Blantyre, Malawi - Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika Thursday told women in the country to be free to wear 'what you want', saying Malawi had no dress code barring women from wearing trousers. He also ordered police to arrest anyone who attacks women wearing trousers or miniskirts.

'You are free to wear what you want,' said Mutharika in an address on state radio and television. 'Women who want to wear trousers should do so as you will be protected from thugs, vendors and terrorists.'

Mutharika's statement came after several women were stripped naked by mobs that included street vendors and urchins, who said they were angry at women's non-traditional dressing.

'I will not allow anyone to wake up and go on the streets and start undressing women and girls wearing trousers because that is criminal,' he said in Malawi's lingua franca, Chichewa. 'Every woman and girl has the right to dress the way they wish.'

Mutharika also denied rumours that he ordered vendors to harass women in trousers, saying: 'No one should lie that I have asked vendors to assault women dressed in trousers. It's a lie and I will not allow that.'

The President's condemnations came a day before women rights activists organise a protest march against the harassment of women.

Seodi White, one of the organisers, told PANA that women and men who are against 'the violence against women' will converge on Blantyre for the protest.

'We (women) will come out in trousers because it is our right,' said White, who heads the Women and Law in Malawi (WILSA). 'We can't be harassed 18 years after the Indecency in dress laws were repealed.'

Under Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda's 30-year dictatorship, women were banned from wearing trousers.

Meanwhile, Police have arrested 15 people in connection with the harassment of women.

Vice President Joyce Banda, who has fallen out of favour with President Bingu wa Mutharika amid a split in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, told journalists the incident was the result of economic woes in a country that has been hit by shortages of fuel and foreign currency.

'There is so much suffering that people have decided to vent their frustrations on each other,' she said.

Pana 20/01/2012