South African police maintain siege against 'illegal' underground miners despite court ordering access
Relatives and friends of those remaining underground have protested near the abandoned gold mine.
In short:
Authorities have been ordered by the courts to ease their blockade of a mine in which up to 4,500 people could be trapped.
Police said it was too dangerous to send officers down to rescue people.
What's next?
A lawyer working with what authorities call "illegal miners" says they will ask the court to order rescue missions and deliveries of essentials to those who have been underground for months.
Starving miners fearing arrest have spent months underground, blockaded by South African authorities who say they are cracking down on illegal operations.
Police have stopped relatives from delivering food, water and other essentials to those hiding inside an abandoned goldmining operation in Stilfontein, according to the South African Human Rights Commission.
Reports vary widely about how many people have been trapped in the mine — and how their health is faring.
Authorities have been unwilling to help.
A recent court win should have made it possible for relatives to resume sending essentials to those sheltering in the 2.5 kilometre-deep mine for the past three months.
However, lawyer Yasmin Omar, who has been working to end the blockade, told the ABC that authorities had intensified their siege, and called in defence forces to back up police.
Police officers and private security personnel secure the opening of the goldmine.
Starved miners refuse to leave
Ms Omar said the government had ordered officers to surround the mine.
"This is an effort by the South African government to facilitate the ends of their foreign investors in the mines," she said.
"They are acceding to the request of foreign investors to protect the mine and they are jettisoning or limiting their rights of their own citizens to achieve this end."
Police wanted to cut off supplies, and force the miners to the surface where they could be arrested.
"When these guys go underground, the local community, their family members would drop food parcels down and water, blankets, and whatever they thought was necessary, down that shaft and the miners would get food," she explained.
Authorities said about 1,000 people had come out of the mine, but most stayed in to avoid facing police and prosecution.
"It became a stand-off," Ms Omar said.
"So the police said, 'well, look, if we don't give them food for long enough, then if they surely they will come out'."
Volunteer rescuers have managed to bring three people to the surface.
The miners have held out, but they have been suffering from a lack of food.
Last week, a body was pulled out of the mine, Ms Omar said.
That panicked relatives of those remaining underground.
They pleaded with officers to allow them to send down food, but police wouldn't budge, Ms Omar said.
Ms Omar said she wasn't arguing that the miners should not be prosecuted.
"But we say it's inhumane to trap them down there and take the stance that either you come out and walk into prison with us or you die down there," she told the ABC.
So far, only three people have been rescued.
When brought to the surface they reported there were about 4,500 people underground, Ms Omar said she had been told by people at the scene.
"The numbers are staggering," she said.
"People told us it's horrendous down there. The people underground are dying.
"There are dead bodies down there and people are laying next to corpses and it's awful."
The Stilfontein mine is about 150 kilometres from Johannesburg.
Police have disputed the numbers of those reported to be trapped by the people who have made it to the surface.
"We feel that the numbers are being exaggerated," police spokesperson Athlenda Mathe said.
Officials said they believed about 350-400 people were in the mine.
Authorities don't want to help any of them, but they have been ordered to stop blocking access to the mine — for the moment.
Court orders police to stop barricade
Under an interim court order issued on Tuesday, police were told to stop blocking access to the mine so emergency services could enter and those trapped inside could exit.
Deliveries of crucial supplies like food and water should also be able to resume.
But it appears unlikely much help would be sent by authorities.
Cabinet Minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni told reporters on Wednesday the government wouldn't assist with rescues.
"We are not sending help to criminals. We are going to smoke them out. They will come out. Criminals are not to be helped. We didn't send them there," Ms Ntshavheni said.
A note retrieved from the miners, written in isiXhosa language, reads: "We are requesting antiretroviral (ARV) pills. People are in need here. We are pleading with you."
Ms Mathe said "no police officer, no soldier or government official will go down to an abandoned mine".
"There is a high risk of loss of life," she said.
If any miners emerge from underground, police will be ready to detain them, they warned in a statement.
"All those who resurface will continue to be assessed by emergency medical personnel on site," police said.
"Those that are in a good health will be processed and detained. Those that require further medical care will be taken to hospital under police guard."
According to the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, some of the miners "may be heavily armed".
"It is well-established that illegal miners are recruited by criminal gangs and form part of wider organised crime syndicates," he said in a statement earlier this week.
"The Stilfontein mine is a crime scene where the offence of illegal mining is being committed. It is standard police practice everywhere to secure a crime scene and to block off escape routes that enable criminals to evade arrest."
He said police would bring the people in the mine to the surface safely.
Barricade tightens, military called in
Ms Omar said despite the interim court order for authorities to ease the blockade, it had in fact tightened.
"The police remained there, and their stance to deny the community access to that entrance to drop food supplies in remained," she said.
"And in fact, the containment of that area became more intense. They called the South African National Defence Force, they called the ministry in and it just made the situation a lot more tense and a lot worse."
Police were supposed to end their blockade but Ms Omar said it had been beefed up with help from the military.
Ms Omar said authorities had also stopped some of her staff from going to the site to update relatives on legal proceedings.
Military personnel told her staff the area was closed from 5pm, she said.
"Our country boasted that we were a free people that we're not going to let the the events of the past like what happened during apartheid be repeated in our country," she said.
"And to us, it smacks of exactly that. We've now got curfews. We've got people in lockdown when it's not necessary. We've got the military descending into civil society."
A further hearing at the High Court in Pretoria has been set down for Thursday.
The South African Human Rights Commission has also launched an investigation into how the police have handled the situation.
Why are people in an abandoned goldmine?
The government calls the people trapped underground "illegal" miners.
Since mid October, there has been a renewed crackdown on illegal mining operations, focused in the North West Provice where the Stilfontein mine is located.
David Van Wyk, a lead researcher at Johannesburg-based Benchmarks Foundation, told CNN there were about about 6,000 abandoned mines across South Africa.
They become targets for illegal mining if they are not properly closed down by the large, multinational corporations that ran them, he said.
Ms Omar said it was often impoverished people being hired by criminal gangs to go into abandoned goldmines.
Ms Omar told the ABC that impoverished people were often recruited by criminal gangs to go into closed or inactive mines.
"They … tell them if you go underground, we're going to pay you to pull out certain things that we want from underground," she said.
She said it was yet to be determined if those in the mine knew they were involved in an illegal operation.
"They may truly be really clueless about the legality or illegality of their actions, and that is the criminal standard that must be met," she told the ABC.
"For them to be found guilty of doing something illegal … it would have to be shown that they intentionally — knowing that this is illegal — entered into that mine."
Illegal mining is common in South Africa's old gold-mining areas, with miners going in closed shafts to dig for any possible remaining deposits.
Their presence in closed mines has also created problems with nearby communities, which have complained the illegal miners, who are often from neighbouring countries, commit crimes ranging from robberies to rape.
By：ABC(责任编辑：admin)
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