Police have clamped down on
sex workers operating on the streets of Swaziland. At least thirty have been
given jail sentences with the option of a fine.
The arrested women say they
have to do this work as they are unemployed and will go hungry.
The move has caused the Swazi police chief to defend his officers’
action, saying they are only upholding the law.
Towns including the Swaziland
capital Mbabane and the
main commercial
city Manzini have been
targeted.
The arrested sex workers
were give jail
sentences of four months with the option of an E400 fine. In Swaziland seven in ten people have incomes
less than E26 a day.
Lawyers for Human Rights in
Swaziland said the arrests of the women was discriminatory because only the
women and not their male clients were targeted. The arrests contravened the
Swaziland Constitution which stated all people were equal under the law.
The Times of Swaziland reported
on Tuesday (8 August
2017), ‘Well-known human rights lawyer Sipho Gumedze pointed out that the
Crimes Act, in terms of which the sex workers were charged, was a legislation
that was enacted during the dark years when black people were still considered
subhuman by the colonial white settlers.’
National Commissioner of
Police Isaac Magagula responded to media criticism of the police action. The Swazi Observer on Tuesday quoted him
saying, ‘As long as laws prohibiting prostitute activities in the land are
still there, don’t blame us when cracking the whip as it is our mandate to see
to it that such laws are enforced.’
Manzini
South Constituency Member of Parliament Owen Nxumalo who is also the Minister
of Public Services told the Times of
Swaziland newspaper that women could be helped away from prostitution
through the Regional Development Fund. ‘We have
a fund that is aimed at alleviating poverty among the constituents and it can
be accessible to them instead of engaging in sex work, which will end up being
a drain to the country financially,’ the
newspaper quoted him saying.
In May 2017 it was reported that poverty-stricken parents of girls as young as fourteen were giving them to soldiers for sex in exchange for food.
In May 2017 it was reported that poverty-stricken parents of girls as young as fourteen were giving them to soldiers for sex in exchange for food.
In July 2016 it was reported that women temporary employees at Swaziland’s Central
Statistics Office (CSO) had been forced to have sex
with their bosses to keep their jobs.
See also
SOLDIERS
SEX FOR FOOD WITH GIRLS, 14
SEX
FOR JOBS CLAIM AT STATS OFFICE
http://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/sex-for-jobs-claim-at-stats-office.html
No comments:
Post a Comment