It happened in the Ezulwini area. The Observer on Saturday reported (23 December 2017) police attacked one well-known illegal shebeen arriving in unmarked cars at about 10 pm. ‘Gunshots were heard with the sizeable number of police officers literally going out of their way to assault the patrons hitting them randomly with whips (tinsilane) and fists,’ it said.
It added, ‘Most
patrons were forced to run helter-skelter into the thick of night in a
panic and in the process getting hurt by barbed wires on the fence.’
The newspaper reported that
usually when police raided shebeens they just confiscated the alcohol.
The Observer reported, ‘According to onlookers and victims who have
lived to tell the tale, the over 30 police officers who were armed to the teeth
with guns and whips, clad in their navy uniform that worked well for them in
the dark as they were not easily spotted until they pounced on their
unsuspecting prey, they just emerged from nowhere.’
The newspaper said similar
raids had taken place across Swaziland. Residents at a shebeen in Sidwashini said
they had also been ordered to surrender illegal immigrants.
In December 2017, it was
reported that police intended to take ‘a robust approach on any acts of criminality that may rear its ugly head during the holidays’.
Police brutality is
commonplace in Swaziland where King Mswati III rues as sub-Saharan Africa’s
last absolute monarch.
In August 2017, a security guard told Mbabane court a
female police officer sat on his face and other officers
assaulted him after they accused him of stealing motor parts.
In March 2017, A man accused of multiple murders told
a court he was tortured by police for 11 days to force him to
confess. He said he was suffocated with a tube and assaulted all over his body,
resulting in many serious injuries. The alleged attack was said to have taken
place at Lobamba Police Station, the Manzini Magistrates’ Court was told.
In January 2017, local media reported police
forced a 13-year-old boy to remove his trousers and flogged
him with a sjambok, to make him confess to stealing a mobile phone.
In September 2016, women
were reportedly ambushed by armed police and ‘brutally attacked’
by police during a strike at the Plantation Forest Company, near Pigg’s
Peak.
In June 2016, a United Nations review panel looking
into human rights in Swaziland was told in a joint report by four
organisations, ‘In Mbabane [the Swazi capital], police tortured a 15-year-old
boy after his mother had reported him for stealing E85.00 (US$6). The boy
alleges that he was beaten with a slasher (metal blade tool for cutting grass)
and knobkerrie (club) for five hours. While enduring the pain, he alleges that
he was made to count the strokes aloud for the police to hear. Instead of being
charged, the boy was physically assaulted and made to sit in a chair for thirty
minutes before he was sent back home.’
The report
was submitted to the United Human Rights Council
Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review of Swaziland by the Swaziland
Multi-Media Community Network, Swaziland Concerned Church Leaders, Swaziland
Coalition of Concerned Civic Organisations and Constituent Assembly – Swaziland.
See
also
SWAZI
POLICE RAIDS AND ROAD BLOCKS
SWAZI
POLICE NOW ‘A PRIVATE MILITIA’
SWAZILAND
‘BECOMING MILITARY STATE’
MORE
POLICE TORTURE IN SWAZILAND
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/01/more-police-torture-in-swaziland.html
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