JB promises no repeat of July 20 killings

President Joyce Banda has promised that nationwide demonstrations similar to the July 20 2011 will not take place under her leadership, saying that she has drawn lessons from them.

The President was responding to calls made by the Livingstonia Synod general secretary the Reverend Levi Nyondo and the Synod’s Church and Society Programme director Moses Mkandawire during the joint prayers in memory of the July 20 victims at Zolozolo Cemetery in Mzuzu on today morning.

The two warned that if government fails to be accountable to the people, the church and the civil society will not remain quiet.

“We don’t want this [such demonstrations] to repeat. There were no freedoms, no human rights in the last regime. We even thought that Kamuzu Banda era was better. The whole government machinery was defiant. But things have changed now.

“The Synod of Livingstonia and other churches will support you. But when things go wrong, we will point out,” said Nyondo.

President Banda in her speech took a swipe at the corruption, violence and exploitation in the last regime, while promising that her government will make sure to be different.

“Things happen for a purpose for us all to draw lessons from…I take this as my lesson number one,” she said.

“I’m human prone to error and it’s you people who need to rebuke me. But you need to approach me personally because I don’t respond to things said in the media,” she said.

Earlier, the President led in laying of wreaths where the first gentleman retired Chief Justice Richard Banda, bereaved families, government officials and representatives from various stakeholders also laid their wreaths.

During the 2011 demonstrations, at least 20 people were killed across the country when police confronted the unarmed demonstrators using excessive force and opened fire at the protesters when they took to the streets to protest against shortages of fuel, foreign exchange and poor governance.

A commission of inquiry appointed by the late Bingu wa Mutharika, but whose results came out in July 2012 under the administration of Joyce Banda, faulted the police for the deaths and called for investigation and prosecution of those involved.

Presently, Centre for Human Rights and Rehabilitation (CHRR) and Centre for Development of People (CEDEP) has called on for an expedited judicial process to bring to book all perpetrators of crimes and call for compensation of victims and survivors.