More detailed
accounts of Swaziland police ‘torture’ against women workers have been
published in a local newspaper.
The women were reportedly
ambushed by armed police and ‘brutally attacked’ during a strike at the Plantation
Forest Company, near Pigg’s Peak.
The Observer on Saturday newspaper (17 September 2016) reported what it
called a ‘horror’ attack. It said a private security company called Siyavutsa assisted police.
The newspaper reported the attack happened at
4.45pm on Friday 9 September. A group of workers left the plantation premises
and walked along a main road to their compound, Goedgegun, about 5 km away, ‘when
all of a sudden a Siyavutsa vehicle swerved and came to an abrupt stop in front
of the first group of about five workers and a swarm of armed police officers
and dog handlers alighted.’
The newspaper added, ‘The different groups of about
15 workers allege that they all ran in different directions while the officers
were in pursuit striking indiscriminately at anyone falling down. The women
claim that the police officers alighted with rifles and batons while Siyavutsa
dog handlers followed suit with the dogs. Shots were fired in the air while
other officers bridged their service weapons.
‘At the
top of his voice a Siyavutsa security chief shouted at the workers as to why
they were burning down the forest, however they wondered how they could have
burned the forest because the fires had started from a different direction, far
away from where they were going.
‘Vice
Secretary of the Workers Union Wendy Simelane said she was struck with a baton
by an officer identified as Manqoba Vilakati on the shin before she was dragged
and thrown into a police van that had arrived to beef up the contingent on the
scene.’
The Observer on Saturday reported, ‘It was
then they, together with a handful of others, were driven deep into one of the
forests. On the way the vehicle swerved to its sides making its cargo bang on
the sides with their heads. By then all their mobile telephones were confiscated.
At the swamp inside the forest the beatings continued with their assailants
stomping on their arms and legs, including Simelane’s fractured leg.
‘“All
this time we pleaded with them why we were being assaulted but to deaf ears. By
then my lower part of the leg was dangling signalling that the shin was
shattered. At the same time, we were forced to do press-ups but I could not
because my leg could not hold any longer,”’ the newspaper reported Simelane
saying.
The Observer reported that the police used
wood stumps and branches from around the swamp to inflict more injury to the
workers. They were then dragged and thrown into the police van, driven back to
Mhlatane station where they found Siyavutsa guards waiting for their turn.
Later,
they were taken to Pigg’s Peak police station ‘for another bout of torturing’. The
newspaper reported that Simelane was tortured by being suffocated with a
plastic bag until she vomited. She was forced into signing a confession that
she had started fires in the forest.
See also
POLICE ‘BRUTALLY ASSUALT’ WORKERS
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