Manny Jones
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
The rescue operation is ongoing. At the moment, the authorities, upon closing business today, say they were able to get out 26 minors alive and nine bodies. It's tricky because this was an illegal operation. We don't know exactly how many minors are down there. Estimates from advocacy groups puts the number of minors down there between 400 and 800.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
Authority states they can only bring them up in small groups in this kind of makeshift metal lift that they've got that goes deep into the mine, takes people and brings them back up. So they say it will take at least a week and potentially up to 16 days.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
Initially, the authorities took a very hard stance because the miners were there illegally. So their initial tactic was to prevent any food and water from getting down to the shaft in the hope that the miners would then emerge by themselves. As it turns out, a workers' union representing the miners says that they're unable to get out by themselves.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
And what this has happened, this standoff between the police and the miners, what this has caused is for many of them to die. According to one of the main unions representing them, they claim that 109 miners have died and that the others are in a really poor state. And they just need to get out of this mine as soon as possible.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
This came after some miners actually wrote a letter late last week describing the conditions as unbearable and begging for masks to deal with the smell of the rotting corpses. And the videos just show a group of men. It's hard to tell exactly how many, but there are definitely dozens of them. Some are shirtless. They look emaciated.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
And there's a voice narrating the whole time saying that these people are hungry. They're in desperate need of help. There's also another video that shows rows and rows of what appears to be dead bodies wrapped in plastics down in the mine shaft. Now, because these videos were shared on social media and a lot of the geolocation has been stripped away, we haven't been able to verify that.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
But this is coming from the mining union. And this is what they're using as an argument to say that this operation needs to happen and needs to happen faster.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
Absolutely. The reaction in South Africa, honestly, is a mixed one. I think advocacy groups and union representatives argue that these are people, you know, they may have been involved in illegal activities, but they have human rights and they shouldn't be denied food or water. They should be rescued as soon as possible.
Global News Podcast
Negotiators close to securing Gaza ceasefire deal - White House
But I think a lot of ordinary South Africans feel that they've put themselves in this situation. They've engaged in illegal activities. And perhaps if there's a deterrent of some sort, like help isn't coming as quickly as they would like, then perhaps this might deter other people from wanting to go into illegal mining. So it's a very divisive issue here.