From: "FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za> Date: Sat, 23 Aug 1997 12:10:18 GMT + 2:00 Subject: AUT: EXTREMELY URGENT-Renewed Repression against SA Comrades Dear all, Some time ago we informed readers on this list about political repression against comrades at the University of Durban-Westville. Now, a further, extremely grave and serious act of repression has involved another comrade, Aaron Amaral, of the Cape Town Collective of "Debate", and a lecturer at the University of the Western Cape. This is a further step in a pattern of generalized victimization in South African campuses which concerns us all. Please read carefully the forwarded message below. Messages of solidarity to the journal or to Aaron can be sent to debate-AT-sunsite.wits.ac.za or to aamaral-AT-artso.uwc.ac.za Franco, Jo'burg ------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- From: "ANDREW NASH" <ANASH-AT-artso.uwc.ac.za> To: debate-AT-sunsite.wits.ac.za Date: Fri, 22 Aug 1997 16:25:53 GMT-2 Subject: State v Aaron Amaral On Monday 18th August, around midday, Aaron Amaral was taken from the Philosophy III class at UWC, by two officials of the Dept of Home Affairs. That evening, he was charged with being a prohibited person in SA. He appeared in court on the following day, and will appear again on 11 September. This e-mail is to inform subscribers to these lists (some of whom know Aaron) of events leading up to his arrest, and indications that it is politically motivated and forms part of a pattern of repression which is emerging on our campuses. Aaron is an American citizen, currently lecturing in the Dept of Philosophy, and registered for an M.A. degree at UWC. (He was lecturing when he was arrested.) He is married to a South African. They married in April, when he also applied for permanent residence in SA. He has been on the committee of the Marxist Theory Seminar at UWC, is a member of the Cape Town editorial collective of `Debate', is active in the International Socialist Movement in Cape Town, and in the Socialist Students Action Committee (SSAC) at UWC. On Friday 8 August, ten days before his arrest, Aaron was visited at his office in the Philosophy Dept by the same two officials of the Dept of Home Affairs. They said that they were acting on instructions from Pretoria, but were clearly not familiar with his residence status or his application. They confirmed that this was not a routine check, and that they were not acting on a complaint from UWC. They were particularly insistent, however, that Aaron should be removed from UWC. They repeatedly threatened him with arrest, without indicating that they had grounds for any charge against him, and told him that he should report to the Home Affairs Office in Cape Town on the following Tuesday. Aaron phoned Home Affairs on that Tuesday, to ask them to communicate with his lawyer, and discovered that the Cape Town office knew nothing of his case. Even after the same officials returned to arrest him on 18 August, they still did not know what charges they could lay against him. Only after several extended visits to Home Affairs offices and police stations was this decided. Legal opinion is that the prosecution is unlikely to succeed. Why was Aaron the subject of this unusual investigation: one which began with the investigators knowing nothing of their suspect except that they wanted him removed from UWC campus? They were not obliged to give any explanation to him, except for referring to instructions from Pretoria. But, according to Aaron (who understands some Afrikaans), the Home Affairs officials were quite open in describing him to their colleagues in the police as a Marxist who was `confusing our people'. His active commitment to popularising socialist ideas is surely the explanation for the entire investigation, for the charges against Aaron, and for the sudden sympathy between the `new South African' officials in their black leather jackets and the uniformed policemen inherited from the `old'. The evidence for such a conclusion is bound to be largely circumstantial. There are plenty of indications of the interest and intervention of state officials (including Home Affairs officials who were previously student leaders at UWC) in student politics on our campus. But the relevant circumstances are not limited to UWC. Extensive and well-documented involvement of the National Intelligence Agency on University of Durban-Westville over the past few years, and more recently on University of Venda suggest a pattern in which those struggling against the massive and growing inequalities of SA and the new world order are singled out for repression by agents of the state. Repression does not take always take on the overt forms that it did under apartheid; it is best to be aware of it and to speak out about it before it does. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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