The Supreme Court in
Swaziland /eSwatini postponed hearing the government’s appeal against a
judgement declaring parts of the Sedition and Subversive Activities Act and
Suppression of Terrorism Act unconstitutional because it did not have enough
judges to form a bench.
Usually, the Chief Justice Bheki
Maphalala sits with four other judges. The Times of Swaziland
on Wednesday (20 March 2019) reported there were seven judges in the Supreme
Court and Maphalala said a majority of them had dealt with the matter one way
or the other in the past.
He said the case would be
postponed until they could find sufficient judges.
The case had originally
been tabled for October 2017 but did not go ahead because the government’s
representatives did not attend court. The case was reinstated in March
2018 and has taken a year to get to its
current position.
Both Acts have been used by
successive governments of King Mswati III who rules Swaziland as sub-Saharan
Africa’s last absolute monarch to stop advocates for democratic reform.
Political parties are banned from taking part in elections and the King chooses
the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and all senior judges.
In September 2016,
Swaziland’s High Court ruled that sections of the two Acts were
unconstitutional. Judges said the Acts contravened provisions in the
Constitution on freedom of expression and freedom of association.
The ruling was delivered
after years of campaigning to have the Acts overturned.
In 2015 Amnesty
International renewed its criticism
of Swaziland for the ‘continued persecution of peaceful political opponents and
critics’ by the King and his authorities.
The human rights organisation called for the two Acts
to be scrapped or drastically rewritten.
It said the Swazi authorities were using the Acts, ‘to
intimidate activists, further entrench political exclusion and to restrict the
exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful
assembly.’
Amnesty said the Sedition
and Subversive Activities Act violated Swaziland’s human rights
obligations. It placed the onus on the accused to prove that their alleged
acts, utterances or documents published were not done with ‘seditious
intention’.
The Act also obliged courts to conduct proceedings in
camera relating to an offence under the Act if so requested by the
prosecution.
Amnesty also said the Suppression of Terrorism Act was incompatible with
Swaziland’s human rights obligations because of, ‘The failure to restrict the
definition of ‘terrorist act’ to the threatened or actual use of violence
against civilians;
‘The failure of the definition to meet the
requirements of legality, that is, accessibility, precision, applicability to
counter-terrorism alone, non-discrimination and non-retroactivity.’
It added offences were, ‘defined with such
over-breadth and imprecision that they place excessive restrictions on a wide
range of human rights, including the right to hold opinions without
interference and the right to freedom of expression.’
See also
Scrap
Swazi Terror Act – Amnesty
No
amnesty in ‘terror’ cases
Swazi
Terror Act stops free speech
‘Opposition
to King is terrorism’
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