By IPS Correspondents
MBABANE, May 25 2001 (IPS)

A reinforced onslaught on free expression by the Swazi authorities has arrested the growth of the country’s fledgling media and put the international spotlight back on rampant civil rights abuses in this tiny kingdom.

The government of King Mswati III this week banned two private news publications critical of the authorities, only days after the High Court ruled that an earlier ban on them was illegal.

Police on Tuesday seized hundreds of copies of the Nation, a monthly news magazine, from distributors after the information minister passed a legal notice banning it and the Guardian, a weekly tabloid, for being “prejudicial or potentially prejudicial to the interests of public order”.

The legal notice came a week after the High Court nullified an earlier notice banning the two publications.

The government has not exactly said why the two publications are considered “prejudicial”. But media watchers point out that the initial ban was effected only days after King Mswati III expressed displeasure with the way segments of the media covered the royal family.

Earlier, government officials led by Prime Minister Sibusiso Dlamini castigated the Guardian for reporting on official suspicions that one of King Mswati’s eight wives had poisoned him after he fell sick early last month. The King subsequently disclosed that he had been suffering from gastritis, a stress- induced ailment.

The Nation, meanwhile, has come out hard against the Prime Minister and other government officials in recent months. The magazine’s June edition, which was seized by police, carried the headline, ‘Up Yours, Mr. Prime Minister’, on its front-page cover.

Media watchers said that the banning of the two publications was an attempt by the authorities in the kingdom, which had been ruled by royal decree since the national constitution was repealed 28 years ago, to control the media.

“We accordingly call upon the international community to assist in putting more pressure on the Swazi government to desist from actions which undermine freedom of the press,” Swaziland National Association of Journalists (SNAJ) secretary general Sibusiso Mngadi told IPS.

The Human Rights Association of Swaziland (HUMRAS), meanwhile, challenged the government to have the two publications formally charged with criminal offences if they had committed any crimes.

“If no charges are forthcoming, HUMRAS has no option but to conclude that the government actions smack of a blatant abuse of power,” HUMRAS secretary general Joshua Mzizi said.

“If this kind of abuse continues, we wonder if anyone will be interested in investing in Swaziland. We wonder if any tourists will be willing to visit Swaziland,” he added.

There are already signs that the international community is getting tired of government actions against civil society. For example, the United States has formally registered its disappointment with the authorities over their actions against the media.

Noting that the history of press freedom in the tiny kingdom has been “a checkered one, at best,” the US embassy in Mbabane urged the Swazi government to reverse the ban effected on the Guardian and the Nation.

“The US embassy is disappointed to learn of the steps that the government of the kingdom of Swaziland has taken to suppress the Guardian of Swaziland and the Nation,” the embassy said in a statement made available to IPS.

“The American embassy remains hopeful that the kingdom will honour the international standards of press freedom enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (of which the kingdom is a signatory). Unfortunately, the recent decisions regarding the Guardian and the Nation are a move in the wrong direction,” it added.

Last year, the United States excluded Swaziland from a list of African countries eligible to trade benefits under the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act over concerns with a new labour law that the International Labour Organisation (ILO) had deemed restrictive.

The US included Swaziland on the list of trade beneficiaries after the government amended the unpopular Industrial Relations Act 2000.

Other western donor governments have repeatedly urged the authorities of Swaziland to grant the press greater freedom. Their calls intensified last year after the government closed the Observer, an establishment newspaper, for refusing to disclose its sources to the police.

The Observer was re-launched in February under a new management. However, analysts say that the new Observer, like the privately owned Times of Swaziland – the only other newspaper in the country since the ban of the Guardian – toes the government line and exercises self-censorship in reporting on the royal family.

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