UN expert urges Zambia to free opposition detainees as post-election crackdown widens

Zambia's government has rejected a formal appeal from a United Nations human rights expert to free hundreds of opposition supporters detained since last month's disputed general election, days after President Hakainde Hichilema was sworn in for a second term before thousands of supporters and a string of visiting African heads of state.

Gina Romero, the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, said in a statement carried by the UN's news service that Zambia was showing "a broader pattern of shrinking civic space" and called on authorities to release political detainees, respect fundamental freedoms and restore democratic accountability. Zambia's foreign ministry answered within a day, telling local media the rapporteur had overstated her mandate and gotten the law on treason wrong.

The dispute centers on the aftermath of Zambia's August 13 general election, in which the Electoral Commission of Zambia declared Hichilema the winner with roughly 60 percent of the vote against opposition alliance leader Brian Mundubile's 38 percent, according to the commission's own results. Mundubile disputed the count, alleging military personnel took over tallying centers and that result forms went missing in areas favorable to the opposition, and said he would challenge the outcome in court.

Those legal challenges never reached a hearing. Zambia's High Courts were closed to the public in the final days before the petition deadline, a move Human Rights Watch said effectively blocked access to the courts for anyone seeking to contest the result. Mundubile and his running mate, Makebi Zulu, went into hiding after the vote before surrendering to police on August 24. Days later, an armed raid tied to the widening security investigation left former government minister Mutotwe Kafwaya dead and led to the arrest of 11 people, several of them senior opposition figures. Mundubile and Zulu were subsequently charged with treason, a case that authorities say has since widened to at least 18 defendants.

On September 1, Hichilema was sworn in for a second five-year term at National Heroes Stadium in Lusaka, telling the crowd "we have heard you" in an apparent nod to opposition voters while pledging what he called a production-driven "Grow Zambia" agenda. Zimbabwe's Emmerson Mnangagwa, Kenya's William Ruto, Tanzania's Samia Suluhu Hassan, Namibia's Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and Botswana's Duma Boko were among the regional leaders who attended, according to reporting from the inauguration. Mundubile and Zulu remained in custody at Mukobeko Maximum Security Prison as the ceremony took place.

The numbers

• 60.49 percent: Hichilema's declared share of the presidential vote, against 37.87 percent for Mundubile, a margin of just over 1.1 million votes.
• Hundreds: the number of opposition supporters Romero's office says have been arrested since the election, many held beyond legally mandated timeframes without formal charges.
• 18: the number of defendants authorities say are now named in the treason case that began with the 11 arrests in the post-election raid.
• 5 years: the length of Hichilema's first term, during which Zambia held what the government calls its most peaceful elections since returning to multiparty democracy in 1991 — a record now in dispute.

Zambia has been governed by Hichilema's United Party for National Development since 2021, when he defeated then-incumbent Edgar Lungu in an election widely praised as a clean and peaceful transfer of power. That precedent shaped expectations for this year's vote and sharpened criticism when it did not repeat itself. An election observation mission from the European Union, whose preliminary assessment described polling day itself as calm and competitive, nonetheless found that "restrictions on campaigning and advantages associated with incumbency contributed to an uneven playing field," and that later reporting pointed to "serious incidents and procedural irregularities during the counting and tabulation, impacting the transparency and the credibility of the process." The mission called on all sides to pursue grievances "peacefully and constructively" through legal channels — the same channels that were shut when the courts closed.

The government has cast the post-election arrests differently, framing them as a national-security matter rather than a political one. Officials allege the defendants in the widened treason case were plotting a coup with the help of a foreign-linked militia, an allegation those charged deny. Zambia's government also withdrew its hosting arrangement for RightsCon, a major international gathering on technology and human rights that had been scheduled to convene in Lusaka, days before it was due to open — a move rights groups read as a further narrowing of space for scrutiny.

Who is affected

Beyond Mundubile and Zulu, Romero's office said the crackdown has swept up ordinary opposition supporters and activists, with many held past the point Zambian law allows without charge. The closure of the courts in the run-up to the petition deadline also affected the roughly 38 percent of voters who backed Mundubile, who were left with no judicial avenue to contest a result they consider rigged. Zambia's standing as a regional example of democratic continuity — a status that helped draw the string of African heads of state to Tuesday's inauguration — is itself now part of what is being contested.

"A healthy democracy requires that all voices speak freely without fear," Romero said in her statement, adding that authorities must "release all political detainees, respect fundamental freedoms, and restore democratic accountability."

Reaction

Zambia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation rejected the characterization within hours, according to local reporting on the ministry's response. The ministry said Romero had mischaracterized Zambian law by describing treason as a capital offense, noting the country abolished the death penalty in December 2022 and struck it from military law in 2023. It also objected to her use of terms such as "post-election crackdown" and "political detainees," arguing opposition membership does not exempt anyone from prosecution, and said she had gone beyond her mandate by making "sweeping claims on electoral flaws, intimidation, assaults, abductions and deaths." The ministry added, pointedly, that "an allegation does not become a fact by being repeated in a United Nations news release," and contrasted what it called the rapporteur's distant "condemnation by news release" with the more consultative approach of a separate UN special envoy engaging Zambian authorities directly.

Romero's office has not withdrawn or amended its statement. Coverage of the dispute, including local outlets tracking the standoff, noted that the government's rebuttal did not address the substance of the arrest numbers or the court closures, focusing instead on terminology and mandate. Mundubile's legal team has continued to describe the treason charges against him as fabricated, while maintaining that the case has never been allowed a proper hearing.

What happens next

Mundubile, Zulu and the other defendants in the treason case are expected to appear before a Zambian court in the coming weeks, though no date had been confirmed as of Thursday. Whether Zambia's judiciary reopens any avenue for a retrospective challenge to the election result remains unresolved; the petition window that closed on August 24 has not been reinstated. Romero's mandate allows her to raise the case further at the UN Human Rights Council, where Zambia's record could face renewed scrutiny in coming sessions, though such rapporteur findings carry no binding enforcement power on their own. For now, Hichilema begins his second term with a mandate that a large share of Zambians dispute, an opposition leadership behind bars, and a UN human rights office and his own foreign ministry publicly contradicting each other about what is happening inside the country.