{"id":27085,"date":"2016-07-21T02:24:38","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T02:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/zambia-police-tear-gas-opposition-leader-mwamba-s\/"},"modified":"2016-07-21T02:24:14","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T02:24:14","slug":"zambia-police-tear-gas-opposition-leader-mwamba-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/zambia-police-tear-gas-opposition-leader-mwamba-s\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambia police tear gas opposition leader Mwamba&#8217;s home"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{Zambian police have fired tear gas and made 28 arrests during a raid on the home of opposition vice-presidential candidate Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba.}<\/p>\n<p>Officers were looking for people they allege had vandalised election posters and fled to the property.<\/p>\n<p>A police spokesman said petrol bombs were also found, but Mr Mwamba&#8217;s party has said they were planted.<\/p>\n<p>There have been growing concerns over political violence in Zambia ahead of next month&#8217;s general election.<\/p>\n<p>The raid comes just two days after a ban on political campaigning in parts of the country had been lifted, reports the BBC&#8217;s Meluse Kapatamoyo from the capital, Lusaka.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Mwamba, who was not in the house in Kasama in the country&#8217;s Northern Province at the time, said his grandchildren were injured during the raid.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;My small grandchildren have been taken to hospital as they have been victims of this barbaric act carried out by the police,&#8221; he said in a post on his Facebook page.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Mwamba is the running mate of Hakainde Hichilema, the presidential candidate of the United Party for National Development (UPND) party.<\/p>\n<p>Northern Province Police Commissioner Bonnie Kapeso said the police officers had to use tear gas in order to get the people they were chasing out of the house.<\/p>\n<p>He added that five petrol bombs were found as well as spears and machetes.<\/p>\n<p>The UPND said in a statement that &#8220;the items allegedly found were only recovered once the house was cleared. We know these have been planted&#8221;.Zambians go to the polls on 11 August to elect a president and a new parliament.<\/p>\n<p>Incumbent President Edgar Lungu, from the Patriotic Front, is facing a tough challenge from Mr Hichilema.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-13692 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_90458421_whatsapp-image-20160720.jpg\" alt=\"Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba says his grandchildren were injured during the police raid\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{Zambian police have fired tear gas and made 28 arrests during a raid on the home of opposition vice-presidential candidate Geoffrey Bwalya Mwamba.} Officers were looking for people they allege had vandalised election posters and fled to the property. A police spokesman said petrol bombs were also found, but Mr Mwamba&#8217;s party has said they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-27085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27085"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27085\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27085"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=27085"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=27085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}