Police armed with batons
blocked a road in Swaziland to stop a petition rejecting the national budget
being delivered to parliament.
Police with guns watched
from a distance.
It happened in Lobamba on
Thursday (15 March 2018). About 100 members of civil society groups, community
organisations and political parties under the banner of the Swaziland Economic
Justice Network marched from Somhlolo National Stadium heading to the
Parliament gate.
The Times of Swaziland, the only independent newspaper in the kingdom
where King Mswati III rules as sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, reported
the march was halted because it ‘would disturb Labadzala’. Labadzala is a group
of Royal elders.
The newspaper reported,
‘the participants resolved to march and force the police out of their way to
deliver the petition.
‘However, immediately when
they got into the road towards the traffic circle, the police, who were mostly
armed with batons, formed a line across the road while those carrying guns
watched from a distance.
‘The participants tried to
divert from the main road and marched across the traffic circle but more police
officers joined their colleagues to extend the barrier. Thereafter, the
participants sang provocative political songs while dancing and toyi- toying in
front of police officers.’
A representative of the
Clerk to Parliament came out and received the petition.
The national budget has been controversial for a number of reasons, mainly because it raises
Value Added Tax by 1 percent to 15 percent. A plan to impose 15 percent VAT on
electricity prices for the first time has been shelved pending a review.
Freedom of speech and
assembly are severely curtailed in Swaziland. Political parties are banned from
taking part in elections and King Mswati chooses the Prime Minister and cabinet
ministers. Advocates for multiparty democracy have been arrested under the Suppression of Terrorism Act.
Meetings on all topics are routinely banned in
Swaziland and the kingdom’s police and security forces have been criticised by
international observers. 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 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 [in 2013].’
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.
See also
SWAZI BUDGET A TALE OF WOES
MPS
SEND BUDGET BACK FOR REVIEW
HOSTILE
REACTION TO VAT INCREASE
SWAZI
POLICE NOW ‘A PRIVATE MILITIA’
http://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2013/04/swazi-police-now-private-militia.html
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