The Chinese national, Lu Ke, who used village children to make videos mocking Africans has been extradited from Zambia to Malawi, where he allegedly committed appalling racist offences.
“Members of the public will recall that Mr. Lu Ke fled Malawi after the publication of a BBC report on the dehumanising videos he produced by tricking Malawian children in Lilongwe and Mchinji district for profit,” said the Malawi government at the weekend.
The videos in which the children repeated Chinese words that mocked them went viral, allegedly earning the accused significant amounts of money.
The BBC Africa Eye documentary exposé revealed how Lu Ke took the children out of school under the pretext he would teach them Mandarin and pay them for the abominable videos.
In the exposé, Lu Ke admitted he sold “company promo and individual greeting” video clips using the children for about $200 (R3 425) each and made as many as 300 videos a day.
However, in one of the videos filmed in Malawi and seen by the BBC, a group of young children is made to chant in Chinese – “I’m a black monster. My IQ is low”, clearly unaware of what they are saying.
The Malawi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it, “wishes to inform members of the public that with the cooperation from the government of Zambia, the fugitive Mr. Lu Ke, who fled Malawi to Zambia in June 2022, has been successfully extradited to Malawi on Saturday, 16th July 2022”.
The Zambian government arrested Lu Ke for irregular entry and fined him accordingly before extraditing him to Malawi.
The accused will appear in court in Malawi.
The charges which are expected to include the infringement of children’s rights are yet to be made public.
