Responding to the information that Eswatini’s Supreme Court docket upheld controversial provisions of the Suppression of Terrorism Act on attraction, Amnesty Worldwide’s Deputy Director for East and Southern Africa, Vongai Chikwanda, mentioned:
“The Supreme Court docket’s resolution to uphold this repressive laws is a serious setback for human rights in Eswatini. The authorities should instantly repeal the Act, or considerably amend it in order that it’s exact, focused and absolutely in step with worldwide human rights requirements.
“The legislation in its present type poses important threats to freedom of expression, affiliation and peaceable meeting. The Suppression of Terrorism Act is overly broad and obscure, and authorities have incessantly used it to arbitrarily arrest and prosecute dissenters and suppress media, together with by branding political opponents, activists and journalists as ‘terrorists.’
“The truth that Eswatini’s highest court docket has given the Suppression of Terrorism Act its stamp of approval is a harmful signal for the way forward for human rights within the nation, particularly as a result of repression is already widespread.”
BACKGROUND
Authorities handed the Suppression of Terrorism Act in 2008 following a bombing incident close to the Lozitha Bridge in Eswatini. The identical yr, authorities declared the Folks’s United Democratic Motion (PUDEMO) opposition occasion, Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) and the South Africa-based Swaziland Solidarity Community as terrorist organizations.
In 2016, the nation’s Excessive Court docket declared a number of sections of the Suppression of Terrorism and Sedition Acts as unconstitutional, following a court docket problem by human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko and SWAYOCO chief Maxwell Dlamini, who authorities had each charged underneath the Act in 2014, and PUDEMO chief Mario Masuku.
The federal government appealed that call per week later. All through the lengthy and irregular appeals process, Eswatini’s authorities used the Suppression of Terrorism Act to harass and intimidate dissenters, together with jailing opposition parliamentarians Mduduzi Bacede Mabuza and Mthandeni Dube in 2021 and designating Swaziland Information and its editor Zweli Martin Dlamini as “terrorist entities” in 2022.
In 2023, Maseko was shot and killed in his home in a case the federal government has but to research.
Together with the Suppression of Terrorism Act, on 13 August 2024 Eswatini’s Supreme Court docket upheld controversial provisions of the 1938 Sedition and Subversive Actions Act, which equally has opposed human rights implications.
Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Amnesty Worldwide.