At least 133 people have
been detained in Swaziland jails without trial for more than a year, the
kingdom’s human rights commission reported.
That is the number of
people who have reported their grievance, Executive Secretary of the Human
Rights Commission Linda Nxumalo told the Sunday
Observer (31 December 2017).
The Observer reported Nxumalo saying, ‘One of the key cases that the Commission
has worked on [in 2017] was one dealing with the issue of access to justice especially
for 133 inmates that have been detained for longer than 12 months without trial
or sentencing at our already overcrowded correctional facilities.
‘After its investigations
and understanding the bottlenecks, the Commission has been working with the
relevant stakeholders within the Justice system to address some of the
challenges unmasked by the investigations. Together with the Correctional
Services, the Commission is still working on these cases to ensure that the
clients eventually receive redress as soon as practicable.’
Nxumalo said the Commission
was also working with relevant departments to ‘systematically address the
challenges to ensure that the bottlenecks are addressed so that justice is not
delayed’.
Swaziland’s prison system has been under scrutiny or
many years by human rights observers.
Innocent children are jailed almost
routinely in the kingdom because they are considered ‘unruly’ by parents or
guardians, but have committed no crime.
A report submitted jointly to the United Nations
Human Rights Council Universal
Periodic Review of Swaziland April-May 2016 by SOS-Swaziland, Super Buddies,
Prison Fellowship and Luvatsi – Swaziland Youth Empowerment Organisation, gave
the example of one child aged 11.
Their report stated, ‘There
is a growing trend of child and youth abuse done by the state and the parents
purportedly in “the best interests of the child”. Children and youths are
illegally incarcerated in prison centres by parents in collaboration with the
Commissioner of Correctional Services who claims that the children are
unruly.
‘In one incident, Grace
(not her real name) who is a single parent to John (not his real name) wrote a
request letter to the Commissioner of Correctional Services requesting that
John be incarcerated for unruly behaviour. In the letter, Grace states her
concerns that eleven years old John might not finish school; hence her reason
for wanting him incarcerated and attending the juvenile school at Malkerns
Industrial School for Rehabilitation.
‘Responding to the same
letter of request by Grace, the Commissioner of Correctional Services stated
that under normal circumstances, they do not admit persons who have not been
sentenced by the courts and directed therein through committal warrants.
‘However, the Commissioner
agreed to rehabilitate John under the stated conditions; that the 11 years old
John is institutionalised at the juvenile school for 10 years; there is an
order from a presiding officer giving him a custodial order of ten years
without remission; and that he will cooperate with His Majesty’s Correctional
Services while under its care.
‘With that response, Grace
[sic] the letter to a presiding
officer who then wrote a custodial order for the stipulated time and John was
admitted to the juvenile school in 2013. The 11 years old John lodges with
other juveniles who have been charged by the court of law for various crimes
they have committed. Grace pays tuition fees and up-keep fees for John, and she
will continue doing so for the next ten years until 11 years old John is 21
years.
‘This case is one of many,
and the children are of different ages and varying backgrounds. It is only
recently that a joint task team comprising of UNICEF, Prison Fellowship
Swaziland, Lawyers for Human Rights-Swaziland, Save the Children Swaziland
working together with the department of home affairs are exploring means to
curb this situation and probably provide solutions for both the parents and
children.’
In 2012, the Times Sunday newspaper in Swaziland reported
that Isaiah Mzuthini Ntshangase, Swaziland’s Correctional Services
Commissioner, was encouraging parents to send their ‘unruly children’ to the
facility if they thought they were badly behaved.
Ntshangase was speaking at the open day of the Juvenile Industrial School at the Mdutshane Correctional Institution. He told the newspaper, ‘Noticing the strife that parents go through when raising some of their children who are unruly, we decided to open our doors to assist them.’
Ntshangase was speaking at the open day of the Juvenile Industrial School at the Mdutshane Correctional Institution. He told the newspaper, ‘Noticing the strife that parents go through when raising some of their children who are unruly, we decided to open our doors to assist them.’
The school not only
corrected offenders but assisted, ‘in the fight against crime by rooting out
elements from a tender age’, the newspaper reported him saying. The children,
‘will be locked up, rehabilitated and integrated back to society’, the Times reported.
In 2014 it was revealed
more than 1,000 people - three in ten of the entire prison population -were in
jail in Swaziland because they were too poor to pay fines.
In Swaziland offenders are
often given the option of jail time or paying a fine. There were people in jail
because they could not pay fines for a range of matters, including traffic
offences, theft by false pretences, malicious injury to property and fraud.
Figures revealed that in
Swaziland, where seven in ten people live in abject poverty with incomes less
than US$2 per day, 1,053 of 3,615 inmates in Swazi jails were there because
they did not have the money to pay the fine option. This was 29.1 percent of
the entire prison population.
Correctional Services
Commissioner Isaiah Ntshangase said the numbers in prison because they could
not pay fines was growing.
In July 2017, the United
Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) interrogated Swaziland which is ruled by
King Mswati III as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, on a number of
prison-related human rights issues, including food shortages, inadequate
sanitary conditions and medical care.
It also asked the
Government to, ‘comment on the allegations that the president of the (outlawed)
political party People’s United Democratic Movement of Swaziland, Mario Masuku,
was denied access to adequate and independent
medical care for
complications relating to diabetes throughout the 14 months he spent in
pretrial detention at Zakhele Remand centre and Matsapha Central Prison.’
The HRC also asked for
detailed information about the number of existing prisons in the kingdom,
prison capacity and the number of inmates and whether there were separate
facilities for adults and children. It also asked what plans Swaziland had to
ratify the Convention against Torture and Other, Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading
Treatment or Punishment.
See also
JUVENILE CENTRE ‘HELL ON EARTH’
KIDS WHO COMMIT NO CRIME LOCKED UP
BOY, 12, JAILED FOR INSULTING GRANNY
BOY, 16, HELD IN SOLITARY CONFINEMENT
THOUSAND
PEOPLE IN JAIL FOR BEING POOR
TRIALS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED: AMNESTY
http://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/trials-politically-motivated-amnesty.html
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