UA 90/92 - Malawi: fear of extrajudicial execution: Archbishop James Chiona, Bishop F Mkhori, Bishop M A Chimole, Bishop A Assolari, Bishop A Chamgwera, Bishop G M Chisendera, Monsignor John Roche

Archbishop Chiona and the six other bishops were the signatories of a Lenten pastoral letter read out in Roman Catholic churches across the country on Sunday 8 March 1992, which criticized the government's human rights record. [...] The government has declared the pastoral letter a seditious publication, making possession of the document a criminal offence. [...] Amnesty International fears that such statements will be taken by members of the paramilitary Malawi Young Pioneers or the ruling Malawi Congress Party as a licence to commit acts of violence against the bishops or other individual Roman Catholics. [...] The persecution of the Jehovah's Witnesses church in the 1960s and 1970s was conducted with a similar combination of inflammatory official statements and local attacks in which Jehovah's Witnesses were killed and their property burned. [...] In 1983 three government ministers and a member of parliament were killed after they had criticized John Tembo, the present Minister of State in the President's Office.