One week after Newsday editor Kananelo Boloetse was seized from his Maseru home, Amnesty International and other press groups have called for an investigation. The U.S. Embassy in Maseru has issued no public statement. That US Embassy silence matches an older gap: no public Embassy condemnation when Lesotho’s security chiefs said, in October 2023, that they would not allow a constitutional change of government.
A week ago today, on Saturday 5 September, journalist and human rights defender Kananelo Boloetse was taken from his home in Katlehong, Maseru, by three unidentified men, according to his account to the Lesotho Tribune and to Newsday Media. He said the men were armed. He said they restrained him, handcuffed him and sealed his mouth with duct tape. He said he was assaulted in the vehicle, interrogated about his journalism and about Section 2, the civic group he co-founded, then abandoned, injured, in Thaba-Bosiu.
A passing motorist picked him up. He was treated in hospital, discharged, and opened a case at the Maseru Central Charge Office. His attackers, he said, warned they would return and kill him if the abduction became public. Newsday managing director Lerato Peggy Matheka said his phones and other valuables were left behind. The questions, she said, were about his work.
Amnesty spoke. The Embassy did not
On 8 September Amnesty International’s deputy regional director for East and Southern Africa, Vongai Chikwanda, called the reported abduction “deeply alarming” and demanded a prompt, independent investigation. The statement is on Amnesty’s site. Reporters Without Borders, the International Press Institute, the International Federation of Journalists and MISA Lesotho issued their own calls the same week.
Police told RSF they had formed a special team. On 10 September Commissioner of Police Advocate Borotho Matsoso said the investigation could not move without Boloetse, whose number, he said, rang unanswered. No arrests have been announced.
The U.S. Embassy in Maseru has published no statement on the case. A check of ls.usembassy.gov and of @USEmbassyMaseru for 5 to 12 September finds none.
The U.S. Embassy posted about health grants, police training and 11 September this week. It posted nothing about the abduction of a journalist.
This is not an idle press office. Between 8 and 11 September the same Embassy announced a M48 million award to Baylor College of Medicine Children’s Foundation, launched a health initiative with World Vision, convened ILEA alumni from five Lesotho security agencies, and marked the anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Charge d’Affaires Tom Hines is on the public record that week. He is not on the public record about Boloetse.
US Embassy silence has a recent precedent
On 16 October 2023 the heads of the Lesotho Defence Force, the Lesotho Mounted Police Service and the National Security Service said they would not allow Prime Minister Sam Matekane to be removed by a motion of no confidence. LDF commander Lieutenant General Mojalefa Letsoela separately told soldiers, in a video the army posted, that he could not “transfer the flag and the constitution again.” That ceremony is how a new prime minister is installed.
The security chiefs put themselves over a constitutional process. No public condemnation from the U.S. Embassy in Maseru appears on the record.
What Washington funds, and what it will not name
The United States funds police training in Lesotho. It funds health systems. It funds the American Corner, where it talks about freedom of speech. Those are choices about what counts as a public concern.
A journalist abducted from his home, questioned about his work and dumped at Thaba-Bosiu is also a public concern. Amnesty and the press groups treated it as one. The Embassy did not.
When the United States speaks in Lesotho about democracy, human rights and the rule of law, does that speech apply to a working journalist one week after an alleged abduction, or only to the programmes the Embassy is already paying for?
The Amnesty demand is still unmet. The police case is still open. The Embassy statement is still unissued.
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