JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Dozens of human rights lawyers pledged Thursday to fast for 48 hours in sympathy with some 200 political prisoners engaged in the nation's biggest hunger strike to protest detention without charge.
At least 12 prisoners starving themselves at Johannesburg's Diepkloof jail were hospitalized for malnutrition-related illness, lawyers told a news conference. The conference also was attended and filmed by armed security police who had burst into the building and seized files moments earlier.
Lawyer Kathleen Satchwell told reporters one prisoner spent Wednesday night on a Diepkloof cell floor after collapsing, while prisons officials waited for security police to provide transportation to a hospital.
'All of our clients have spent months and even years imprisoned as detainees without being brought before a court of law and prosecuted on any criminal charges,' Satchwell and 41 other lawyers said in a statement read at the news conference in a downtown Johannesburg church center.
They said all legal efforts had failed to free the detainees, among whom are several who have been held without charge since President Pieter W. Botha imposed nationwide emergency rule to put down black rebellion in June 1986.
'The South African legal system has failed our detainee clients and it has failed us as lawyers,' the group said. They also expressed concerns about 'the mental, psychological and physical deterioration' of the prisoners.
'We ... have embarked on a fast in solidarity with all detainees and especially those on hunger strike,' the lawyers said, vowing not to take food from noon Thursday until noon Saturday, one hour before a scheduled protest meeting.
'We are confident that our professional responsibilities require these actions of us,' they said.
The prison protest began at Diepkloof Jan. 23 and spread to other prisons in the past few days, Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok said late Wednesday.
Vlok acknowledged the hunger strike 'has spread from prison to prison' but said the protest was 'an organized and coordinated attempt to cast the authorities in a bad light and to blackmail them.'
Satchwell said 12 prisoners were receiving treatment at two Johannesburg hospitals for malnutrition-related illness after 18 days of taking only water fortified with salt and sugar.
'It's the largest group we know of to go on a hunger strike and the most serious in intent, too,' lawyer Greg Knott said.
Four casually dressed security policemen disrupted a meeting of the lawyers before Thursday's news conference and seized files from Satchwell and Azhar Cachalia under the lawyers' protests.
Police Capt. Gert van Huyssteen said he was acting under emergency laws and told Satchwell: 'I have information that suggests you are having a meeting that might threaten the security situation.'
Reporters heard Van Huyssteen ordering another officer in Afrikaans to radio for a riot squad 'because these people are very threatening.'
At least two riot squad patrol wagons were stationed outside the church center when the news conference broke up. A police camera crew videotaped the conference.
About 12 of the lawyers gathered outside Diepkloof jail earlier Thursday after urging Vlok to meet the protesting detainees face to face.
'Minister Vlok has not replied ... in any way directly to the lawyers,' Satchwell said.
Vlok said in a statement late Wednesday: 'I am prepared to listen and to talk with anybody who wants to talk with me but I don't think this is the way we should try to solve the problem.
'We can not allow (the government) to be blackmailed, so we will try to defuse the situation as quickly as possible.'
Human rights groups estimated up to 35,000 people were held without trial for varying periods after President Pieter W. Botha imposed a nationwide state of emergency in 1986 to put down violence spreading through segregated black ghettos.
Human rights lawyers say some 1,500 are still held, but Law and Order Ministry officials dispute the figure, claiming less than 1,000 are in police detention.
