Swaziland

Swaziland, where 34 percent of adults are HIV-positive, now has the second-highest HIV infection rate in the world after Botswana.

The government said last Friday it was buying a US$250 million luxury jet for Swaziland's king, even though massive food shortages threaten an estimated 230 000 people with starvation.

Repression in Swaziland is being ignored by the international community because of a misguided perception that its people live in traditional peace and harmony, an opposition activist says. "We have not resorted to violence and it would be our choice not to do so," Ignatius Dlamini, the secretary general of the banned Peoples United Democratic Movement (Pudemo), told a seminar at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria.

The African folklore tradition is being revived in Swaziland to communicate difficult contemporary problems like AIDS and child abuse. "These stories are not Swaziland-specific, and we believe they would be welcome and useful in other African nations," UN children's agency UNICEF representative, Alan Brody, told IRIN.

King Mswati's efforts to use the constitution to permanently enshrine absolute monarchial power and ban political opposition is being challenged by Western envoys stationed in the kingdom. "The aspirations and basic rights of all Swazi citizens must be guaranteed," warned United States Ambassador to Swaziland, James McGee, in his formal address at an observation marking America's Independence Day last week.

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