| LRF protects Criminals
Dear advisor,
I would like to express my disappointment
with your organisation. For a long time now you have been protecting prohibited immigrants
and other criminals with different cases. Well your work is being appreciated by the
people you have helped but as a human rights activist organisation I thought your job is
to sensitise people and make them aware of their obligations in terms of human rights.
It is surprising that you are only
concerned about the police officers. Why do you want to protect criminals instead of
helping the police in their work? I am of the view that police officers have there own
ethics and they know their job better than you do. If you do not know, very soon this
country will be rated the highest in terms of crime because you are protecting hard-core
criminals who even boast that your organisation will secure their release. Watch out the
way you do your work or else you will be promoting crime in this country.
Yours, Worried police officer, B.
P. Phiri, Lusaka
Dear B. P. Phiri,
It is always advisable to understand the
issue or issues at play before you criticise or comment on anything. If you understand,
the role and objectives of the Legal Resources Foundation (LRF) you cannot in your right
frame of mind allege that LRF protects criminals. If LRF were to protect lawbreakers, the
best thing for it to do would be to shut down because it would have defeated one of its
objectives. All those who say lawyers protect criminals do not understand how legal
systems all over the world work.
No body is a criminal until a court of
competent jurisdiction convicts him of a crime. It is nobody’s duty, either the
police or the public, to label anyone a criminal. Up until the point of conviction, we
only have suspected criminals.
You must understand that everybody
including yourself has a legal right to be defended by a lawyer of one’s choosing.
The function of a lawyer (and LRF) is to ensure that the rights of the suspect are not
violated by over zealous police officers by way of assaults, beatings and intimidation,
unlawful arrests and prolonged detentions without legal justification, oppressing suspects
into confessing to crimes they may not have committed. Be assured that you shall not be
given free reign to do as you please.
LRF is concerned about the police officers
because they are the major violators of citizens’ fundamental rights and freedoms.
Yes indeed, police officers have their ethics, but they do not follow them. It is
difficult to say that some police officers understand what their job entails. If they did,
we would have stopped going round in circles a long time ago. Is it part of a police
officer’s job to torture suspects, to search a house without the owner’s
permission or search warrant, to demand for money from suspects or relatives of the
suspects?
Be informed that the existence of LRF goes
beyond sensitising people about their rights. It extends to securing and protecting these
rights, which makes the violators uncomfortable. Suspects may say that LRF will secure
their release because they know that the police will do all the wrong things, for
instance, it is unlawful to detain a suspect without being sooner charged and taken to
court.
Once such a thing happens, the suspect will
be released because the detention is unlawful. It is also not permissible to have a
suspect remanded without being tried as soon as is practicable.
Yours
LRF Advisor.
Help me get back my house
Dear LRF Advisor,
I am a police officer at Choma Police
Station. Sir, I have a very serious issue that I need urgent advice on from your office.
On 25th August 1998, I went to see somebody
who could help me with some money to clear payments to the Choma Council, which offered me
a house to buy and the price was K 756,000.00. Nevertheless, before this person could
assist me with some money, he told me to write an offer that the house would be sold to
his wife and promised me a small house to stay in.
I wrote an offer to his wife and sold the
house to her, but unfortunately, the madam was not there. He called his daughter to sign
on behalf of her mother.
I was given K 3,500,000.00 and a small
house in a shanty compound. On 9th December, 1998, I shifted to that small home and after
two days he sent his brother to come and evict me. I was evicted with my nine children and
up to date, I am still suffering.
Police cannot accommodate me because they
are saying I sold the house. LRF I would like to be advised on how I should go about this
problem because the council was not approached to change the ownership, the property is
still in my name.
This man has refused to be refunded and he
has not given me that house because we did not put it in writing.
Since this man is refusing to get his
refund what should I do?
B. Sinkala
Dear B. Sinkala,
The first question that arises is why you
had to move out of your house if the idea was to merely borrow money to assist you buy the
house in question. Why did you not resist the eviction from the small house or get back to
your house immediately, at that earliest opportunity there was an indicator that the man
you were dealing with was not sincere in his dealings. Be that as it may be advised as
follows:
a) There was no proper contract of sale in
that one of the parties, the wife to the man was not aware of the deal and did not sign
the contract. The contract was signed on her behalf by her daughter without her authority.
(Why did the man decide not to sign the contract himself?)
b) You can only sell what you have. At the
time you dealt with this man, you had not bought the house; it was still property for the
Council. You could not have sold what was not yours. You had not yet acquired the full
title to the house so as to be in a position to decide whether to hold, sell it or give it
away.
c) You should promptly take the matter to
the subordinate court for a declaration that there was no sale of the house in question to
either the man or his wife, ask for an order of repossession and an order that you refund
the man his money back.
Yours, LRF Advisor. |
