All forms of dissent in Swaziland are under attack at present, following news that a man has been charged with giving the kingdom’s top police chief the middle finger.
It seems Police Commissioner Edgar Hillary – the man who leads a police force that regularly tortures ‘suspects’, shoots unarmed people and teargases and fires rubber bullets at legitimate protestors - is such a delicate flower that he needs to be protected against the finger.
The Swazi Observer reported (17 April 2008) that a man was to appear at magistrates court accused that he did ‘unlawfully and intentionally injure the dignity’ of the police chief ‘by pointing him with the middle finger up’. It is alleged that this happened at Matsapha Industrial Site in May 2007.
Keen readers will spot that this happened very nearly a year ago. I wonder how the police chief has managed to live since then without having the full force of Swazi law protect him from further fingering.
When I first read the story I laughed out loud at the absurdity of it. On second thoughts, however, it scares me a bit (and I suppose it is meant to) because it means that there is no way that an ordinary person in Swaziland can make a protest, however minor, against the powerful, without being hauled before the courts.
No comments:
Post a Comment