Seven international and regional legal bodies set out a documented sequence surrounding Zambia’s August 13 general election. On August 24, the penultimate day of the constitutional deadline for filing a presidential election petition, the Constitutional Court, High Court, Supreme Court and other courts across the country were closed and cordoned off by police and military personnel on security grounds that have not been substantiated, and the Chief Registrar’s email address was disabled, blocking electronic filing. Linda Kasonde, a former president of the Law Association of Zambia, lodged a petition through the Chief Justice’s personal email within the seven-day deadline; the statement also records reports that lawyers preparing election challenges left the country over threats to their safety. The signatories place the closure in a longer sequence: 40 judges appointed across the superior courts in May, three months before the election, which they describe as reportedly the largest judicial appointment in Zambia’s history; a unilateral executive increase in judicial salaries bypassing the constitutionally mandated Emoluments Commission; and the removal in October 2024 of three of the five founding Constitutional Court judges over a ruling delivered some eight years earlier. They call for independent inquiries into each, and for the filing deadline to be treated as tolled for the duration of the closure. Signed by IBAHRI, the Bar Human Rights Committee of England and Wales, the East Africa Law Society, the International Commission of Jurists, the Law Society of England and Wales, Lawyers for Lawyers and the Pan African Lawyers’ Union.

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