A lawyer with a government department in Lusaka confirmed to IPS that the government had entered a reservation on Article 20, which calls for a UN investigating team to come into a country to investigate reports of human rights violations and the torture of suspects in prisons.
Activists can now fight to have the government do away with the reservation.
It is better than starting the fight from zero in my view,'' he added. Unsubstantiated reports of torture against the junior army officers arrested for the coup plot were rife soon after they were picked up and thrown into the cells. This appears to me like a legal gimmick.