From LR
This is a wonderful piece from the Guardian. Congratulations editors. The truth must be told to stop this promitiveness.--
Matinyi.
Do we need a commission to probe this cold-blood murder?EditorialThis week, the Minister for Home Affairs, Emanuel Nchimbi, formed a probe commission to investigate the brutal killing of David Mwangosi, a correspondent for Channel Ten in Iringa.The probe team comprises retired judge Steven Ihema who is the chairperson, Theophil Makunga from the Editors' Forum, Pili Mtambalike from the Media Council of Tanzania, Col Wema Wakwe of the Tanzania People's Defence Forces and Deputy Commissioner of Police Isaya Mgulu.
The minister says the committee would need 30 days to accomplish its work, during which it will, among other things, respond to six questions whose answers Minister Nchimbi claims he cannot provide now.
Though many people, especially from the media fraternity, may see this as a credible move against those who killed Mwangosi, we would wish to state, categorically, that this is another ploy used to skirt around issues that call for justice to take its clear course – the hallmark of 'dilly-dallying' typical of this country.
We call it a dilly-dallying ploy because there's nothing to investigate about; the killers are well known according to eyewitnesses and documented evidence, which include video footage.
According to the available evidence, the members of the Field Force Unit killed Mwangosi in cold-blood murder.
The killings happened a week after another brutal death of a newspaper vendor who died in Morogoro region in what was also connected to police brutality.
But, to the surprise of many, the Home Affairs Minister, top police officials as well as members of the ruling party, have come out strongly in defence of the police --claiming that Chadema's thugs might have killed the news vendor.
A week later, the police were caught on camera unleashing brutal beatings on the Channel Ten correspondent, before one of them blew his stomach -- ending the life of a messenger.
Commissioner of Police, Paul Chagonja unaware that the brutal killings were captured live on camera by photographers at the scene in Iringa, have the nerve to give the public some wicked spin in a veiled, yet poor, attempt aimed at defending the killers.
Chagonja's fabricated propaganda was a demonstration of a desperate cover-up by the Police aimed at concealing the identity of those who killed Mwangosi. But, his ill-timed spinning this time around was strongly refuted and overtaken by the compelling evidence from the crime scene.
The police are asking us to believe the impossible: that you can as well make a probe team to establish where the sun rises. What does that take us? It simply means that you do not investigate the obvious, but unfortunately, that reality isn't as obvious to Dr. Nchimbi, who thinks that he can form a probe commission to investigate where the sun rises – and sets!
This is wastage of taxpayers' monies in the name of seeking justice. If Nchimbi and his boys in the police force were serious, they would have arrested the members of the Field Force Unit responsible for the killing of Mwangosi -- as well as the man who ordered them to kill him.
How do you investigate the people who are still sitting in the comfort of their offices? From Iringa Regional Police Commander's Office to the Police headquarters, it was very clear that there was a move to defend the Force in this murder case.
In a serious country, those accused would have been suspended pending findings of the Probe Commission, but in Tanzania -- it's business as usual, as it were.
If Nchimbi wants the public to believe that he's after justice in this case, he should first suspend those suspected of being involved in this murder case—pending investigations by the Probe Commission.
The Tanzania Police has a blood-tainted record. We all remember the extra-judicial killings in Nyamongo in May, 2011 where armed police killed dozens of villagers.
The reason behind the killings, the public was told, was that the villagers invaded North Mara Gold Mine. What puzzled many was the outrageous claims that some 1,000 youths from Nyamongo area invaded the North Mara gold mine, but 900 of them managed to escape without being arrested or injured, except those gunned down by the police.
But, as the investigation was later to establish, the majority of those killed were in fact hit by the bullets on their chests – contrary to the police reports that the victims were trying to escape when they were shot dead.
When the public demanded the closed-circuit camera's footages to prove that anything approaching 1,000 villagers could have invaded the goldmine, neither the police in Mara nor their bosses at headquarters had the answer.
There are many other recent cases, which prove beyond reasonable doubt, that our police are becoming notorious for extra judicial killings as well as the excessive use of force, even when handling scuffles at public demonstrators. The incidence in Arusha, which again involved Chadema supporters, is just one credible proof of how the Police are becoming more of an enemy of the very same people it is supposed to protect. It's the same with the Iringa case -- the same old story.
We would like to see the accused seven policemen and their bosses who gave them the order to kill are arrested and prosecuted before the courts of law.
If the minister wants to know whether there's hostility between journalists and police in Iringa region, then that should be a separate issue to be dealt with at a later stage.
What the public is interested in today is to see that the suspects in the murder case of Mwangosi are arrested and prosecuted immediately, or suspended to pave way for thorough investigations.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
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