CCPR/C/105/D/1303/2004
1.2
On 20 October 2004, the Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim
measures denied the State party’s request for the Committee to examine the admissibility of
the communication separately from the merits.
Factual background
2.1
On 28 October 1997, Mr. Chiti, who was a military officer, was arrested by the
police as a suspect in an attempted coup d’état. He was charged with treason. He was
detained in solitary confinement and held incommunicado and in fetters in the Zambian
police headquarters for nine days. During this time, he was denied food and legal
representation. In addition, from 28 October to 6 November 1997, each night from 19h00
to the following morning, he was subjected to the following treatment by 8 to 12 state
security agents taking turns: regular hour-long beatings with hosepipes, electrical wires,
wooden and rubber batons; made to stand on one leg for hours and when tried to shift to the
other leg was beaten; repeated questioning by all policemen in the room at the same time,
sometimes while lying on his stomach with policemen standing on him, and then repeated
beatings; threatened with death and maiming; forced to sign statements implicating senior
politicians in the alleged coup; suspended from a rope hanging from the ceiling; suspended
on a rod having been “coiled” into a wheel, with a metal rod passed between his abdomen
and his curled legs; threatened with drowning and being fed to crocodiles at the foot of a
river, 50 km south of Lusaka; made to stand naked against the edge of a table whereupon
his penis was hit with the sharp edge of a ruler.
2.2
As a consequence of the torture inflicted, Mr. Chiti was transferred to Maina Soko
Military hospital in Lusaka where it appeared that his eardrum had been perforated. On 6
November 1997, Mr. Chiti was transferred to Lusaka Central Prison (Chimbokaila). On 10
November 1997, he was taken back to the police station headquarters where he was forced
to make and sign a written statement implicating certain politicians in the alleged coup.
2.3
In the same month, Mr. Chiti made a complaint to the Government-appointed, administered and -controlled Zambian Permanent Human Rights Commission. A group of
human rights commissioners from this Commission tried to visit him in prison in
November or December 1997, but prior to their arrival he was removed and hidden in
another prison. He forwarded his complaint to the Legal Resources Foundation, a privately
run law firm, which represented him in relation to his treason charge (see para. 2.7 below).
2.4
On 31 October 1997, two days after Mr. Chiti’s arrest, soldiers, police officers and
State security agents forced their way into the government flat in which the Chiti family
was living. They took all the family belongings, loaded them on a military truck and drove
to an unknown destination. No member of the family was in the house at the time, as the
author was visiting her husband at the police headquarters. When trying to return home, the
author and her children were barred from doing so. Almost all the family belongings,
including important documents like birth and marriages certificates are either missing, were
damaged or stolen. The author later found out that their belongings had been dumped at
Lusaka’s main city bus and railway station. She could not recover any of them.
2.5
Subsequently, on six occasions, the author and her children were forcibly and
illegally evicted by State security agents from six homes in which they attempted to seek
shelter. According to the author, they were victimized, harassed and intimidated, denied
freedom of movement and assembly. The author’s children could not go to school any more
due to fear of harassment. In November 1998, the author and her three youngest children
fled Zambia to seek political asylum in Namibia. They stayed there until October 1999.
Since their return, the State party has continued to harass them. As a result, they are
homeless and destitute and the education of the author’s children has been greatly
disrupted.
3