Outsider’s view: Suspected albino trader’s death shoots down ‘Shoot To Kill’ policy in Malawi

Buleya Luka died after he complained of an illness.

By Flemming Kayange

The death of Luke Buleya who was named in court this week as the middleman in the abduction and disappearance of a boy with albinism in Dedza may have thrown investigations of the police in jeopardy.

It also puts in a rather too glaring spotlight the proposal by some that Malawi should implement the ‘Shoot to Kill’ policy.

According to media reports, the step father and his accomplice who abducted Goodson Makanjira told the court in Lilongwe this week that Buleya had offered to give them K800,000 if they brought the boy to him.

The two claimed they handed the boy over to Buleya, meaning that as the hunt for the whereabouts of the boy continues, it is Buleya who was likely to have known where the boy is now.

Of course Buleya denied involvement. But from a non-police officer’s point of view, his death may have effectively cut the road leading to where the boy could be found.

This is very sad, sad because all along, Malawians have been struggling to bust the said market of people with albinism in Malawi because it is generally believed that this would be the lasting solution to the problem of albino attacks in Malawi.

As the crisis rages, there have been angry suggestions by some that the Malawi Government should implement ‘Shoot to Kill’ on those suspected to have been involved in albino killings.

Heartrending as the abductions and killings are, this proposal fails a number of critical questions.

Firstly, is the question of applicability. Reports have been rare, if at all there has been one, of suspected albino abductors being seen by anyone running away with their victim or from the scene of their crime. In almost all the cases reported so far, police get reports and they have had to do investigations to track down the suspects and arrest them.

So here are the questions: Who do you shoot when you have not caught anyone in the act? Do you shoot these suspects that have been apprehended after investigations? What about the constitutional provision that everyone has the right to be heard for it to be proven that they are guilty or not guilty?

Some have even been so light on this as to say it would scare would-be perpetrators. This is cheap, if one dares say. It is none of government duties to embark on scaremongering tactics. Government works according to law.

The second issue is: Let us suppose that a man like Buleya had been shot, the man who would possibly have provided leads to the market, how else would investigations proceed to try to bust the alleged market? Is it not because of this that police discourage mob justice?

Needless to say that even in the event of deaths of people who would have helped to provide leads, the police have their own ways to still make breakthroughs in some cases. But it is a fact that death of a suspect, whether through Shoot to Kill or not, would makes things difficult for them.

It is out question that the violence Malawians are seeing on people with albinism is too hard to bear. It is primitive and it is evil! We must end this scourge.

But as the nation seeks ways to curb the problem once and for all, it seems it is critical, however strained our passions are, that Malawi should come up with ways that can definitively root out the problem.

It is the view of this writer that it does not look like ‘Shoot to Kill’ would be effective, apart from that it would also be unjust. At best, it would be like cutting down a problem tree when the most effective intervention should have been digging to the roots so as to prevent it from regenerating and continue to be a problem.

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Flemmings Kayange is a Malawian writer based in Durban, South Africa. Views expressed in this article are not necessary those of Maravi Post

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