Tag Archives: police

Killed by Malawi police? Frank and Christina Semu’s grandson

Last Sunday (July 31), I visited Ndirande township and the home of Frank and Christina Semu. Ten days earlier, their 13-year-old grandson, John Mora, was killed by a gunshot to the head.

As things stand now, all evidence points to the stray bullet from the weapon of a Malawi police officer. But nobody from the authorities has come around to investigate.

Worse than that, because Mora was one of 19 Malawians killed during two days of national unrest that began on July 20, the president has labeled the young boy a common thug.

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A slight bump on a road trip to Sikkim

Road trip! It was time for another break from Thimphu. So a few of the guys from the magazine and I hastily threw together some supplies—the trip wasn’t confirmed until 11:00 p.m. the night before our scheduled departure—piled into a car we had borrowed from the office, and made for the mountains of India’s Sikkim province.

We arrived in Gangtok, the region’s capital, long after dark. The rain poured down and while we spent more than an hour searching for a hotel with two vacant rooms, the car’s useless ventilation system kept the windows hopelessly fogged. And of course, it couldn’t be just any guest house we stayed; Mitra, my Butanese buddy at the wheel, insisted we slept at some place run by a friend of a friend’s uncle’s cousin —or something like that.

On the verge of giving up, we stopped a local police officer and asked for directions. That turned out to be a bad decision.

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