REPORT SAYS CHILDREN CHOSEN FOR GOVERNMENT VIOLENCE
JAMES F. SMITH, Associated Press
Apr. 17, 19861:26 PM ET
JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICAJOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP)
A
n American lawyers' groupsaid today that thousands of black children have been arrested, tortured and killed by authorities in a campaign to crush opposition to the government.
A report by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, titled ''The War Against Children, South Africa's Youngest Victims,'' gave dozens of detailed examples of suspected police and army brutality against children.
''Far from being spared the effect of suppression, these children have often been chosen as special targets of state-authorized violence,'' the report said.
It said that in one case, ''11-year-old FanieGoduka, arrested on aaccusation of public violence and later innocent, was refused bail twice and held for 57 days in a cell with adult criminals.''
The report said soldiers questioning one 14-year-old gave him repeated electric shocks.
Police headquarters in Pretoria issued a statement rejecting the report's allegations and saying, ''The security forces do not tolerate or condone any abuses or illegal actions against the civilian population.''
The statement said most of the supposed cases could not be investigated because full names, dates and locations were not given, and that anyone with a complaint should come forward.
The government has said in the past that youths often are in the forefront of anti-government violence, but that they are treated with restraint.
The study acknowledged that some children have taken part in stonings and rioting. The current wave of unrest in black townships broke out in September 1984 and is directed against apartheid, the system under which South Africa's 5 million whites dominate and deny the vote to the 24 million blacks.
But the report said the security ''net has been cast so widely and indiscriminately that it is evident that the security forces are using the vaguely defined crime of public violence as a convenient means to control, intimidate and incarcerate those involved in political protest.''
The New York-based committee's report was written by lawyer Helena Cook and based on interviews in South Africa last year, affidavits, news clippings and government statements.
The study said 2,106 children younger than 16 were detained under emergency powers from July to March, comprising one-fourth of the total people held.
It said 209 children were killed in unrest from January 1985 through mid- February 1986, including a 4-year-old girl shot in the head with a rubber bullet fired from a police car passing her yard in a Pretoria township.
Three teen-agers were among the 12 people who died in police custody in 1985, it said.
It said a 14-year-old, Joseph, was arrested while playing soccer and held by soldiers for nine days.
During interrogation, a ''white soldier took my right arm and bent it behind my back,'' the report quoted Joseph as saying. ''He then took out a lighter and he held it beneath the wrist of my right hand. ... I could smell my flesh burning.''
Joseph was quoted as saying a wire was tied around his right hand and attached to a box with a handle, then water was poured on his hand and he was given electric shocks.
''Each time my body would convulse with the electric shocks,'' the report quoted him as saying. ''It ripped out my thumbnail and took a chunk of flesh out of my thumb.''