Two female shoplifters in Zambia, said to be 19 and 21 respectively, were treated to a new humiliating kind of justice after they were caught and bathed in yellow paint. The ladies were reported to have stolen some ladies’ clothes, hats, skirts and T-shirt at the Jets stores in Lusaka, the capital, and were caught by the CCTV camera installed in the store.
The treatment they were given has, however, caused uproar in the nation as the nation’s Human Rights Commission has descended hard on the store, condemning the action in very strong terms. Chief of Information, Education and Training of the Commission, Mweelwa Muleya, said the body ‘strongly condemns acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman and
“The Commission became aware of this form of human rights violation yesterday, 21st March 2016, through Social Media Platforms and immediately instituted independent investigations, which established as a fact that two named ladies of Mtendere Townships in Lusaka, aged 19 and 21 years old respectively, were indeed subjected to acts of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment by Jet Stores officials.
The Commission has since interviewed the Stores Manager at Jet Stores, PHI, who has admitted painting the ladies with water paint, claiming that the victims consented to that kind of ill-treatment as opposed to being either fined or taken to police.
The Commission has also interviewed both victims who reported that they were physically and emotionally abused by beating them with electrical cables from 16:00 hours to 18:00 hours to an extent of one of them becoming unconscious while the other one bled from the ears.
The victims also claimed verbal, sexual and physical harassment during the ordeal that took place in a room where they were later forced to lay down and subjected to being painted with yellow water paint all over the body.”