some in the ruling party have argued that the opposition leaders are not attending these church services with genuine intentions to worship God, but for political purposes, citing the recent Church meeting at Danny Pule’s Dunamis Christian ministries. However, whether their Church attendance is genuine or not genuine, is none of the ruling party’s business, neither the police’s business. If they are going to Church to play politics, they are answerable to God and not the police and the ruling party, unless the UPND has taken upon itself to be a god, which of course can’t be entertained.
Clearly, Hakainde Hichilema, despite his many promises to the contrary, is up to no good in terms of promoting democracy in this country. And he must not be allowed to obliterate the democratic credentials this country fought for so hard leading to the reintroduction of multipartism in this country in the very early 1990s. We encourage the opposition leaders not to give in to the intimidation and heavy handedness from the police. And this abuse is not only against the opposition leaders who are being denied their rights. This is an assault against all the democracy loving Zambians.
Zambians have shown over the years that they will not allow anyone to take away their hard fought democracy. They came out in their numbers first when they fought the British for their independence in 1964. They also came out in the droves to effect change of government in 1991, 2011 and most recently in 2021. We encourage Hakainde to abide by what he promised and prove to Zambians this time around that he is not just all talk and no action. He promised Zambians to revolutionalise the way the government should operate, saying the abuses he himself experienced of having his freedoms abused were going to be a thing of the past. The same Hakainde who claimed so is presiding over one of the worst police services the country has ever seen. Since when did it become normal in this country to deny people from worshiping at their own churches of choice? Why should the police be used to deny people from worshipping their God? And it doesn’t matter whether they are going there for true worship or politics. They have the right to worship, to freely associate and to move wherever they want to.
Please stop this police madness!
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