SWAZI PM LIES ON UPRISING TALKS

Last month Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, said his government had arranged to meet with leaders of the ‘uprising’ due for 12 April to see what their concerns were.

He was lying – again – to the Swazi people.

Instead of engaging in dialogue he unleashed his terror forces on leaders of the ‘uprising’.

As reported yesterday (7 April 2011), the national organiser of the banned Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) was taken in by police and tortured.

The Swaziland Solidarity Network (SSN), one of the groups behind next Tuesday’s activities, responded to this in a statement, ‘The National Organizing Secretary of SWAYOCO, Mcolisi Ngcamphalala, was detained and later tortured by the police from Tuesday evening in Siphofaneni on suspicion that he was one of the organizers of the April 12 Swazi Uprising.

‘At the torture chamber, a room in the police station specially reserved for this evil and illegal act, he was beaten and kicked whilst handcuffed, throttled, and suffocated with a plastic bag. These are well known torture tactics used by police, and they have resulted in fatalities before.

‘The police came to fetch him from his home, where a SWAYOCO banner and other SWAYOCO and Socialist documents were confiscated. They started harassing and clapping him while they were still raiding his home.

‘The police have threatened to stop the Uprising with force, promising to be all out in numbers on the planned date.

‘A police officer by the name of Mthembu, who was also part of the gang of police that arrested Sipho Jele, and later stopped his funeral on the 16th of May, 2011 was part of the torture gang.’

Ngcamphalala was released on Wednesday.

SSN said, ‘Upon releasing him they warned him not to be part of The April 12 Swazi Uprising because they would not hesitate to kill him.

‘They also promised him that they would come back for him again. At the time of our interview with him, he stated that he was living in fear, not knowing when the police would come back for him.’

He is not the only one that has been raided or tortured. At least four other people are known to have been detained and tortured by police.

Ngcamphalala has since fled into a nearby forest and has not been heard from again. It is feared that the police could want to arrest him again.

POLICE TORTURE UPRISING ACTIVIST

A Swazi activist said today (7 April 2011) that he had been detained and beaten as police interrogated him about plans to organise the ‘uprising’ on Tuesday against King Mswati III, Africa’s last absolute monarch, the AFP news agency reports.

Nkolisi Ngcamphalana, national organiser for the youth wing of the banned opposition People’s United Democratic Movement (PUDEMO), told AFP that he was detained Tuesday night and held for 24 hours. He said police beat him, placed plastic bags over his head, and then interrogated him about calls for national protests.

‘They grilled me about the April 12 uprising, and they kicked and beat me,’ he said shortly after his release. ‘Right now they are outside my house. They are intimidating my family,’ he said. ‘They threatened me with death.’

Several other activists have been arrested as police raided their homes in recent days, said Maxwell Dlamini, head of the Swaziland National Union of Students which has led the protest calls. ‘We expect more raids in the coming days,’ he said.

To read the full AFP report, click here.