Police tortured Luanar students – MHRC

The Malawi Human Rights Commission (MHRC) has said police officers tortured Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (Luanar) Bunda campus students who were demonstrating against blackouts.

This has been revealed in the primary findings on the death of Luanar student Prince Kamwanza.

MHRC has established that MPS officers tortured some of the students who were demonstrating against prolonged blackouts at the college last month.

But the commission has distanced the police from the death of Kamwanza.

According to the investigative report by MHRC, the death of Kamwanza who was a first year student studying soil science was caused by bowel obstruction and not physical assault.

MHRC findings show that police did not violate right to life of Kamwanza.

The report has however faulted the Luanar students for not demonstrating responsibly saying violence led to damage of property among others.

On some of the recommendations, MHRC says an independent postmortem maybe done on Kamwanza’s death.

The commission has also asked the police to learn ways of controlling demonstrations without torturing demonstrators since that is violating their rights.