Nurses Refuse To Treat Eswatini police after colleagues shot
Since June, protests in Africa's last absolute monarchy, formerly known as Swaziland, have swept the country. Some internet services, such as Facebook, were temporarily shut down this week in response to the unrest.
The government, which denies that security forces used live ammunition, has now banned all demonstrations."We have no reports of nurses being shot," a government spokesperson Focus on Africa.
"Police are on the streets to maintain law and order; there is no willy-nilly shooting."He added that Eswatini was a country founded on peace and dialogue. On Friday, nurses were protesting at three hospitals, reports say.
The Swazi News Twitter account has shared a video that shows nurses demonstrating at the Nhlangano Health Centre in the south of the country.
Earlier this week, health workers and other public sector employees, who went to deliver a petition to parliament demanding better living conditions, were met with an "unprecedented show of force", the Swaziland Democratic Nurses Union (SDNU) said.
Thirty nurses were injured as the police and army opened fire, and a young bystander was killed, the union added. Describing the security forces as a "brood of vipers", SDNU called on all nurses "in solidarity with the shot nurses not to treat a police officer".
Union president Welcome Mdluli acknowledged that this goes against the principle of treating everyone. Still, he told them that his members were now scared of the police." We have reports of police shooting health care workers inside the hospital... we are afraid of them," he said.
Mr Mdluli now wants a guarantee from the health ministry that nurses will be safe before the treatment boycott ends. A delegation from the regional grouping, the Southern African Development Community, is currently in the country to meet King Mswati III and some involved in the pro-democracy movement.
"Images that are coming from Eswatini are alarming indeed, and we can see that the political temperature is boiling," Jeff Radebe, who is leading the delegation, told the South African public broadcaster before he travelled.
The health workers have joined students, transport workers and others in a wave of protests calling for major constitutional reforms that will allow them to elect their leaders.
The stark inequalities in the country have also fueled the demonstrations. According to the World Bank, in 2016, just under 60% of the population lived in poverty. On Monday, student protests led to the indefinite closure of all schools, a move that UN Secretary-General António Guterres criticised.
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