The latest victim of state police and an increasingly compliant judiciary is Barnes Dlamini, President of the Swaziland Federation of Trade Unions (SFTU).
His home was raided on Monday (21 June 2010) and as with other raids the police claimed they were looking for bombs or bomb-making equipment.
SFTU Deputy Secretary General Vincent Dlamini said the harassment might be connected to a recent International Labor Organization meeting held in Geneva in which Swazi trade unionists and others put the Swaziland government’s record on human rights in a global spotlight.
Vincent Dlamini said, ‘We know what happened just a few days ago in Geneva and obviously government is not happy. This is not so much about looking for bombs and other material but rather about intimidation, inducing fear and harassing us with the hope that we will be boggled into silence.’
Barnes Dlamini told the Times of Swaziland, the kingdom’s only independent daily newspaper, the search of his home lasted three hours and he was then taken to the police station to be interrogated by ‘about 18 police officers’.
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