Civil society and opposition groups in Eswatini have expressed outrage after the US deported five men to the country, with the largest opposition party calling it “human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal”.
The men, from Vietnam, Jamaica, Laos, Yemen and Cuba, were flown to the small southern African country, an absolute monarchy, last week as the US stepped up deportations to “third countries” after the supreme court cleared them last month.
Eswatini, formerly Swaziland, is landlocked by South Africa and Mozambique and has a population of about 1.2 million. It is Africa’s last absolute monarchy and has been ruled by King Mswati III since 1986.
The government estimated the five men would be held for about 12 months, a spokesperson, Thabile Mdluli, said, adding: “It could be slightly less or slightly more.”
She said Eswatini was ready to receive more deportees, depending on the availability of facilities and negotiations with the US, which has also deported eight people to South Sudan after holding them for weeks in a shipping container in Djibouti, and more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Officials have said the men, who were put in solitary confinement, were safely imprisoned in Eswatini. However, they have refused to disclose the terms of the deal, other than to say the US was footing the costs of keeping the men locked up and that they would work with international organisations to deport them to their home countries.
Many civil society organisations and politicians were not convinced. “This action, carried out without public consultation, adequate preparation, or community engagement, raises urgent questions about legality, transparency, and the safety of both the deported individuals and the people of Eswatini, especially women and girls,” said a coalition of seven women’s groups.
The organisations delivered a petition to the US embassy on Monday calling for the US to take back the deportees, for the deportees’ human rights to be respected, and for Eswatini not to become a “dumping ground for unresolved problems from elsewhere”.
The groups’ leaders held a protest outside the US embassy on Friday, where they sang, danced and held up signs with messages including: “Whose taxpayers?”, “Eswatini is not a prison for US rejects” and “Take the five criminals back to the US!!”
Eswatini’s largest opposition party, the People’s United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), said in a statement: “Pudemo vehemently condemns the treacherous and reckless decision by King Mswati III’s regime to allow the United States of America to dump its most dangerous criminals on Swazi soil.
“This is not diplomacy but human trafficking disguised as a deportation deal. It is an insult to all Emaswati who value peace, security, and the sanctity of our homeland.”
The coordinating assembly of NGOs, an umbrella group, said the situation was “deeply alarming” and condemned the “stigmatising and dehumanising language used by US officials”. It called for the Eswatini-US agreement to be made public and to be suspended pending “genuine public consultation and transparent national dialogue”.
Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary at the US Department of Homeland Security, said in a post on X on 16 July that the men, who she said had been convicted of crimes including child rape, murder and burglary, were “so uniquely barbaric that their home countries refused to take them back”.
She added: “These depraved monsters have been terrorising American communities but … they are off of American soil.”
Eswatini’s prime minister, Russell Dlamini, told local media on Friday that the government was confident it would safely manage the prisoners. “Eswatini is currently holding inmates who have committed more dangerous crimes than those attributed to the five deportees,” he said.
A prison service spokesperson, Baphelele Kunene, said the country’s citizens should not be afraid. “We can confirm that the five inmates in question have been admitted to one of our high-security centres where they are responding very well to the new environment,” he said. “Even though they come from the US, there is no preferential treatment for them as they are guided by the same prison regulations, eat the same food as others and are also expected to exhibit the same and equal amount of respect for prison protocols.”
The US state department’s most recent human rights report on Eswatini, in 2023, said there were “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extrajudicial killings; torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; serious problems with the independence of the judiciary; [and] political prisoners or detainees”.
Political parties are banned from taking part in elections, which the system’s advocates argue makes MPs more representative of their constituents. In September, Pudemo’s leader, Mlungisi Makhanya, was allegedly poisoned in South Africa. The party said it was an assassination attempt, which Eswatini’s government has denied.
The Department of Homeland Security has been contacted for comment.
