Besides, one of the reasons offered by suspected armed insurgents
fighting under the platform of the Islamic extremists in the Northern segment
of the Nigerian society is the 2009 alleged extra-legal execution of Mohammed
Yusuf, the founder of the armed Islamic sect by the police.
Only recently, when the chairman of the National Human Rights Commission
Dr.Chidi Odinkalu raised alarm of the unprecedented scale of police
extra-judicial execution of suspects in police custody, the Inspector General
of police Mr. Abubakar Dikko Mohammed attempted to arrest and detain him if not
that organized civil society groups protested vehemently.
Even the United Kingdom –based Amnesty international and the United
States-based Human Rights Watch warned the police top hierarchy to stop
harassing the chairman of the Nigerian Human Rights Commission who had raised
valid concern regarding the high rate of extra-legal killings of suspects and other
innocent citizens by overzealous trigger-happy but extremely untrained armed
police operatives of the Nigerian police force.
Few years back, the Independent Corrupt Practices and other related
offences Commission (ICPC) issued a report on corrupt practices among officials
of government agencies and ranked the operatives of the Nigerian police force
as some of the most corrupt in Nigeria.
But few weeks ago, operatives of the South African Police demonstrated
to the World that some of their operatives are yet to extricate themselves from
the notorious vestiges of apartheid policing tendencies characterized by brutal
extra-legal killings of black South Africans.
The South African police in the full glare of global media gruesomely
shot and killed about 34 South African miners who were protesting poor
conditions of service. Some suspected armed protesting miners were blamed for the
earlier gruesome killing of their fellow miners and two police operatives.
As if that bestiality was not
enough the so-called New South African police proceeded to arrest and charge
several protesting miners for the said extra-legal execution of nearly 34
miners by the police.
An analyst told the Cable News Network [CNN] that in South Africa, the
practice is that suspects being pursued by police are charged for murder if in the
cause of trying to arrest them there occurs collateral damage or fatalities as
a result of the police action.
If this is the true picture of the law in place in South Africa, then the
South African police are not only brutal, notorious and dangerous but very
primitive and therefore this legal framework should be amended to meet global best
practices.
For purposes of clarification, I hereby re-present the news report of
the killing of the 34 or so protesting miners by the South African police as
captured by the Associated Press on August 17th, 2012.
The bloody police
real life dramatic killing of 34 miners was reported thus; “Frantic wives searched for missing loved ones, President
Jacob Zuma rushed home from a regional summit and some miners vowed a fight to
the death Friday as police finally announced the toll from the previous day’s
shooting by officers of striking platinum miners: 34 dead and 78 wounded”.
“Police Chief Mangwashi
Victoria Phiyega said that Thursday was a dark day for South Africa
and no time for pointing fingers, as people compared the shootings to
apartheid-era state violence and political parties and labor unions demanded an
investigation. Phiyega took over in June after two police commissioners were
indicted for corruption and other charges. She already had her work cut out
trying to reform a corrupt and scandal-ridden force”.
The foreign press Agency
also reported that; “Thursday’s shootings are seen as a microcosm of the myriad
problems facing South Africa 18 years after white racist rule ended, including
growing inequality between a white minority joined by a small black elite while
most blacks endure high unemployment and inadequate housing, health care and
education”.
The shootings “awaken us
to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking — it has exploded,”
The Sowetan newspaper said in a front-page editorial Friday. “Africans are
pitted against each other… They are fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral
wealth of the country.”
The South African government must decisively bring to trial the police operatives
who fired live bullets into the protesting miners and killed the over three
dozen poorly paid South African black miners who were legitimately seeking
enhanced pay wages which is legal and permissible by international humanitarian
laws.
On the side of the Nigerian police Force, the South African police
Massacre and the international condemnation that followed the bloodshed should
become a reminder to them that unlawful, extra-legal killings of civilians by
armed security operatives are reprehensible, atrocious and indeed amounts to a
crime against humanity which must be punished if not locally but in the International
Crimes Court (ICC).
This is because Article three of the Universal Declaration of HUMAN
Rights provides that; “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of
persons”. Article six of the International Covenant on civil and political
rights stated thus; “Every human being has the inherent right to life. This right
shall be protected by law. No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his life”.
It is not enough that the South African police authority has belatedly
decided to drop the so-called murder charges against the detained protesting
miners for the brutal mass murders that they [South African police] committed. But
South African justice system must charge the police operatives who shot and
killed unarmed civilians for murder in the competent court of law because to do
otherwise is to stage a return to the notorious apartheid period.
* Emmanuel Onwubiko,
Head, HUMAN Rights writers’ Association of Nigeria, blogs@www.huriwablogspot.com
3/9/2012
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