78 Bodies Recovered From South African Illegal Gold Mine As Police Face Backlash For ‘Horrific’ Blockade Strategy

Illegal miners said they had to eat cockroaches after police cut off their food supply.

Rescue workers retrieved at least 78 bodies from an illegal gold mine in South Africa, where police cut off food and water supplies for several months in what critics called a “horrific” act to stop illegal mining. Th 246 survivors, many of which were emaciated, were arrested for illegal mining and entering the country illegally. According to authorities, most of the miners were from.

The mine in Stilfontein, South Africa, has been the scene of a standoff between police and miners since November when authorities implemented a plan to force the miners out by cutting off the food and water supply.

Most of the miners at Stilfontein were from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Lesotho.

Authorities also removed the ropes and pulley system they used to lower supplies and enter and exit the mines, about .2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) deep. According to South African police, miners could exit the mines but refused out of fear of arrest, a claim that community activists refute.

“We’ve never blocked any shafts. We’ve never blocked anyone from coming out,” Athlenda Mathe, the South African police’s national spokesperson, said in a press conference, Reuters reported. Our mandate was to combat criminality, and that is exactly what we’ve been doing. “By providing food, water, and necessities to these illegal miners, it would be the police entertaining and allowing criminality to thrive,” she said.

Since November, several miners have been rescued by community members using ropes. Civil rights groups sued the South African government in January after videos surfaced showing dead bodies in the mine. In the court petitions obtained by The Daily Maverick, miners claimed that some people were trying to escape and had fallen to their deaths. Miners also stated the conditions forced people to eat cockroaches and human flesh.

South African authorities have received harsh criticism from private citizens and activist groups for their actions. The South African Federation Of Trade Unions (SAFTU) issued a statement accusing the South African government of carrying out a “massacre.”

“These miners, many of them undocumented and desperate workers from Mozambique and other Southern African countries, were left to die in one of the most horrific displays of state wilful negligence in recent history,” the organization wrote on its website. “This massacre reflects the South African government’s failure to uphold the most basic tenet of our Constitution: the right to life.”