Watchdog to release stats of unrest casualties

MBABANE – Following the conclusion of investigations by the Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration, the public will get to know the number of people who died, got injured and arrested during the political unrest

This will happen next week.

The commission conducted an investigation in light of the fact that different people, including government and others from outside the country, came up with varying figures of the number of people who were among those killed allegedly by security forces during the unrest. Government fixed the number at 34, while others, including members of political formations, alleged that over 70 people were killed.

The mandate of the commission is to; promote respect for human rights and a culture of human rights; promote the protection, development and attainment of human rights; monitor and assess the observance of human rights; investigate and report on the observance of human rights; take steps and secure appropriate redress.

According to the Chairman of the commission, Sabelo Masuku, the commission sought to close the gap in the varying numbers of people who were killed which different people and organisations came up with, by carrying out a verification exercise. Currently, government has not set up a formal inquiry into the deaths, arrests and hospital admissions resulting from the unrest.

Unrest

In an interview yesterday, Masuku said the background about the commission standing up was the difference of facts out there by government, individuals and organisations that are interested in the number of people who died during the unrest. “We were all not there, so as a commission we thought we should have a database. We must know, at least verify that,” said Masuku.

He pointed out that the commission did not have institutions, such as health, but government did, where people were admitted. Masuku said the process involved getting access to the health facilities. However, he mentioned that there was no problem from the Ministry of Health in giving them access to public health institutions.

Masuku said other people wondered if they would be given access to private health facilities where some of the people who were injured were admitted.

He pointed out that there was no problem there either because private hospitals were also under the Ministry of Health.

Masuku said the minister of Health, when she agreed to the commission conducting the exercise, her agreement included access to private hospitals as well.

What was critical, according to Masuku, was the verification of whatever information they got from the health institutions. He said they did that by either finding a relative who was willing to say something to assist in the verification of the information they got. The chairman said they made use of the contacts of the people who were registered as having brought those who were hospitalised individuals to health institutions.

Expectations

What the commission did not do, said Masuku, was to invite members of the public to come to them because if they did that, it would ultimately raise expectations. “If you are going to call people, they expect that you want to discuss issues of compensating them and ultimately you are raising expectations. We cannot compensate anyone. The courts can do that,” said Masuku.

He mentioned that as a commission, they wanted to check the records ‘that would lead us to who we should speak to’. “The verification has been what is holding us back. I think the exercise of getting the information has been good. We just require to verify the figures. We haven’t verified the figures. In the draft, that was what was glaringly missing,” Masuku added.

Apart from the hospitalised and those who were killed, he said some people were arrested and that had to be verified. The chairman pointed out that since others were arrested, the commission had to verify where those people were now.

“That one is complete now but I don’t have the figures in my head.”

Masuku said since they had completed the investigation of the deaths, those who were injured or arrested, they had not thought about the next step because theirs was to have a verified database ‘because everyone is coming up with different figures’.

“So as an independent body, we need to say we verified and got this and this is what we have. Everyone is coming up with a different figure. So there is a debate on the actual numbers. The real point of this is verification purposes. We haven’t really thought of the next step,” Masuku said.