Testimony by Carol Bragg of the Rhode Island office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The testimony says AFSC is a Quaker service and educational organization which addresses a wide variety of peace and justice issues. The testimony says for 30 years, AFSC has had staff living in Southern Africa, assigned to work in various countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania; AFSC has assisted in political transitions from colonial regimes racially dominated by whites, has carried out several major community development programs, and has shipped material aid and medical supplies to refugee camps in Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia; AFSC staff working in Southern...
Testimony by Carol Bragg of the Rhode Island office of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). The testimony says AFSC is a Quaker service and educational organization which addresses a wide variety of peace and justice issues. The testimony says for 30 years, AFSC has had staff living in Southern Africa, assigned to work in various countries, including Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania; AFSC has assisted in political transitions from colonial regimes racially dominated by whites, has carried out several major community development programs, and has shipped material aid and medical supplies to refugee camps in Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia; AFSC staff working in Southern Africa return to the United States on a regular basis to provide first-hand reports about the conditions in the region; it is through direct experience in Southern Africa that the American Friends Service Committee has concluded that the United States and the global community should impose economic sanctions against South Africa. The testimony says evil happens throughout the world, as we are painfully aware; but nowhere today is it so clearly entrenched-constitutionally, legally, politically, economically, and socially-as in South Africa. The testimony says the violence of apartheid is irrefutable; the South African government has imposed and recently extended emergency laws which prohibit freedom of assembly, speech, and the press; an estimated 40,000 people have been detained since September, 1984, nearly a quarter of them children under the age of 18; killings, beatings, and torture are routine occurrences; three and a half million people have been forcibly removed to the so-called "homelands" (Bantustans), where they live in squalor; the South African government has declared four of these "homelands" to be independent. The testimony says South Africa illegally occupies Namibia and has carried out widespread aggression against its neighbors, resulting in the deaths of more than 900,000 people --either through terrorist attacks or from manmade famine and the disruption of social services which would otherwise have saved lives. The testimony says I began a fast on June 16, the anniversary of the Soweto uprising. The testimony says I also look at the vast riches of South Africa: the gold, the diamonds and the uranium, the gold of the nuclear age. The testimony says in 1985, church leaders in South Africa issued the KAIROS Document; the South African church leaders spoke of the KAIROS moment of truth for apartheid and for the South African Church. The testimony says we must ask ourselves, do we have the courage as a nation to take the necessary action--total, mandatory economic sanctions--with firm resolve and all due speed, in order to alleviate human suffering and hasten the day of freedom for all the peoples of South and Southern Africa? The testimony includes a quote by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The testimony discusses UNICEF and the National Party. [Note: the document was apparently used during the presentation of the testimony.]
