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Lesotho: Misa Communiqué On Lesotho Violations
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Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
12 July 2007
Posted to the web 12 July 2007
MISA joins civil society coalition in highlighting serious violations of citizens' human rights by the Lesotho's state security organs. Recent events in Lesotho show that the government has roped in the army to fight its political battles in different arena.
The most alarming development is the tacit unleashing of the army upon members of the public. In terrorist fashion similar to some turbulent parts of the world hooded army operatives kidnap, torture and maim members of the public and sometimes damage their property. They detain their victims in unspecified locations where their families and lawyers cannot have access to them.
The Lesotho Defence Force (which falls under the Ministry headed by the Prime-Minister) initially disavowed any complicity in these criminal acts, claiming that the perpetrators were criminal elements masquerading as members of the army. But the big lie was exposed when victims resurfaced in the army facilities and in their custody directly implicating members of the army.
Terror and consternation is sweeping through the nation. What the drama of abductions and tortures of citizens by hooded soldiers says to the Basotho nation is that the government is behaving in similar fashion with governments that rule with the barrel of the gun.
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It is too early in Lesotho's democratic project to forget that it is this very same military institution which has, throughout Lesotho's post-colonial history been used to inflict untold suffering against the people. The irony of the situation is that the Prime Minister and some of the Ministers in the present government were subjected to similar abductions, torture and murder, and some even forced to flee into exile by the same army as recently as 1994.
These abductions, tortures and illegal detentions; therefore, belie the much vaunted reform of the army under the present dispensation. Any so-called reforms that are going on would seem to be geared not towards eradicating the culture of military politicisation and lawlessness but bringing the army into the political fold of the incumbents in political office.
It is our firm believe that, a government that sets loose against citizens an army of hooded operatives under the cover of darkness cannot have a place amongst civilized nations. Lesotho has set herself on the irreversible democratic road of Constitutional governance, unremitting observance of human rights and the rule of law.
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| Copyright © 2007 Mmegi/The Reporter. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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