Court halts Biko autopsy auction

 

The Johannesburg High Court has halted the auction of anti-apartheid icon Steve Biko's original autopsy documents.

The auction had been scheduled to go ahead on December 3 but has been halted following the court's ruling.

According to a description from the auction house, the 43-page document did not contain the photographs from the autopsy but was signed by the doctor who did the autopsy and was "a unique document of the Struggle era of great historical importance."

In opposing the auction, Biko's family said that the document belonged to them and should not be sold for private gain by third parties.

"The autopsy report of any deceased person is central to the dignity of the deceased," Biko's son, Nkosinathi, was quoted as saying by Sapa.

"An action by an unrelated party that amounts to auctioning off national history for private commercial reasons fails the nation at the level of morality and decency, and certainly fails at honouring the memory of those who laid their lives down for that very nation."

Steve Biko was the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement and a leading anti-apartheid icon. He was killed by the country's apartheid security forces in 1977 after being interrogated and tortured.