S.Africa frees first batch of miners arrested for killings

A South African court freed the first batches of 270 miners Monday, arrested for the killing of 34 fellow workers who were gunned down by police in a wildcat strike last month.

The court released 162 people after prosecutors provisionally withdrew murder charges against the group amid public outrage following the bloodshed at Lonmin's Marikana mine in the worst day of police violence in post-apartheid South Africa.

"The murder charges against the accused are at this point of time withdrawn," said Magistrate Esau Bodigelo as he released the first group of 47 miners in the court north of Pretoria.

"You may stand down," he added as applause broke out in the courtroom.

The freed workers sang and danced as they left the court after being processed in groups numbering a few dozen men, while 10 minibuses readied to take them back to Marikana where celebrations awaited.

"I'm going home now. I'm going to find my family in Marikana," Siyabulela Milo, 32, told AFP.

The Marikana shooting, shocking footage of which was beamed around the world, conjured up images of apartheid-era police violence and cast the spotlight on crippling social inequality in South Africa.

Meanwhile, police said four people had been injured in a shooting at a gold mine in the east of Johannesburg, and a stayaway by 12,000 workers continued at another gold mine in the west of the city.

"We can confirm that there were four people who were taken to the hospital after they were injured," police spokeswoman Captain Pinky Tsinyane told AFP.

The violence erupted after fired workers, armed with traditional sticks and iron rods, gathered on Monday at the Gold One mine from which they had been fired during an illegal stayaway in June and attacked reinstated miners.

Four people were arrested for attempted murder.

The shooting follows the deadly police action at the Lonmin mine northwest of Johannesburg on August 16 during a wildcat strike. Earlier violence left 10 people dead, including two police officers who were hacked to death.

The decision to charge the miners with murder triggered outrage over what in fact was a police crackdown, with South Africa's justice minister demanding that prosecutors explain the charges.

Speaking Sunday, acting national director of prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba said a final decision on whether to press murder charges would be taken after a series of investigations into the shootings.

These include a judicial commission of inquiry appointed by President Jacob Zuma, which has until January to present its findings.

The releases are being processed in batches, after the miners' addresses have been verified by police, with no bail required.

"I'm proud to be outside," said Edwin Ramahlokane, 31, who was released in the second group of 38 people, adding: "We are innocent."

But the group will return to court on February 12, 2013 on charges of public violence and holding an illegal gathering.

The strike since August 10 has crippled the world's third largest platinum mine where worker turnout slumped to 4.5 percent on Monday, amid threats from strikers on returning workers.

"An indefinite strike will ultimately threaten the jobs of more than 40,000 workers," the company said in a statement.

"We cannot go on indefinitely without normalising operations and still escape the consequences of the mine not being operational."

As mediators sought to broker a breakthrough in the Lonmin deadlock, government ministers moved to calm jitters after strikes spread to the gold sector.

"The events at Marikana are not a reflection of the business environment in South Africa," said minister in the presidency Collins Chabane.

Police claimed self-defence in the shooting, after an escalating stand-off between rival unions had already turned deadly during an increasingly bitter strike over pay.

Julius Malema, South Africa's former youth leader who was axed this year by the ruling ANC over ill-discipline, meanwhile urged striking miners to bypass labour unions.

Malema told striking miners at a Gold Fields mine west of Johannesburg, where 12,000 workers have been on an illegal strike since Wednesday, that they should bypass the main mine union if their needs were not met.

"Leaders of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) should know that you can't act for workers without consulting them, and don't take workers for granted," Malema was quoted by the local Sapa news agency.

"If they fail you, you must lead yourself."

The company has said the strike is due to an internal dispute within the NUM, the country's biggest union and an ally of the ruling African National Congress.

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Cuba frees dissidents arrested at Paya funeral

Cuban authorities have released without charge most of the dissidents arrested after the funeral of political activist Oswaldo Paya, activists said.

"I was arrested for about nine hours at the Tarara police school (in eastern Havana) with about 20 other dissidents. Then, they took me home by car," rights activist Guillermo Farinas told AFP.

Farinas, the 2010 winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize, was among dozens of dissidents arrested Tuesday after they emerged from Paya's funeral shouting anti-government slogans.

Most of the other arrested dissidents also were freed under similar conditions, according to the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), a dissident information clearinghouse.

Speaking to AFP from his home in the central city of Santa Clara, Farinas, known for hunger strikes against the Americas' only one-party Communist regime, said he was released "without charge," as were the other dissidents arrested with him in Tarara.

During his arrest, Farinas said he was struck in the face and forced onto a bus that took him and others to the police barracks.

"I asked (police interrogators) what law in Cuba kept me from walking next to a hearse but they could not answer," he said.

CCDHRN president Elizardo Sanchez said "most" of those arrested were freed late Tuesday.

Authorities say Paya, 60, died on Sunday along with another dissident, Harold Cepero Escalante, when their rental car went off the road and struck a tree in southeastern Cuba.

Paya, an engineer and fervent Roman Catholic, founded the Christian Liberation Movement, a group pressing for political change in Cuba.

He won international attention in 2002 when, on the eve of a visit by former US president Jimmy Carter, he presented Cuba's legislature with more than 11,000 signatures in support of an initiative calling for change on the communist island.

Cuba was then still run by Fidel Castro, and Paya's move was a bold, landmark first confrontation between a citizen seeking wholesale change -- economic and democratic -- from within the existing political system.

Paya won the Sakharov prize for human rights later that same year.

Yet his defiance of the Communist system did not bear fruit at home.

When Carter mentioned Paya's project in an uncensored speech on Cuban state television, most Cubans, in a country with only official media, had never heard of it. The Cuban legislature ultimately rejected the initiative.

Paya's daughter, 23-year-old Rosa Maria Paya, sharply questioned the official Cuban account of her father's death in an impassioned statement delivered at the funeral before an audience that included leaders of Cuba's Roman Catholic church.

Rosa Maria said her skepticism of the official version was based on "the repeated threats against the life of my father and our family."

Cuba "should carry out a full and transparent investigation, because it should be determined what exactly happened," a US State Department spokesman, Mike Hammer, said in Spanish in response to questions on Twitter.

The United States earlier condemned the arrest of dissidents at Paya's funeral as "a stark demonstration of the climate of repression in Cuba."

"We call on the Cuban government to respect internationally recognized fundamental freedoms, including freedom of speech, rather than arresting their citizens for peacefully exercising these universal rights that are protected and promoted by governments throughout the world," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in a statement.

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