Swaziland’s police will attack even members of their own force to stop people getting their rights under the new Swazi Constitution.
A video of Royal Swazi Police breaking up a meeting called in support of a trade union for junior police officers shows police dragging people from the meeting and trying to arrest them.
A senior police officer is videoed saying that the meeting cannot go ahead because the organiser’s do not have a permit. He says he is only following his orders.
The video, which has been put on the Internet, then shows police dragging people from the meeting hall to a waiting police van. Three policemen attack one man who is dragged by his feet on his back and as he tries to struggle free he cries out ‘Where are you taking me? What have I done?’
As police try to put him in the back of a van his comrades come and rescue him and the police appear to give up on him.
Later in the video police drag off another man. He desperately clings to a pole to stop them taking him further. Again, his comrades come to his rescue and he escapes.
The video, which lasts eight minutes, has no commentary, but it does have the sound of the confusion. The cameraman gets close to the action and most of the time is right in the thick of it. Naturally, the police are aware that they are being videoed.
The level of violence used by the police is much less than we have witnessed recently in the textile strike and at the University of Swaziland (UNISWA). I wasn’t at the meeting, but I wonder if the fact that the police knew they were being videoed calmed them down a bit. No sticks, teargas or rubber bullets were used this time.
Since the protestors were themselves from the police force it might also have been that the officers who broke up the meeting knew one or two of them personally and felt some sympathy toward them.
The video, although roughly edited and without commentary, gives an excellent insight into life in Swaziland that rarely gets seen. Swaziland’s two television channels never get so close to the action and even if they did such video as this would not get shown.
The video also demonstrates that in Swaziland the recently enacted Constitution is not being respected. The Constitution clearly states that people have freedom of association. That means the junior officers have the right to form a trade union and also the right to hold public meetings. There should be no need for them to have a ‘permit’ from the authorities.
I wonder who it was who gave the senior police officer his ‘orders’ to break up the meeting.
The leaders of the junior police have also been victimised for trying to form a union.
The Swaziland Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations (SCCCO) got the video footage of the meeting, which was on 18 October 2007. The video was recently uploaded to the video file sharing website, YouTube.
The SCCCO enlisted the help of the UK’s largest trade union, Unite the Union, to get the video released to the world. In Swaziland the Internet connections are so poor it is all but impossible to upload video onto websites, so when representatives of Unite were recently in Swaziland they took a copy of the video back to the UK with them and uploaded it from there.
Unite also has its own online television channel (oh the joys of a broadband Internet connection!) which broadcasts reports and features of interest to trade unionists, as it says ‘straight to the homes and workplaces of million of members’.
To see the video on YouTube click here.
See also
SWAZI POLICE ‘KILL BABY WITH TEARGAS’
MORE ON SWAZI POLICE BRUTALITY
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