PAMELA WHY? : Why We Should Ask Tough Questions About This Kidnapping.
The rescue of Pamela & other girls has brought some form of relief to many Zambians & indeed a Praise report to God for saving her life & the lives of 12 other girls.
The narrative both from the abductors & the general population is clear; Pamela & the 12 women are the victims of abduction, & the arrested young men criminals that deserve to rot in jail.
However, in trying to piece together this case in my head, I am battling in good conscious to exclude Pamela from the crime itself.
1. Kidnapping is defined as moving of another person without their consent. While kids cannot give or refuse consent, Pamela as an adult was seen entering a car on the day of her disappearance willingly without force. Pamela knew the person(s) who took her.
2. Kidnapping usually follows three stages.
(i) Seized; a victim is abducted often violently.
(ii) Violated; a victim is beaten, tortured, & even raped in order to break the victim mentally, emotionally, psychologically.
(iii) Held captive; usually locked up in a room that has sound proof, or their mouths are covered except to eat & drink & usually chained so that they cannot escape that easily.
3. Often kidnapping by a stranger is common, however in cases of familiar people, these cases happen mostly to children, & most child kidnaps in recorded history are done by a parent who for some reason has been denied access to the child.
Pamela in this case is kidnapped by a friend that she knew, & if the social media stories are true, she went to school together with her abductors.
4. Kidnapping happens for various reasons;
(i) Ransom; in this kind of kidnapping, the kidnaper end goal is purely greedy for money.
Therefore, if money is the reason for kidnapping, the kidnaper does not randomly abduct any human.
They choose a person who can afford to pay ransom or whose parents can pay ransom or whose government can pay ransom.
Pamela was working (not owning) a money booth. She is poor from a poor family. Why take a risk, & kidnap a person who does not have money to pay?
(ii) Reward; in this case a kidnapper abducts a person, wait for relatives or police to offer a reward for anyone who finds a missing person alive. The kidnapper, then comes out as a hero & receives the reward.
(iii) Sexual violence; the kidnapper targets their victim for sexual purposes.
POSITIVE IDENTIFICATION SCARES CRIMINALS
When a gang of criminals hijacked woman in her car & drove her in the bush, one of the criminals locked eyes with the victim & they knew each other well.
Their families are connected. They played together as children.
He begged his friends to let her go unharmed, but criminals don't usually release a victim who can positively identify one of them. She was killed!
For 6 months these criminals knew Pamela knows them too well, they still kept her alive knowing too well she could positively identify them.
4. Pamela's kidnappers after being caught have found themselves guilty, sentenced themselves to prison, & have asked society to receive them after serving their jail sentences & applied for jobs already before the case goes to court.
These criminals know that Zambians are emotional, at best gullible. They are creating a narrative, they are in control of how the story around the kidnaping should be told.
Zambians are not in charge of the Pamela story, criminals are.
It is on their own terms, & this leads to my suspicion they left the door open, they wanted their 'victims' freed.
We have been told many times by Police that Pamela was in contact with her boyfriend on phone. That is how police were convinced Pamela was alive.
5. Faking your own kidnapping is a crime. It is wasting police resources. It is also causing harm to family & society some of whom end up mentally affected just by the mere thought of a girl child abducted.
Because the perpetrators (at least in that video interview) suggest they only needed money, we must question why they targeted Pamela a poor friend who can not afford ransom.
Why not a child of a government Minister? Why not the girls from rich parents?
To get answers the girls must be kept under police protection separately. They must be questioned one by one.
I may be wrong to position Pamela as part of the criminal gang, but thorough investigation should vindicate her at the end.
They were fed 3 meals a day. They had access to pads during their monthly periods, & they even had their hair plaited.
This is not time to be emotional, this is time to ask tough questions so that if this was a prank, no Zambian will be tempted to pull another of this kind knowing Zambians will not be easily fooled by a well-choreographed rescue.
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