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AS MANY AS 30 people may have been killed after South African police opened fire on a workers’ protest at Lonmin Platinum Mine near Rustenburg on Thursday.
A spokesperson for the national police said “several individuals” were fatally wounded during the incident, while others were injured.
Captain Dennis Adriao claimed that officers were forced to engage with “a heavily armed group of illegal gatherers” in order to “protect their own lives”.
He described the shootings as acts of self-defence.
The crime scene, which covers a vast area at a hilltop close to the mine is currently being managed by an Independent Police Investigative Directorate. The National Commissioner of the South African Police Service, General Riah Phiyega, and members of her top management are also at the scene, appraising themselves of the situation, which investigators say is still unfolding.
Police say the armed group charged at officers before any firearm was discharged. They had failed to negotiate with the striking miners, who refused to hand over machetes, clubs and other weapons. The Associated Press reports that police ministry spokesperson Zweli Mnisi admitted that more than 30 people were killed.
Images broadcast by private television station e.tv carried the sound of a barrage of automatic gunfire that ended with police officers shouting: “Cease fire!”
Warning: this video may be distressing to view
President Jacob Zuma is “alarmed and deeply saddened” at how the situation degenerated and lead to the tragic loss of lives.
“We are shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence,” he said in a statement. “We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence.”
While the initial walkout and protest focused on wages, the ensuing violence has been fueled by the struggles between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the upstart Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. Disputes between the two unions escalated into violence earlier this year at another mine.
-Additional reporting by Associated Press
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The article should state since US troops withdrew partially. There is still a significant US military presence in Iraq.
While that is true, officially the troops that are still there are a lot more restricted in their potential operations than what they were allowed to do before December 2011. The idea I believe was to ween Iraq off US dependency for military operations in the aftermath of the invasion rather than leave in one go and abandon the Iraqi army to an insurgency they certainly can’t handle entirely on their own right now.
They’re mostly stationed around oil producing facilities.
How about the terrorists mortar and bomb attacks in Syria, Damascus and Homs, that killed 60 people (including 13 kids playing in their schoolyard) and injuring hundreds. Is that not deemed worthy enough for your readers good folks at thejournal.ie? I would like a reply on this please.
We will probably see the same thing happen in Syria with the up and coming presidential election.
Oh wait, didn’t the United States just recently supply their organ consuming malitia FSA friends with anti tank missiles……
“Oh wait, didn’t the United States just recently supply their organ consuming malitia FSA friends with anti tank missiles……”
Proof?
Proof? The very fact you demand proof to the worst kept secret in modern history just goes to show what a shill you really are…goodbye my love.
All the Proof you need…
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/syrian-rebels-acquire-us-made-antitank-missiles/980/
“Proof? The very fact you demand proof to the worst kept secret in modern history just goes to show what a shill you really are…goodbye my love.”
So I ask for proof that the US was involved in selling those weapons, which you’ll notice I’m not actually denying the existence of, and suddenly I’m a “shill”? Last time I checked accusations usually have to be backed up by proof.
This distraction effort tells me there isn’t any.
Frank, very first paragraph of that article:
“It is unclear how the rebels obtained the wire-guided missiles, which are capable of penetrating any armored vehicle used by the Syrian army.”
Therefore it is not proof. You claimed the US supplied them. Where’s the proof of that?
The US Government is full of lies.
We will know soon enough when these Terrorists are supplied with these latest weapons.
Perhaps the next Christian town that will be ransacked.
“We will know soon enough when these Terrorists are supplied with these latest weapons.”
So you admit that you’re claiming the US sold the weapons to the rebels in Syria without any evidence to support it then?
Stop trying to badger bait the subject… This is typical of what a website Shill would do.
I never said anything about weapons being sold…they were supplied free to terrorists. .
All you have to do yourself Jason is Google US arms rebels in Syria and you’ll get hundreds of thousands of articles, I’m sure you’ll get it there, but you’re intentionally staying ignorant of the fact, simple as that.
“It’s potentially a very significant development. These missiles have not been seen before in Syria,” says Charles Lister, a specialist on the Syrian conflict and a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center think tank, who first wrote about the missiles in IHS Jane’s Defense Weekly. Even if the weapons were passed to the rebels from a government that bought them legitimately from the U.S., strict regulations apply to their transfer. “Even if country like Saudi had decided to send these to the rebels, technically the U.S., and [President] Obama would have known about it and given its blessing,” says Lister. It is of course possible that the missiles in question were bought on the black market, and as long as the number of star turns on social media sites run by rebels stay low, that is the most likely scenario. Even if the U.S. or its allies didn’t want to advertise the fact that they were supplying weapons to the rebels, the ubiquity of social media on the Syrian battlefield would mean that their distribution wouldn’t stay secret for long.
Where is the shill gone? Frank, any ideas?
I think you scared him off with the truth.
In the same article you that you presented him with:
The weapons were not directly provided by the United States. “Friends of Syria” delivered them, he said, referring to the U.S.-backed alliance of Western powers and Persian Gulf Arab states established to support the opposition Free Syrian Army. The rebels had to promise to return the canister of each missile fired, to not resell the weapons and to protect them from theft.
Awda declined to offer further details of the provenance of the missiles. But he said the donors made clear to him that the delivery had U.S. approval, and U.S. officials have confirmed that they endorsed the supply.
He probably only read the first two sentences and said, that’s all I need to know thanks.
And the Americans are worried about Russian ‘interference’ in Ukraine. Crazy.
Washington is only worried about keeping its masters in business, the war on terror has run it’s course pal, people are starting to see past that big charade, the focus has now shifted to Russia as the new ‘threat’ to justify the massive public spending on war. The military industrial complex…
This is how the big news networks work nowadays, keep em distracted about the things going on that they/we should really know about…
Did you hear about the LA Clippers? Did you hear about what Cliven Bundy said? Did you hear about that missing plane? Just stay focused on these highly-important stories for a little while longer until I’m done redeploying U.S. forces outside the borders of China and Russia so that when they decide they’ve had enough and attack us for provoking them, you will all be totally in the dark about events leading up to such a move and inevitably turn to your trusted friends in government to ask why they hate us.
have your say