THE real perpetrators of the gassing incident where over 50 people lost their lives may never be known for as long as the PF remains in power, says Andrew Banda.
Banda, the former first secretary at the Zambian Mission in Italy, noted that never in the history of Zambia has such an issue ever happened where over 50 innocent citizens died.
He lamented that to date, the perpetrators of that serious crime have not been made known.
“The real perpetrators of the gassing incident may never be known as long as the PF remains in power. Zambians are duty bound to hold PF accountable for the terror they caused during that three months’ period in which they wanted to implicate president Hakainde Hichilema and our party UPND. All their schemes backfired on them like the zero option and the black mamba backfired on the MMD of Mr Frederick Chiluba,” Banda said.
He said terrorism was a very serious offence world over as it was intended to coerce or intimidate societies to attain political, religious, or ideological goals.
“Terrorism is the calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to instill fear in citizens. It is intended to coerce or intimidate societies to attain political, religious, or ideological goals. In this particular case of gassing, the PF through their propaganda wanted Zambians to believe that HH and UPND were behind gassing and it nearly worked. The purpose for all this was intended to eliminate HH from contesting in the 2021 presidential election,” he said.
Banda said in all honesty, silence implies consent and the PF’s stillness implies that “they have consented to the crime”.
He said the PF does not care even a bit and were not responsible enough to inform the nation the truth about gassing and therefore Zambians were entitled to continue speculating that they were the ones behind the gassing.
“Note, former president of Nigeria, the late General [Sani] Abacha, was once quoted ‘When there is insecurity in a country for over 24 hours, then the State is involved’. Some PF ministers and senior party officials accused the opposition for sponsoring gassing. They further went on to accuse the opposition by stating that what was happening was politically motivated because mobs were chanting political slogans,” he recalled. “Gassing spread from the Copperbelt to North Western and Lusaka and spread countrywide. According to PF, because citizens were chanting political slogans, the opposition would do anything to get to State House.”
Banda said there were so many questions begging for answers, among them why the PF government refused to bring in Scotland Yard or FBI to investigate the gassing issue after local police failed to arrest the issue and prosecute the offenders.
Further, Banda asked why senior police officers were issuing inconsistent and contradictory statements over gassing and why most of those arrested over gassing were PF cadres that included Spax Mulenga.
“Why have they not been taken to court up to date? Where is Spax Mulenga today? Why has the Commander-In-Chief of the armed forces (the President) remained mute?” Banda asked.
“Why did gassing come to an end after Spax Mulenga was rounded up and detained at an unknown facility? As long as those suspected to have been behind the gassing/terrorism are not prosecuted for the public to know, terrorism will continue at very high level going forward.”
He said the problem with Zambians was that they never want to hold a sitting government accountable for its actions.
Banda said in this particular case, like many others, his appeal was for citizens to do the needful to avoid a repeat of the now forgotten gassing incidents.