The Chingola Police Killing - What Happened?

Human rights activist and Alliance for Community Action (ACA) Executive Director Laura Miti is asking what happened in the case where police allegedly shot and killed a citizen accused of being a gasser in Chingola.

The incident took place in January 2020, during the height of the gassings, with former Deputy Inspector General of Police, Bonnie Kapeso, announcing the police had shot and killed a citizen in connection with the matter.

“The circumstances surrounding the killing were both disturbing and bizarre,” Miti writes.

According to Miti, Kapeso had claimed the young man was shot in the legs as he tried to run away after the police ordered him to stop.

“The then Deputy IG announced, with not a modicum of remorse or seeming sense of how inexplicable that was, that the suspect bled out and died, as police watched,” she narrates.

“To justify the killing, Mr Kapeso displayed bottles with liquids that, he said, the young man had been carrying in a backpack,” she continues.

While the nation was told the liquids would be taken for analysis to a lab in Lusaka, and the nation informed of the outcome, Miti claims that there has been no further update on the subject.

Having found the incident disturbing, Miti wrote to the Human Rights Commission, requesting an investigation. However, the Commission did not respond.

“I have never forgotten that young man and I still want to know why he was killed in cold blood. It bothers me that, when we list the citizens murdered by police in the last few years, he is not included. He was shot buried and forgotten, in my view, sacrificed to show a public panicked by gassing, that the police were on top of things,” she writes.

One year on Miti is asking what the lab analysis found to have been in those bottles and questions if indeed the bottles belonged to the young man.

“Just because an individual is poor, and unconnected, it does not mean their life is worthless. What the police did to Nsama Nsama and Joseph Kaunda on the 23rd of December, is exactly what they did to the faceless nameless Chingola boy - recklessly and lawlessly discharged live ammunition, when other policing tactics were available to them. The Chingola boy must be remembered, his killers punished and family compensated,” she writes.

“May his blood join that of Mapenzi, Vespers, Frank, Joseph and Nsama in crying out from the grave against Katanga, Kapeso Kanganja and Kampyongo. I hope the four of them hear all this blood they have shed bubbling in their ears, as they get on with their comfortable lives,” Miti concludes.