ZAMBIAN AUTHORITIES CRACK WHIP ON OPPOSITION: 48 MPs SUSPENDED FROM PARLIAMENT
Zambia’s leading opposition political party, United Party for National Development (UPND) has continued to receive a bashing from the Patriotic Front government with the church and civil society raising alarm at what they describe as an accelerated move towards a dictatorship. Zambia now has a situation where the president of the main opposition party is in indefinite detention and where there is effectively no opposition party in the National Assembly. The Party’s President Hakainde Hichilema remains incarcerated on charges of treason after his motorcade allegedly blocked President Lungu’s motorcade as they both drove to a traditional ceremony in western Zambia. Hichilema was recently committed to the High Court and forcefully airlifted from Lusaka Central Prison to a maximum remand prison in Central Zambia. The prison is famous for housing dangerous hard core criminals and inmates on death row. His lawyers lamented that they could no longer guarantee his safety and his wife a