On 11 October, commemorated as the "Day of Solidarity with South African Political Prisoners", the President of International Defence and Aid Fund, Canon L. John Collins, was among those who addressed the United Nations Special Committee Against Apartheid, meeting in New York. Here we reproduce an extract from that address.
Recalling that 11 October is the anniversary of the opening of the Rivonia trial in 1963, when Nelson Mandela and others of the ANC were sentenced to life imprisonment, Canon Collins went on to say:
> "It is the provision of humanitarian aid in the form of the best available legal assistance for those accused of political offences, as in the Rivonia trial, that has saved many of the liberators from death sentences, has given them an assurance of not being left alone in their struggle, and has played a significant part in exposing to the world the true nature of the tyranny of the apartheid regime. It is by provision of aid to the families and dependants of those who, in the course of their struggle against apartheid, are subjected to detention, to house arrest, to torture, to many other kinds of intimidation and hardship, and to death, that the morale of the Liberation Movements is preserved. And it is by the provision of an accurate account to the world of the facts concerning the white racialist regimes in Southern Africa, and as true an evaluation of the facts as can be assessed, that the conscience of the world can be stirred....
> "Armed struggle or no armed struggle, the need for humanitarian aid for the victims of white nationalist racial oppression in Southern Africa will persist till full freedom is achieved."
