Thursday, August 30, 2012

S.Africa police killed miners 'in cold blood': photographer

South African special police shot dead strikers at the Lonmin mine "in cold blood", a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer alleged Thursday after he spent 15 days probing the violence that killed 44.

"Heavily armed police hunted down and killed the miners in cold blood," wrote South African photographer Greg Marinovich on the Daily Maverick news website.

Marinovich spent more than two weeks at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, interviewing witnesses and taking photos after police opened fire on striking workers on August 16.

Officers shot dead 34 and injured 78 after a stand-off between rival unions had already killed 10, including two police officers.

Television cameras screened a mass shooting, which police afterwards justified as self-defence.

But most of the dead were shot away from the cameras, said Marinovich.

"A minority were killed in the filmed event... The rest was murder on a massive scale."

His photographs showed the letter "N" painted by police forensic experts on a rock crevice 300 metres (328 yards) behind the hill where the shooting was filmed.

The letter, the 14th of the alphabet, indicates corpse number 14 in the forensic investigation.

"Approaching N from all possible angles, observing the local geography, it is clear that to shoot N, the shooter would have to be close," said Marinovich.

An eyewitness had also told the photographer that armoured police trucks had driven over some strikers, Marinovich wrote.

President Jacob Zuma last week appointed a judicial commission of inquiry into the events on the day.

Police watchdog spokesman Moses Dlamini declined to comment on the Thursday report.

"I can't comment until I've read the article and spoken to investigators," he told AFP.

The Star newspaper on Monday reported that most of the dead were shot in the back while fleeing.

Marinovich won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for his coverage of violence in South Africa's townships at the end of apartheid.

His story as part of the "Bang Bang Club", four photographers who covered the conflicts, was told in a book and Hollywood film.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/africa-police-killed-miners-cold-blood-photographer-111249167.html

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