Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Botswana.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Botswana. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No
attempt has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on this
page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper
resources that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Botswana U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/botswana/
[accessed 6 July
2021] PRISON AND DETENTION
CENTER CONDITIONS Administration:
Authorities investigated credible allegations of inhuman conditions brought
by inmates against prison officials and took disciplinary or judicial action
against persons responsible for abuses. Independent Monitoring:
The government generally allowed international and local nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) to meet with prisoners and permitted independent human
rights observers to visit prisons. The International Committee of the Red
Cross visited prisons. Representatives of diplomatic missions have also been
allowed access to the FCII. ARREST PROCEDURES
AND TREATMENT OF DETAINEES Pretrial detention
in murder, rape, livestock theft, and robbery cases sometimes exceeded a
year, but there were no reports of instances in which the length of detention
equaled or exceeded the sentences actually imposed. Freedom House
Country Report 2018 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/botswana/freedom-world/2018 [accessed 11 May
2020] F3. IS THERE PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE
USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR AND INSURGENCIES? Although citizens
are largely protected from the illegitimate use of force, corporal punishment
is imposed in some cases, a practice that many human rights groups criticize
as cruel and degrading. Instances of police brutality have been reported, and
perpetrators are rarely held accountable. Although the parliament passed a
motion in 2012 calling for an Independent Police Investigations Directorate
(IPID) to handle allegations of police abuse, the Ministry of Defence, Justice, and Security has not yet established
the body. DIS in P2.9m
torture lawsuit Tshireletso Motlogelwa,
Staff writer, Mmegi On Line, Issue: Vol.30 No.102, 11 July 2013 www.mmegi.bw/index.php?sid=1&aid=1359&dir=2013/July/Thursday11 [accessed 12 July
2013] The man who alleges
that he was arrested, detained, interrogated and threatened with violence at
the hands of Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) agents is suing
the spy agency for P2.9 million. In the letter
Tlhage puts the AG, Isaac Kgosi (head of DIS), Commissioner of Police and two
other operatives as defendants. The letter furthers
says that although Tlhage was not convicted of any offence, he was
fingerprinted and had photos of him taken and
"made to feel like a criminal and repeatedly accused of being a
threat to national security and the government of the day”. It is alleged
members of DIS specifically Kgosi, and the two agents took turns
"interrogating, taunting, denigrating and threatening Tlhage with torture
and violence; saying that if he did not tell them what he said about the
President they had "mechanisms" which could make him talk and they
would not hesitate to use them on him if he did not talk". Tlhale argues that
this treatment amounted to "unlawful arrest, unlawful detention, torture
and inhuman and degrading treatment and ... abuse of power" since he did
not commit any crime but rather only made utterances about the President
which were not "unlawful". He further maintains that the remarks he
made "are permissible and or protected as part of freedom of expression
and or permissible in a democratic society such as Botswana”. He was later
"unlawfully" detained at the Sir Seretse Khama Airport Police
Station for 30 hours. Tlhage is
demanding compensation from the police as well for their collaboration with
the DIS. Policing
and Human Rights -- Assessing southern African countries’ compliance with the
SARPCCO Code of Conduct for Police Officials Edited by Amanda
Dissel & Cheryl Frank, African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum APCOF,
2012 ISBN:
978-1-920489-81-6 [accessed 25 March
2014] [BOTSWANA] --
ARTICLE 4: TORTURE AND CRUEL, INHUMAN AND DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT No police official shall, under any circumstances,
inflict, instigate, or tolerate any act of torture and other cruel, inhuman
or degrading treatment or punishment of any person. Although the
Constitution and the laws of Botswana prohibit torture and inhuman treatment
of people, there are reports that the police often ‘beat and abuse suspects
to obtain evidence or elicit confessions’ from persons in their custody. It is alleged that torture is rife among
suspects who are categorised as ‘high risk’, that is involved in diamonds and
narcotics, serious crime, car theft and armed robbery. The units that are
alleged to be notorious for torture and inhuman treatment are Military Intelligence (MI),
the Crime Intelligence Division (CID) and lately the Directorate of
Intelligence Service (DIS). The security
agencies have been under the spotlight since the advent of the DIS. There are
not only allegations of conflation of roles and blurred areas of jurisdiction
between the DIS and the police, but there are also allegations of incidents
of unlawful arrest, detention, torture and humiliation when suspects are
asked to ‘strip naked’. The DIS is
also alleged to have a ‘sound-proof torture chamber’ where confessions are
extracted through suffocation through the use of a ‘plastic bag’, a ‘rubber tube’
or a hosepipe, which is allegedly used to ‘whip people on the soles of their
feet’.116 However, these allegations are difficult to prove, except where
there are obvious physical wounds and scars. Press Mugabe to End
Crackdown Human Rights Watch,
Johannesburg, 29 March 2011 www.hrw.org/news/2011/03/29/sadc-press-mugabe-end-crackdown [accessed 21 January
2013] On February 19, six
civil society activists, including a labor activist, Munyaradzi Gwisai, were
arbitrarily arrested by police and are facing charges of treason and
attempting to overthrow the government by unconstitutional means for viewing
a video of the popular uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The
six, who were among 45 people arrested at the meeting, spent three weeks in
custody before they were released on bail. The activists told their lawyers
that they were beaten, tortured, and kept in solitary confinement. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For current
articles:: Search Amnesty
International Website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=botswana+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 25 December
2018] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2008 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/118987.htm [accessed 21 January
2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2008/af/118987.htm [accessed 3 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The constitution
and law prohibit such practices; however, there were reports that security
forces occasionally beat and abused suspects to obtain evidence or elicit
confessions. During the year the Botswana Police Service (BPS) investigated
three abuse complaints. For example, in October the Directorate of
Intelligence and Security Services (DISS) allegedly tortured, by beating and
suffocation during an extended interrogation, four men, including two police
officers and two soldiers, after a weapon in their possession went missing.
An investigation was ongoing at year's end. There were no
developments in the March 2007 case in which two men facing robbery and
murder charges stated that threats and beatings were used to obtain their
confessions. In October a
magistrate ruled in the trial of five soldiers and two police special
constables accused of forcing several Zimbabwean detainees to perform sex
acts on each other in 2005. The five Botswana Defense Force (BDF) members
were convicted of indecent assault, and they awaited sentencing at year's
end. The two special constables were acquitted of the charge. Freedom House Country Report - Political Rights: 2 Civil Liberties: 2 Status: Free 2009 Edition www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2009/botswana [accessed 21 January
2013] LONG URL
ç 2009 Country Reports begin on Page 21 [accessed 11 May
2020] Authorities have
been reported to occasionally use beatings and other forms of abuse to obtain
evidence and elicit confessions. Botswana has been criticized by rights
groups for continuing to use corporal and capital punishment. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Botswana", http://gvnet.com/torture/Botswana.htm, [accessed
<date>] |
