Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Wang Yu Ching/Office of the President/Flickr/CC BY 4.0
THE TAIWANESE GOVERNMENT has proposed funding a science and technology park in Eswatini at a cost of 1 billion NT, the Taiwan Industrial Innovation Park. The science park would be to shore up relations in what is Taiwan’s sole remaining diplomatic ally in Africa, with the aim of expanding the footprint for Taiwanese businesses in Africa. President Lai Ching-te and Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung previously visited the site of the proposed science park during a visit to Eswatini earlier this year.
The visit to Eswatini by Lai took place after a planned trip by the Taiwanese president for King Mswati III’s 58th birthday and the 40th anniversary of his accession to the throne was abruptly canceled. Countries that Lai would have passed over on his flight to Eswatini, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles revoked overflight permissions shortly before Lai was to set out. This was largely interpreted as China flexing its muscles in terms of its influence in Africa, with the Lai administration suggesting that China threatened to revoke debt cancellation for Madagascar, Mauritius, and the Seychelles if they did not comply.
Lai’s trip, then, took place with Lai abruptly traveling to Eswatini, then only announcing that he had arrived after the fact. Presumably, this was to minimize the space for China to react. Lai arrived in Eswatini by traveling on King Mswati III’s personal aircraft, a former China Airlines plane that was sold to the monarch in 2015. Lai later returned on the same aircraft, taking a winding route that tested the operational limits of the plane, but similar to the route taken by then-US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi during her August 2022 trip to Taiwan.
Still, one notes that–as is broadly the case with Taiwan’s diplomatic relationship with Eswatini–there was little criticism of Eswatini’s record on human rights afterward. Eswatini is an absolute monarchy. The constitution was voided in 1973, and political parties were banned, as a result of which free and fair elections still do not take place in Eswatini today. Although Mswati agreed to constitutional changes in 2005, he retains his grip on power. Under Mswati III’s rule, life expectancy has halved in Eswatini since 2000.
Pro-democracy protests rocked Eswatini in the summer of 2021, with the public calling for the right to vote. In the violence that followed, 28 were shot, with demonstrators alleging that at least twenty were killed. Tear gas was used by police against demonstrators, and Internet services were suspended, with a curfew declared in major urban centers, in which buildings were burned during the turmoil, including Manzini and Mbabane, as well as the industrial center of Matsapha.
Much as occurred during Taiwan’s authoritarian period, Eswatini also sees the killing of dissidents. In 2023, opposition politician Thulani Maseko was killed by unknown gunmen in a shooting widely suspected of being ordered by the monarchy. Maseko was a human rights lawyer and public intellectual. At the time, Mswati III stated, “People should not shed tears and complain about mercenaries killing them,” implying that he had ordered the killing.
Nevertheless, after the demonstrations, Taiwan announced that it would be donating 637 million NT to the government for reconstruction–an act that makes it complicit in the government’s crackdown on the protests. Either way, Taiwan simply chose to act as though the protests had never occurred.
Indeed, in spite of its human rights violations, Taiwan has continued to blithely engage in trade relations with Eswatini. In May, the Lai administration was asked about the prospect of importing labor from Eswatini. Online claims were that Taiwan planned to import 1,000 workers from Eswatini after Lai’s trip, something that government officials denied as disinformation. For its part, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied that Eswatini is being considered as a source of imported labor. It instead claimed that emphasis has been placed on cultivating vocational talent in the manufacturing, tourism, energy, and infrastructure sectors, so that Eswatini workers can work in Taiwanese-owned businesses in the science park that is being built in Eswatini.
It is probable that such claims were an attempt to leverage recent backlash to the prospect of introducing Indian migrant workers, with a wave of online racism against the idea, claiming that Indian migrants would sexually assault Taiwanese women en masse. The Lai administration scaled down the recruitment of Indian migrant workers to only 1,000 after the backlash.
Still, it should be clear that it has hardly ever occurred to the Lai administration to turn Taiwan’s substantial economic heft in Eswatini to pressuring for improvements in its human rights. This does not appear set to change anytime soon.