Facts For Working People Offers Congratulations to the director, producers and all of the people connected with this powerful documentary chronicling the events that led to the deaths of 44 striking miners at the Lonmin Mine in South Africa in August 2012. Many activists in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the world showed the film in order to raise funds for the families of the murdered miners but also to bring the story to workers throughout the world. This is wonderful news.
Media Release
“Miners Shot Down” has
won the Cinema for Peace Award for
Justice
Dated: 10 February 2015
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
“To
be presented an award by the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal
Court is very affirming. We have a just cause and one day those behind the
Marikana massacre will face trial and therefore the consequences.” (Rehad
Desai, Director)
South African documentary film, Miners
Shot Down, has won the Cinema for Peace Award for Justice, 2015. The Cinema for Peace Award for Justice
was initiated in 2009, together with the Prosecutor of the International
Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. The
announcement was made in Berlin at the Awards Gala on February 9th,
2015.
This year’s Cinema for Peace Award for
Justice was deliberated on by a group of very powerful figures, including
the chief prosecutor of the ICC. This means that people will be looking very
closely at the evidence of political collusion that is highlighted by the film.
For example, the role of Cyril Ramaphosa, the current Deputy President of South
Africa, who at the time of the massacre was a shareholder and a non-executive
board member of Lonmin, as well as a senior member of the ANC.
Cyril Ramaphosa is a known skilled
negotiator. The strikers’ key demand was to negotiate with Lonmin management.
Ramaphosa chose not to procure peaceful dialogue in August 2012. Instead he communicated
with cabinet ministers on the need to escalate the use of force to end the
strike.
Cinema for Peace
has supported a number of important causes with the help of artists such as
Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Sean Penn, George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia
Roberts, Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron and personalities such as the Dalai
Lama, Muhammad Ali, Bill and Hillary Clinton, president Mikhail Gorbachev and
our former Honorary Patron Nelson Mandela.
Several winning
films have been screened at special occasions and campaigns, including at the
UN General Assembly and in a campaign to save Sakineh Ashtiani from death by
stoning. The Cinema for Peace Justice Award for Miners Shot Down bolsters the case for all those responsible for
the massacre to get their day in court.
“Endorsement by icons like Nelson Mandela
and George Clooney will help to propel the film and its campaign for justice to
greater heights. We won’t rest until the victims of the massacre get justice.”
Rehad Desai, Director.
For more information contact:
Zivia Desai: zivia@mweb.co.za
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