Zambia National Women’s Lobby (ZNWL) Chairperson Beauty Katebe Phiri says her organisation is excited that president Lungu has released general Clifford Dimba, who was serving 18 years for defiling an under age girl.
Phiri says her organisation will work with Dimba, also knows as general Kanene because, according to her, the other prisoners Lungu did not pardon have not repented.
Phirir told ZANIS that her organization is happy with the President’s decision to give General Kanene a second chance.
She said her organization feels there is no need for anyone to question the grounds on which General Kanene was pardoned by the President adding that the renowned musician has tremendously reformed.
She said the issue of Presidential pardon has nothing to do with how long someone has served their sentence but how reformed one gets.
She added that there are some people in prisons that have served many years but have not reformed and still remain a danger to society.
She claimed that for the President to grant pardon to General Kanene, the prisons authority was convinced that he had reformed and therefore gave its recommendations for him to be released.
The ZNWL Chairperson stated that people should realize that prisons are reformatory facilities for perpetrators of various offences and not punishment centers. (THIS IS CLEARLY NOT TRUE).
But on May 14, 2014, the same Beauty Katebe Phirir said she was angered by the continued human rights violation of women and girls in Zambia and Africa as a whole.
Speaking on behalf of Zambia National Women’s Lobby Board, Beauty Katebe Phiri said her organisation is appalled by the brutal assault and killing of two women in separate incidences in Mkushi and Mumbwa.
She said as a women movement, they find it unacceptable that 50 years after independence gender based violence should be one of the leading causes of mortality among women in Africa.
“This is the same brutality with which over 200 girls were abducted by the militia group Boko Haram in the Western African Country of Nigeria.” She says.
She said that in Zambia, cases of defilement remain high as can be evidenced by the impregnating of over 50 girls of school going age.
She described the act as inhuman and demanded that the culprits responsible for these actions must be brought to justice in the case where the girls in question are under the legal age of canal knowledge.
“We cannot allow such acts of barbarism to continue with impunity. These acts qualify the assertions that women and girls are still regarded as second class citizens who can be abused and even used as leverage in the settlement of disputes.
We demand for the protection of women and girls from such backwardness and savagery that is being witnessed. Women and girls should not live in fear of their lives and safety as if they are lesser citizens of the world.” Phiri said.