Police in Swaziland intend
to set up security road blocks across the kingdom over the forthcoming holiday
season.
Lubombo Police Commissioner
Musa Zwane said there had already been raids on homes and there would be
increased police patrols.
He said this at a crime
awareness event held in Siteki on Wednesday (6 December 2017). The Swazi Observer, a newspaper in effect
owned by King Mswati III who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan Africa’s last
absolute monarch, reported, ‘Zwane said police will be taking a robust approach
on any acts of criminality that may rear its ugly head during the holidays.’
It added the ‘intensive
raids in homesteads’ were ‘aimed at uprooting any criminal elements from the
society’.
The Swaziland police and
security forces have been criticised in the past by international observers. Meetings
on all topics are routinely banned in Swaziland. In 2013, the Open Society
Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) reported that Swaziland was becoming a
police and military state.
It said things had become so bad in the kingdom that
police were unable to accept that peaceful political and social dissent was a
vital element of a healthy democratic process, and should not be viewed as a
crime.
These complaints were made by OSISA at an African Commission
on Human and Peoples' Rights (ACHPR) meeting in The Gambia in April 2013.
OSISA said, ‘There are also reliable reports of a
general militarization of the country through the deployment of the Swazi army,
police and correctional services to clamp down on any peaceful protest action
by labour or civil society organisations ahead of the country’s undemocratic
elections.’
OSISA was commenting on the trend in Southern Africa
for police and security services to be increasingly violent and abusive of
human rights.
In particular, OSISA highlighted how the police
continued to clamp down on dissenting voices and the legitimate public
activities of opposition political parties prior to, during and after
elections.
As recently as September 2017, police stopped a
pro-democracy meeting taking place, saying they
had not given organisers permission to meet. It happened during a Global
Week of Action for democracy in the kingdom. About 100 people reportedly
intended to meet at the Mater Dolorosa School (MDS) in the kingdom’s capital,
Mbabane.
In 2013, after police broke up a meeting to discuss
the pending election, the meeting’s joint
organisers, the Swaziland United Democratic Front
(SUDF) and the Swaziland Democracy Campaign (SDC) said Swaziland no longer had
a national police service, but instead had ‘a private militia with no other
purpose but to serve the unjust, dictatorial, unSwazi and ungodly, semi-feudal
royal Tinkhundla system of misrule’.
In April 2015, a planned rally to mark the anniversary
of the royal decree that turned Swaziland from a democracy to a kingdom ruled
by an autocratic monarch was abandoned
amid fears that police would attack participants.
In February and March, large numbers of police disbanded meetings of the Trade
Union Congress of Swaziland (TUCOSWA), injuring at least one union leader.
In 2014, police
illegally abducted prodemocracy leaders and drove them up to
30 kilometres away, and dumped them to prevent them taking part in a meeting
calling for freedom in the kingdom. Police staged roadblocks on all major roads
leading to Swaziland’s main commercial city, Manzini, where protests were to be
held. They also physically blocked halls to prevent meetings taking place. Earlier in the day police had announced on
state radio that meetings would not be allowed to take place.
In 2012,
four days of public protest were planned by trade unions and
other prodemocracy organisations. They were brutally suppressed by police and
state forces and had to be abandoned.
In 2011,
a group using Facebook, called for an uprising to depose the King. State forces
took this call seriously and many prodemocracy leaders were arrested. Police
and security forces prevented people from travelling into towns and cities to
take part in demonstrations. Again, the protests were abandoned.
See also
SWAZI
POLICE NOW ‘A PRIVATE MILITIA’
SWAZILAND
‘BECOMING MILITARY STATE’
POLICE
THREAT TO DEMOCRATIC STATE
RIOT
POLICE FORCE HALT TO PRAYER
POLICE
BLOCK PUBLIC MEETING
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/armed-police-block-public-meeting.html
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