ZAMBIA GASSING ATTACKS

Since January 2020, Zambian citizens have been subjected to a wave of gassing attacks. At the start of March, over 511 crimes related to the use of poisonous substances had been reported, with over 1,687 victims.

One of the earliest incidents occurred at Chingola, a Zambian mining town, where residents were terrorised by a gang of criminals who, it was claimed, had sprayed unidentified chemicals inside peoples’ homes. In January, police arrested seven people suspected of being members of the gang, and gunned down an eighth man as he ran from police. Noxious chemicals were found in a bag he had discarded. However, further gassing incidents were reported in February; six families in nearby Kalalushi were sprayed with what was described as a poisonous substance, and local people lynched three suspects, leaving one dead. The attacks had begun in Zambia’s Copperbelt region to the north of the country, near the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), but on 10 February, nine family members living in the capital city Lusaka’s George Township reported having been gassed in their homes at night, with 32 boarding school pupils also claiming to have been gassed while asleep.

On 11 February, police chief Kakoma Kanganja announced that officers had full knowledge of the chemicals being employed, but refused to give details on the grounds that “disclosing the contents of the chemicals may mean giving information to other criminals”. The chemical