Human Rights Campaigners want authorities to set routine means of understanding operations of foreign nationals to establishing their purpose of stay in line with cases of human rights violation.
This is contained in a statement by Centre for Democracy and Economic Development Initiatives and is coming following revelations by the BBC’s Africa Eye investigative report, about the perceived racist video recordings of vulnerable children in Malawi, done by some Chinese nationals.
In one of the videos, one of the Chinese men told a group of children to speak Chinese, saying that they are “black devils and have low IQ”.
The BBC Africa Eye investigation has among other things found that the man, was shooting 380 videos a day and earning him around 77 million kwacha, but he was paying the children in his videos below one US dollar.
While acknowledging the stance taken by the Malawi to investigate the issue, Sylvester Namiwa Executive Director for CDEDI is calling upon the Ministry of Homeland, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among others to immediately commence a roll call to track and trace all the Chinese nationals in the country to ascertain the status of their stay.
The process according to Namiwa will assist in verifying if indeed what they are doing in the country is tallying with the purpose of their coming into the country.
The human rights advocate has since challenged the authorities to deport any Chinese national who is staying in the country illegally.
“Those that are staying in the country illegally, and those that are doing contrary to what they came to Malawi for, should be given 48 hours to leave,” reads part of the statement.
Namiwa has said video recording incident is just a tip of an iceberg, pointing to the fact that some Chinese nationals could be staying in the country illegally and indulging in criminal activities.