20 January 2016 :

A lecturer in the School of Law at the University of Zambia, Landilani Banda, says death sentence is “state-sanctioned murder” and must thus be abolished because there is no legal, political or religious justification for maintaining the death penalty in the laws of the country. Mr Banda appeared before the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs, Governance, Human Rights, Gender Matters and Child Affairs, that has been receiving views on whether the death penalty should be abolished or not. “There is no valid reason to maintain death sentence in the statutes of Zambia. Being on death row alone causes so much anguish and suffering to the convict that most of them actually die on death row,” Mr Banda said. He contended that death sentence has not acted as a deterrent to would-be offenders and it is, therefore, only logical that it is scraped.
“Death penalty is retrogression to the right of life. It is the state violating the right to life. Which citizen deserves to be killed by the state? Death penalty is not defence of life of the state,” Mr Banda said.
Mpika member of Parliament Mwansa Kapeya asked Mr Banda on whether he thinks Zambians will be convinced to abolish death penalty through a referendum.
Mr Banda said: “Zambians have a conscious. And Government needs to sensitise citizens on their rights, which includes the right to life”. Committee chairperson Cornelius Mweetwa asked Mr Banda on what the best deterrent should be in an event that the death penalty is abolished. Mr Banda said life imprisonment would be ideal to replace death penalty.