More than 70 State of Emergency detainees in the Vaal Triangle and Free State have embarked on a hunger strike barely a week after they were arrested in a police crackdown in unrest areas. The Detainees Aid Committee approximates the number detained under Emergency regulations since last week as 150.
The Human Rights Commission reports that 12-year-old Vusi Masina from the Eastern Transvaal has also been detained. DAC representative Audrey Coleman says most hunger strikers are at Bloemfontein, Kroonstad, Welkom, Odendaalsrus, and Vereeniging prisons. The hunger strikers are demanding that they be charged or unconditionally released. ”The police have used the excuse of unrest to detain these people. This is an excuse because most of them are leading figures in their community organisations: in Welkom, the president, vice-president and publicity secretary of the Thabong Youth Con¬gress were detained.
”Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok is misinformed if he says only criminal elements are being detained,” says Coleman. She adds that there is no basis for such detention without trial especially since ”President (FW) de Klerk has said that it is legitimate to articulate opposition to the present system”. Meanwhile, an HRC representative reports that a Kroonstad Prison common law inmate, Paulos Themba, escaped from prison this week and gave them a letter to hand to the commissioner of prisons in Pretoria.
The letter lists the demands of more than 50 prisoners and Emergency detainees at Kroonstad, and calls for the commissioner’s intervention. The common law prisoners have been on hunger strike for 12 days and were joined by the Emergency detainees a week ago. The Kroonstad prisoners are demanding the improvement in prison conditions. Department of Prisons comment was unavailable. – Cassandra Moodley
The article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
