World Notes South Africa

Scenes of South African policemen lashing black demonstrators with leather whips called sjamboks have become all too familiar. Last week a young government doctor turned the spotlight on another pervasive form of police violence: the beating and torturing of detained prisoners. Dr. Wendy Orr, 25, who noted that inmates she treated in two Port Elizabeth prisons were often physically abused, sought a restraining order against the police. Said she: "Detainees are being taken out of my care . . . and during the course of interrogation are brutally assaulted." In an official acknowledgment of such violence in South African jails, the state supreme court issued an injunction barring police from assaulting detainees in Port Elizabeth.

Human rights groups have been protesting the treatment of detainees since Black Leader Steve Biko died of brain injuries suffered in a Port Elizabeth prison in 1977. Since then at least 26 black South Africans have died while in detention, 15 of them during the past year. While police officials have repeatedly denied abusing prisoners, a recent University of Cape Town study found that detainees stood an 83% chance of being tortured.