Namibia floggings

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33386, 19 November 1973, Page 16

Namibia floggings

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter—Copyright) LONDON. The principal African nationalist movement in {Namibia has said that many Namibians who had been recently flogged by the South African authorities were now in a concentration camp. The South-West Africa People’s Organisation (5.W.A.P.0.) added that more than 100 people had been publicly flogged by the South [Africans, who now control! the former German colony, while pregnant women, blind and handicapped people as well as children, were beaten up during recent elections in the territory.

S.W.A.P.O. also called for world-wide action to end

South African rule in the territory. S.W.A.P.O. said in a statement, issued by its West European officer, that the concentration camp had been set up in a very remote place called Omidamba, on the border between Namibia and Portuguese Angola to the east of the Rucana Falls on the Dunene River. The statement added: “This camp is mainly used as a detention centre where people, who have been arrested, ate kept for as long as the authorities choose. Many of those who have been flogged recently have come from the camp in Omidamba.” S.W.A.P.O. said that the South Africans, who were granted control of Namibia more than 50 years ago and who have subsequently continued to remain there in defiance of declarations by the United Nations and the World Court, had publicly flogged more than 100 people. Tire statement named 99 people who were said to have been arrested in the northern Namibian area of Ovamboland or in Windhoek, the territory’s capital. One of these — Benjamin Edandjo — had the word “killed” appended to his name. S.W.A.P.O. also said that a further 58 unnamed people had been arrested. With regard to flogging, S.W.A.P.O. said, “It must be emphasised that the tradition is not ‘tribal’ but firmly embedded in the South African penal code.” A South African Government minister said recently that floggings in Ovamboland

were “absolutely a tribal matter and it is an old custom of the (Ovambo) tribe.” The statement also said that S.W.A.P.O. leaders detained in Windhoek had sent a letter to their colleagues in the outside World outlining the brutal conditions in which the elections took , place. SW.A.P.O. said that it had sent a copy of the statement and letter to the British Government. S.W.A.P.O. urged the British Government to condemn the floggings, to publicise the situation in Namibia, to put pressure on South Africa to discontinue this gross violation of human rights, and to aid financially the dependents of the victims of South Africa’s illegal administration in the territory. Accountants’ officers elected.— Officers elected at the annual meeting of the Canterbury-Westland branch of the New Zealand Society of Accountants were: chairman, Mr K. W. Parker; committee, Messrs R. A. Anderson (vice-chairman), J. C. Brown, J. W. Grocott, N. C. Perkins, O. W. Pitchaithly, A. J. Wakefield, C. W. Walker; ex-officio members, Professor F. Devonport, R. D. Cormack, K. J. Jensen, A. W. Mann, and J. K. Torrance.