Saturday, October 16, 2010

NEW DATE FOR SWAZI HOLIDAY SHOW

The London radio programme on Swaziland that was set to whitewash human rights abuses in the kingdom and paint a picture of it as an idyllic holiday destination has been postponed.

LBC has put the feature called ‘destination of the week’ in its Travel Show back by one week. It now airs on 24 October 2010 from 1 – 3pm UK time.

The feature was prepared last month just after Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister, threw a number of foreign nationals out of Swaziland because he didn’t like the meeting they were attending. He later said he wanted to target ‘tourists’ who he felt were coming to Swaziland to promote democracy.

These remarks came after Dlamini said that he wanted to use ‘sipakatane’ (otherwise known as ‘bastinado’, a form of torture that involves flogging the bare soles of a person’s feet) on people from overseas who campaigned against his government.

This was just one of the many human rights abuses in Swaziland that has been highlighted by Amnesty International, Freedom House and the US State Department.

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