Seven Global Lawyers’ Bodies Accuse Hichilema Government Of Court Closures, Army Deployment And Passport Seizures After Zambia’s Election
Seven international and regional lawyers’ organisations have accused the Zambian government of shutting down courts, deploying the army during polling and cancelling the passports of government critics in the weeks following the country’s 13 August general election. The joint statement, dated 16 September 2026, was issued by the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI), the Bar Human Rights Committee of England & Wales (BHRC), the East Africa Law Society (EALS), the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the Law Society of England and Wales (LSEW), Lawyers for Lawyers (L4L) and the Pan African Lawyers’ Union (PALU).
The organisations said they were “gravely concerned” by a pattern of events surrounding the vote, ranging from military deployment at polling stations to the closure of every superior court in the country during the window for filing a presidential election petition.
The Zambia Army and joint security task forces were deployed during and after polling on 13 August, the statement said. Election observers, including a European Union observation mission, separately reported irregularities during the counting and tabulation process that affected the transparency of the result.
A day after polling, on 14 August, a security operation at a property linked to the opposition presidential candidate ended in the fatal shooting of former Cabinet minister Mutotwe Kafwaya. His death was only publicly confirmed by the authorities five days later, according to the statement.
The lawyers’ groups then turned to the treatment of the courts. On 24 August, the penultimate day of the constitutional deadline for filing a presidential election petition, the Constitutional Court, High Court, Supreme Court and other courts across Zambia were closed and cordoned off by police and military personnel. The government cited unspecified security concerns that the signatories said have never been substantiated.
The Chief Registrar’s email address was also disabled during the closure, blocking electronic filing and, in the words of the statement, causing “a complete denial of access to justice”. The Law Association of Zambia (LAZ) said at the time that it had received no formal explanation for the shutdown, its scope or its duration, and called for the courts to reopen.
A significant number of opposition figures and people linked to the opposition coalition were arrested and detained in the aftermath, the statement said, in circumstances the signatories described as arbitrary and tied to their political affiliations.
Lawyers preparing election petitions were also targeted. The statement said some had felt forced to leave Zambia over threats to their safety. Former LAZ president Linda Kasonde is named as an example: she prepared and electronically lodged a petition challenging the presidential result through the personal email address of the Chief Justice of Zambia, working around the physical closure of the courts, within the seven-day filing deadline. The Commonwealth Lawyers Association has separately raised similar concerns about lawyers’ safety since the election.
The lawyers’ bodies said the pressure has escalated since polling day. On 11 September, the government published Statutory Instrument No. 1421 of 2026, cancelling the passports of six people, among them opposition figures, a former diplomat, an academic and a media commentator. The grounds given were that their conduct was contrary to the interests of Zambia, grounds the statement said remain unsubstantiated.
The signatories argue the passport cancellations breach Article 12 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Article 22 of the Zambian Constitution, both of which protect freedom of movement. Article 26 of the Constitution requires any such restriction to be authorised by law, with the affected person given reasons and a right of review.
The statement places the events in a wider context of what it calls reduced judicial independence. In May, three months before the election, President Hakainde Hichilema appointed 40 judges across Zambia’s superior courts in what the statement describes as the largest judicial appointment in the country’s history, timed close to the dissolution of Parliament. Judicial salaries were raised around the same period by the executive alone, bypassing the Emoluments Commission, the body constitutionally responsible for setting judicial pay.
The lawyers’ groups also point back to October 2024, when three of the five founding judges of the Constitutional Court were removed on misconduct grounds tied to a ruling delivered roughly eight years earlier. The statement says the removals appear to have been retribution for decisions that went against the President’s own past legal interests, in violation of the principle that judges may only be removed for incapacity or conduct making them unfit for office.
Taken together, the signatories say the developments narrow civic space, restrict access to justice and erode the separation of powers, in violation of Zambia’s own constitutional guarantees as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers, the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary, the Commonwealth (Latimer House) Principles and the Lilongwe Principles on judicial appointments.
The organisations have set out six demands to the Zambian government. They want an independent investigation into Kafwaya’s killing, an inquiry into the legality of the August court closures with the petition deadline treated as tolled for their duration, and publication of a full list of election-related detainees with fair trial guarantees. They are also calling for guarantees that lawyers can work safely and independently, restoration of the six cancelled passports pending a fair process, and an inquiry into the May judicial appointments, the salary increase and the 2024 removal of the three Constitutional Court judges.
None of the six demands had been publicly addressed by the Zambian government at the time the statement was issued.
