4 thousand illegal miners are trapped in a mine in South Africa — it was the government that closed them

In a mine in Stilfontein, 4,000 miners suffer from a lack of food and water. The government says it will not help them. This practice is already recurrent, and it is intentional.

Operation “Close the Hole” consists of cutting off the miners’ supplies to force them to return to the surface and be arrested. With this practice, the South African government has already captured more than a thousand miners.

These illegal workers rise to the surface.”weak, hungry and sickafter having spent weeks without receiving their basic supplies”, says .

In this mine, there were already 20 workers who could not resist the deprivation of basic needs and rose to the surfacebeing captured by the police and arrested.

A government minister, Remindertold journalists on Wednesday that the government would not send any help to illegal miners as they are involved in a criminal act.

“We are not sending help to criminals. Let’s kick them out. They will leave. Criminals should not be helped; criminals must be prosecuted. We didn’t send them there,” said Ntshavheni.

Illegal mining continues to be common in South Africa’s ancient gold mining zones: Miners enter closed shafts to excavate possible deposits, explains CNN.

These illegal miners are, in most cases, from neighboring countries. The police guarantee that the illegal operations involve larger unions that employ the miners.

The alert to the fact that these illegal miners are generally armed and there are often disputes between rival groups that lead to death of some miners.