POLITICAL PRISONERS Protest By South African Students

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32295, 13 May 1970, Page 17

POLITICAL PRISONERS Protest By South African Students

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) JOHANNESBURG, May 12.

South African students demonstrated across the country yesterday in protest against the indefinite detention of political prisoners, the New York Times News Service reported. The demonstrations were silent, peaceful and passive and were received passively by the public.

The protests took the form of absenteeism from lectures, placard-carrying pickets and! campus meetings. The National Union of South African Students, re-i j presenting English-language :universities and colleges, had’ called on its members to demonstrate their condemnation of the clause in the Terrorism Act that allows for the indefinite detention of suspects. The demonstrations were to dramatise the case of 22 African detainees arrested exactly 'one year ago. They appeared (briefly in court on charges brought under the Suppression of Communism Act, were acquitted and immediately detained under the Ter-, rorism Act. Students took turns to main-| tain a 22-strong picket line outside the University of Wit-| watersrand in Johannesburg

(yesterday, carrying posters (that condemned the indefinite detention clause. The students also listened 'to speeches on arbitrary detention and the rule of law. One of the speakers was Mr Joel Carlson, the lawyer who defended the 22 detainees during the Communism Act hearing. There was a marked absence of uniformed policemen at the scene of the demonstrations and any significant reaction from passing public.