Christmas boycott in S. Africa spotlights torture of children
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Socialist Action convention report, See pp. 7-10 By MICHAEL Anti-apartheid groups in South Africa launched a 10-day boycott of white-owned HERE C Ric:
Tyan shops last month despite heightened attacks by the government and right-wing vigilantes.
A major objective of the "Christmas Against the Emergency" boycott was to draw attention to the detention of thousands of peopleespecially youth and children —by South African security forces.
At least 8200 children have been thrown into jail since the declaration of a state of emergency last June 12, according to the Detainees Parents Support Committee (DPSC). Some prisoners are as young as eight. During the same period, some 22,000 persons of all ages have been detained-most without charges or trial.
Many children are held in solitary confinement, refused clean clothing for weeks, and denied fresh food and water. "They told us we were 'small ANC' [African National Congress] and could not be let out of the cells," one child told interviewers from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.
Court affidavits describe a variety of abuses. One 14-year-old boy stated: "We were making our beds and tidying up, but they said we were slow and they sprayed tear gas into the cell. And then later, they sprayed water, which made the blankets and mats wet. Some of us fainted and some of us vomited."
South African security police routinely torture their prisoners during interrogation. In interviews conducted by the University of Capetown in 1985, for example, 83 percent of former detainees claimed that they had suffered some sort of physical abuse.
Beatings, whippings with the metaltipped "sjambok," electric shock, branding with hot irons, and suffocation are some of the methods commonly used to obtain information and "confessions." Children are not spared the tortures.
Bishop Desmond Tutu describes the con -dition of one boy, Johnny Mashiane, after his release from detention: "His eyes were (continued on page 12, in “Realignment in Aquino gov't: Filipino capitalists shored up”)
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