Key Malawi protest leaders in hiding: activist

BLANTYRE (AFP) - Several leaders of Malawi's anti-government protests have received death threats and are in hiding after President Bingu wa Mutharika said they would be arrested, a rights activist told AFP Monday.

"The leaders have received death threats from unknown people. They are in hiding for their personal safety and that of their families after the president said he would arrest them," said Moses Mkandawire, who organised the protests in the northern city of Mzuzu.

Undule Mwakasungura, chairman of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, a coalition of over 80 rights groups which spearheaded the protests, and Rafiq Hajat, director of the think-tank Institute for Policy Interaction, were among those who had shown a clean pair of heels, he said.

Mkandawire, director of the Presbyterian-funded group Church and Society, said he and others in Mzuzu were not hiding and were operating freely.

"I am not in hiding. I am quite safe. But it's important to take the risk, because how long can you hide," he said.

Mutharika on Friday accused opposition leaders and rights activists of seeking to stage a coup through the demos, which left 19 dead over two days after police tried to suppress the protests. In a nationally broadcast speech, he named leaders who should face "consequences" for the protests.

The Public Affairs Committee, an umbrella group of Christian and Muslim activists in Malawi, joined the chorus of international condemnation of Mutharika's handling of the crisis.

"It was not right for the president to push blame on civil society groups" for the violence, said cleric Macdonald Kadawati, head of the group.

"Should government continue to harass people for no proper reasons, another demonstration will be inevitable," he said in a statement.

"Our patience is in short supply at the moment. Bullets and tear gas have never triumphed over the will of the people," he added.