Zambian rights activists Saturday hailed as a “enormous milestone” a choice to scrap two British colonial-era legal guidelines: the loss of life penalty and making criticism of the nation’s chief a punishable offence.
President Hakainde Hichilema, whose social gathering was in opposition for over twenty years, had promised that he would scrap the legal guidelines if elected to the highest job.
“President Hakainde Hichilema has assented to the penal code of 2022 abolishing the imposition of the loss of life penalty and the offence of legal defamation of the president, which has been on the Zambian statute books since (the) pre-independence period,” presidential spokesman Anthony Bwalya stated in a press release on Friday.
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Human rights activist Brebner Changala stated the choice was a “enormous milestone within the removing of colonial legal guidelines that don’t match within the democratic dispensation of the nation”.
The chief director of the Centre for Coverage Dialogue Caroline Katotobwe stated Zambians would now communicate freely.
“As stakeholders we’re elated that this repressive legislation is lastly finished away with. Thus, permitting residents to freely categorical their views with out concern of prosecution as was the case previously,” she stated.
Zambia gained independence from British rule in 1964. The southern African nation is dwelling to 18 million individuals.