AFRICA - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

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to incarceration for juvenile offenders. Female prisoners are held separately from
male prisoners. There have been allegations that female prisoners sometimes were
abused by prison guards. The Government continued to grant NGO’s regular access
to prisons and prisoners. The ICRC requested and received prison access, including
access to the high security Dorbabis detention facility.
d. Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile.—The Constitution forbids arbitrary arrest
or detention except in situations of national emergency; however, security forces
used arbitrary arrest and detention in practice. According to the Constitution, persons
who are arrested must be informed of the reason for their arrest and must be
brought before a magistrate within 48 hours of their detention. Those accused are
entitled to defense by legal counsel of their choice, and those who cannot afford a
lawyer are entitled to state-provided counsel. However, in practice many accused
persons in remote and rural areas are not represented by counsel, primarily due to
resource constraints. A trial must take place within ‘‘a reasonable time,’’ or the accused
must be released. Human rights organizations have criticized the length of
time that pretrial detainees were held, which have extended up to 1 year in some
cases (see Section 1.e.). Under a state of emergency, the Constitution permits detention
without trial, although the names of detainees must be published in the government
gazette within 14 days, and their cases must be reviewed within 1 month by
an advisory board appointed by the President.
On January 7, SFF members arrested Erkki Fiderato in a village east of Rundu
and allegedly beat him while he was in detention at Utokota SFF base (see Section
1.c.). On February 10, SFF officers arrested Hompa Anton in Sauyemwa near
Rundu; they beat him with rifle butts, whipped him, and kicked him during his arrest
and detention (see Section 1.c.). On February 18, the Central Intelligence Service
detained the Katima Mulilo-based head of National Society for Human Rights’’
(NSHR) Caprivi office, Moses Nasileli, for questioning and they expelled him from
the country to Zambia on February 21 (see Section 4). On June 9, a group of Angolan
and Congolese refugee musicians were arrested for performing at a Congress of
Democrats (COD) rally (see Section 2.d.). The Government returned the musicians
to the Osire refugee camp and revoked their permission to live in Windhoek. When
some of the musicians later left the camp without government permission, the Government
attempted to arrest them. The musicians, represented by the LAC, obtained
an injunction against their detention and expulsion from the country. Although
the Government initially announced that it would arrest them again, no
such action had been taken by year’s end. During a security force operation in August,
the Government arrested 82 alleged Angolan illegal immigrants in the northern
part of the country and detained them under Section 49 of the Immigration Control
Act, a provision that gives the Government greater powers to arrest and detain
immigrants who may pose a security threat. A majority of the arrested immigrants
had lived in the country for many years, and they were detained based on suspicion
of involvement in UNITA crossborder attacks. The detainees were held for a month
in secrecy before the Government made the arrests and detentions public in September.
Although the detainees were interviewed by the ICRC and UNCHR, they
were denied legal counsel. The NSHR stated that at least one of the detainees was
a citizen and provided his identification card number; however, the Government has
disputed the detainee’s citizenship, and he continued to be held at Dorbabis detention
facility at year’s end. The Government stated that it would not forcibly return
the detained immigrants to Angola. The detainees remained at Dorbabis at year’s
end; they had not been charged, and they were not granted access to legal counsel,
although ICRC arranged for the Namibian Red Cross to transmit messages to and
from their families.
In October there were reports that security forces arrested and detained 3 senior
headmen and 10 children from the Kxoe minority group (see Section 1.c.). The children
reportedly were later released.
Some traditional leaders reportedly continued to detain and imprison persons accused
of minor offenses without recourse to police or judicial review. In response the
Government instructed traditional leaders on the legal limits of their authority.
During the August 1999 state of emergency declared in response to CLA attacks
in Katima Mulilo, the security forces detained several hundred of suspected CLA
members and sympathizers. Most of the detained were held incommunicado for 2
weeks, which the Constitution allows during states of emergency, before the Government
provided public notice of the detentions. All of the detained were arraigned
on charges, but were denied bail and remained in detention at year’s end; their
trials were postponed until April 2001. While the majority of detentions during the
state of emergency occurred in the Caprivi region, on August 7 and 8, Albert Sibeya
and Martin Sichimwa Mutumba were arrested in Ongwediva in the north-central
part of the country. The NSHR protested the use of emergency measures to detain
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