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[LUSAKA, 29 July 2009] - Human rights authorities in Zambian have found that officers in the southern African country's reformatory centres are torturing children found on the wrong side of the law instead of rehabilitating them, the Zambia Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. The Human Rights Commission (HRC) said children at Nakambala Approved School and Katombora Reformatory School in southern Zambia are being subjected to beatings and torture by officers who are supposed to rehabilitate them, according to Daily Mail. HRC Chairperson Pixie Yangailo said in Lusaka on Tuesday that the government should discipline the officers who are violating the rights of the children under their custody. Speaking at the launch of the Office of the Commissioner for Children, the HRC chairperson said her officers visited the reformatory centres early this year and has since done a report on how children are being treated, which will soon be released. The report, she said, gives an insight to the status of children in the correctional centres, the Daily Mail said. "In view of the above, the commission is calling upon the government to domesticate and criminalise torture so that it becomes a deterrent to would-be offenders and provide protection to our children," Yangailo was quoted by the paper as saying.
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