Three Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) members who went to the Durban Westville prison on Tuesday to screen prisoners’ CD4 counts were threatened with guns and dogs by warders, they said.
”They are removing us forcefully, pointing [at] us with guns and they don’t want to let us through,” the TAC’s treatment project coordinator for KwaZulu-Natal, Cindy Blose, told the South African Press Association.
Blose was at the prison with two of her colleagues and doctors to hand out antiretrovirals to HIV-positive inmates.
”We are not threatening them, we were waiting for the [prison] director’s call so that we can go into the prison, but now they are telling us not to stand at the gate,” Blose said.
Blose said they were surrounded by four armed warders with dogs.
”There are 13 warders altogether and they have shields.” — Sapa