Community police in
Swaziland / eSwatini illegally forced a six-year-old boy to strip and then
thrashed him on the naked buttocks after he was accused of stealing a cellphone
from a schoolteacher.
It was one of a long list of
cases where community police have taken the law into their own hands.
The latest case happened at
Gundvwini in the Manzini region, the Times of Swaziland reported
on Monday (17 June 2019).
The newspaper reported the
aunt of the boy said he had been thrashed by a community police member. It
reported, ‘She said the pupil informed her that he had been taken to the
mountains and had his private parts squeezed before being ordered to undress.
After undressing, she said Simo was allegedly thrashed a number of times with a
stick on his bare buttocks.’
The community police
operate in rural Swaziland and are supervised by traditional chiefs who are
local representatives of King Mswati III, Swaziland’s absolute monarch. They
have the authority to arrest suspects concerning minor offenses for trial by an
inner council within the chiefdom. For serious offenses suspects should be
handed over to the official police for further investigations.
There have been a number of
cases reported by media in Swaziland where community police have acted
illegally. In June 2018 five community police officers at Ngoloweni
in Sandleni attacked a man
described as ‘mentally disturbed’ and beat him close to death and set his genitals on fire.
They suspected the 44-year-old man had attempted to rape a girl aged six.
In April 2018 it was reported that two community police officers at Malindza
stripped a man naked, tied him to a tree and flogged his bare buttocks with
sticks until they bled profusely. They had accused him of stealing pots from
his grandfather’s house.
In March 2018 a court heard that three
community policemen from Dvokolwako gang-raped a 17-year-old schoolgirl at
knifepoint and forced her boyfriend to watch. One of them recorded it on his
cellphone. The teenager was in her school uniform while she and her boyfriend
walked to a river after a school athletics competition. The community
policemen told them they were on patrol to make sure none of the pupils
committed any offences during the athletics competition.
In 2014 three Malindza
community police beat to death a mentally challenged man who had escaped from
the National Psychiatric Centre.
In 2011 community police in
Kwaluseni reportedly threatened to murder democracy activist Musa Ngubeni if he was released on bail pending trial on
explosive offences. Residents accused the community police in the area of being
involved in criminal activities.
See also
Police beat man close to death
Police
gang-rape schoolgirl
Community
police banish gay men
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