Zambia suspends 48 opposition MPs

Bishop’s death ‘murder’

LUSAKA, June 14, (Agencies): Zambia’s parliament suspended 48 opposition lawmakers on Tuesday for boycotting a speech by the president, widening a political rift that has alarmed rights groups.

Parliament’s speaker barred the United Party for National Development (UPND) politicians from taking their seats for 30 days, a move that banned them from the building and stopped their pay.

Their party, which was defeated in August elections that it said were rigged, called the suspensions unconstitutional.

The lawmakers boycotted President Edgar Lungu’s address at the official opening of the assembly in March, saying they did not recognise him as leader.

A month later, the UPND’s leader, Hakainde Hichilema, and five others were arrested and charged with treason after a column of opposition vehicles failed to make way for Lungu’s motorcade.

Amnesty International has said the treason charges are “trumped up” and called for the politicians’ release.

Lungu

Bishop’s death ‘murder’:

A Roman Catholic bishop whose body was found in a river in central Cameroon early this month was “brutally murdered” and did not commit suicide, his peers said in a statement.

“We, bishops of Cameroon, affirm that Monsignor Jean Marie Benoit Bala did not commit suicide; he was brutally assassinated,” the church leaders said in a statement obtained Wednesday by AFP.

They said after meeting to discuss “the heinous and unbearable crime” that the bishop’s death was “yet another murder, a murder too many.”

The body of the 58-year-old bishop of Bafia, in the centre of the country, was fished out of the Sanaga river on June 2, more than 48 hours after he was reported missing.

His car had been found on a bridge over the river on May 31, with his identity papers and a written note found on the front seat, saying “I am in the water”.

2 die in building collapse:

The mother of two children rescued from a collapsed seven-storey building in Nairobi has died in hospital, officials said Wednesday, amid fears more people are trapped under the rubble.

The woman’s daughter and son are in a stable condition after being pulled from the debris in a poor neighbourhood near Nairobi’s international airport, southeast of the Kenyan capital.

“Unfortunately one female adult, believed to be the mother of the rescued children, succumbed to the injuries while undergoing treatment at the hospital,” said Pius Masai, National Disaster Management Unit spokesman, who is coordinating the search and rescue mission after Monday night’s tragedy.

It means the death toll has risen to two, after a boy’s body was found dead in the rubble on Tuesday night.

The incident has renewed criticism over unregulated construction in the city of more than three million people.

Police and local residents said the authorities were alerted on Monday after cracks appeared in the building, sparking an emergency evacuation before it collapsed two hours later.