IT’S PURE TYRANNY
People can’t talk because they are gagged – Kapwepwe
By Adrian Mwanza
GOVERNANCE expert Mulenga Kapwepwe has said what the United Party National Development (UPND) is doing to opposition political parties is pure tyranny and should be condemned in the strongest terms.
In an interview with The Mast, Kapwepwe said there was a chilling effect because people were scared to talk since they were being gagged.
“What is happening now is pure tyranny because there’s no way people can be arrested for merely expressing an opinion,” she said.
Kapwepwe said people were now living in fear because the current government was picking up people for merely expressing their opinions.
She said this was a campaign period and people needed to express themselves freely and not the current situation where they could not freely talk.
“These people should relax and not the way they are panicking. We have seen a lot of regimes but nothing like this has ever happened in Zambia,” she said.
Kapwepwe said the UPND was capable of charging individuals for merely utilising their free speech because the party was desperate to cling to power.
She said there was a need to respect people’s freedom of expression because it was their democratic right and no one should gag them.
“Freedom of expression is every Zambian’s fundamental right. Therefore, people should learn to respect it by giving them an opportunity to do so freely, more over this is a campaign period,” she said.
Kapwepwe said the detention of former Zambia Security intelligence Service (ZSIS) director general Xavier Chungu was unfortunate because he was just expressing his views.
