(MENAFN- The Post) THE police arrived in Ha-Rammeleke, a Mokhotlong village, in the middle of the night.
They stormed one house and found a couple sleeping.
They then dragged the man out and ordered him to follow their instructions if he didn't want to be killed. Their order was that he should scream while announcing to his neighbours that his wife was gravely ill. The villagers who responded to the man's plea for help didn't know that they were walking into a trap.
The police rounded them up as they arrived at the man's house.
Their night of horror has just begun.
Dozens of men and women were frog-marched to the edge of the village.
The police assaulted the men with sticks and whips. They kicked others.
In the crowd was Tebalo Lesita, a 48-year-old Rastafarian with dreadlocks.
He was called to the front and ordered to act like a Rastafarian.
First, they said he should sing Reggae while shaking his head so that his dreadlocks would wave from side to side. He did and they laughed.
“They also ordered me to mimic Lucky Dube.”
Lesita says he only shouted like he was singing because, due to fear, all Lucky Dube's songs he knew had slipped out of his mind.
“I just mumbled some words as if I was singing. I have never experienced such torment before.”
“I only kept saying 'Ye ye ye!'”, he says.
They laughed again.
Meanwhile, the police were hurling insults at him.
“I was told that I was smelling rubbish in the mouth.”
Lesita says the police then instructed him to act as if he was having sex.
And when he said he was tired of the act the police ordered him to act as if he was ejaculating.
He did and his tormentors roared with laughter.
The police, Lesita says, wanted him and other villagers to confess that they knew men who had shot and killed a man earlier in the village.
Lesita says after the ordeal that lasted nearly an hour the police ordered him to pray. He claims his body is full of bruises, especially on the buttocks.
“My body is aching all over.”
Lesita says he wants to sue the police but doesn't know where to start.
“I understand that my human rights have been grossly violated but I do not know which legal steps to follow,” he says.
A week after the assault, he still hasn't sought medical help.
Nor has he opened a case against the police.
“I find it impossible to open the case against them. I will have to go to the police station to open a case,” he says.
“How can I open the case against the police at the police station?”
As a sheep farmer, Lesita says he cannot afford the taxi fare to travel to Mapholaneng to report a case at Tlokoeng Police Station.
Lesita says he cut his dreadlocks a day after the incident“because they have put me into serious problems”.
“I rue the day that I started growing those dreadlocks,” he says.
Police spokesman, Senior Superintendent Kabelo Halahala, confirmed that there was a police operation in Mokhotlong but said he didn't know how it unfolded.
Incidents of the police terrorising villagers under the guise of fighting or investigating crimes are common in Lesotho.
It is rare for police officers involved in such incidents to be arrested or prosecuted.
Majara Molupe
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