By Michael Kaluba
The Prison Care and Counseling Association-PRISCA- has challenged the new dawn government to break the silence on what the organization has described as an archaic death sentence law by abolishing it.
PRISCA Executive Director Dr. Godfrey Malembeka says the law is not only expensive to undertake but that it is against the right to life and only meant to punish poor convicts.
Dr. Malembeka says he supports sustained efforts by the human rights commission to lobby government to abolish the death penalty further wondering why Zambia continues to have the death penalty when Britain, which introduced it in Zambia during colonialism, has abolished it presently.
Dr. Malembeka is also of the view that the death penalty is not consistent with Constitutional Amendment Numbers 2 of 2016 which replaced the Zambia prisons with the Zambia Correctional Service and from punitive to rehabilitation of inmates respectively.
Despite the constitution still having provisions for a death penalty upon conviction, Zambia last had an execution in January 1997 under the mmd government of former and late president Fredrick Chiluba.
PHOENIX NEWS