No one is illegal - Abahlali baseMjondolo comment on the Xenophobic Attacks in Johannesburg

We condemn the attacks, the beatings, rape and murder, in Johannesburg on people born in other countries. We will fight left and right to ensure that this does not happen here in KwaZulu-Natal.

We have been warning for years that the anger of the poor can go in many directions. That warning, like our warnings about the rats and the fires and the lack of toilets, the human dumping grounds called relocation sites, the new concentration camps called transit camps and corrupt, cruel, violent and racist police, has gone unheeded.

Let us be clear. Neither poverty nor oppression justify one poor person turning on another. A poor man who turns on his wife or a poor family that turn on their neighbours must be opposed, stopped and brought to justice. But the reason why this happens in Alex and not Sandton is because people in Alex are suffering and scared for the future of their lives. They are living under the kind of stress that can damage a person. The perpetrators of these attacks must be held responsible but the people who have crowded the poor onto tiny bits of land, threatened their hold on that land with evictions and forced removals, treated them all like criminals, exploited them, repressed their struggles, pushed up the price of food and built too few houses, that are too small and too far away and then corruptly sold them must also be held responsible……………..Continued.

Links: South Africa is in all of us

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South Africa
Xenophobia
Immigration

Social Movements Indaba action against hate

The Social Movements Indaba (SMI) - a co-ordinating national body of social movements, civil society and activist organizations - is organizing with its affiliated organizations and immigrant communities to roll back the groundswell of xenophobia. In the years since its formation in 2002, the SMI has linked organizations of the poor in struggle for basic services, international solidarity and against police repression. At its last national meeting in December in Cape Town, the SMI identified xenophobia as a pervasive problem in communities and undertook to campaign against hatred of foreigners. Now that the crisis of hate crime is no longer foreboding and is terrifyingly HERE, there is no time to stall and wish we were better prepared. We are without hesitation committed to the struggles for social justice, internationalism and solidarity with all repressed people.

While the police have been deployed to try keep a lid on the pressure that has boiled over, this is no solution to the safety and security of all. As a xenophobic force in Johannesburg pre-existing the outbreak of violence, the police cannot be trusted to be more than the brute barrier between perpetrators and their targeted victims. The South African Police Services and Johannesburg Metro Police harass immigrants to solicit bribes as a matter of practice. Calling on the police to ‘do their work’ as president Thabo Mbeki and his government have done does not, therefore, address the issues of safety and security amongst immigrant communities. The refugee communities do not trust the police as impartial arbiters of the conflict.

The police conducted a brutal raid on the Central Methodist Church on the 31 st of January 2008 under the pretext of crime prevention. Criminalisation of immigrants is a smokescreen for deportation and bribery that the police has not cleared.
Long-lasting safety and security for all does not include deportation of foreign nationals, whether voluntary or not. Xenophobia’s origins lie within the conditions of poverty in which the majority of south Africans live.
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The “food riots” in Haiti are easy fodder for the media especially when no explanation is seen to be necessary. Try and find a single report with any historical background to the food crisis other than relating it to the overall food crisis across the global south and the rise in the West’s demand for bio-fuel. Once again the majority world feeds the minority world’s over consumption. A case of feeding the cars whilst starving the people.

Some facts about Haitian government’s spending (the Haitian government is not really a government - it’s a kind of proxy group of puppets working under the direction of the US).

Haiti’s government sends almost $1 million per week in loan payments to the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), much of which is payments on loans given to past dictators. That money could be better spent feeding Haitian citizens and stimulating Haiti’s economy.

But money (that Haiti doesn’t have) is not just being used for loan repayments . Not only has Britain been uncritical of MINUSTAH***’s many atrocities in Haiti they have been selling arms to Haiti. The most recent UK foreign office report dated 12th December, 2007 is revealing. Not just arms to Haiti but to their neighbour The Dominican Republic and to Columbia and Ecuador plus a host of other countries. So why does Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, need the following weapons including air-to-air missiles and components for submarines?

aircraft radars, air-to-air missiles launching equipment, air-to-surface missiles launching equipment, air-to-surface rockets launching equipment, bomb handling equipment, components for airborne electronic warfare equipment, components for aircraft carriers, components for aircraft radars, components for air-to-air missiles launching equipment, components for air-to-surface missiles, components for anti-ship missile launching equipment, components for anti-ship missiles, components for anti-ship missiles, components for antisubmarine rockets launching equipment, components for combat aircraft, components for combat helicopters, components for command communications control and intelligence equipment, components for corvettes, components for depth charges, components for electronic warfare equipment, components for fire control equipment, components for frigates

[Read more…]

Google Earth and the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees) have added a new layer of refugee camps around the world - Chad, Darfur, Palestine, Western Sahara to name a few.

Google Earth’s new mapping programme takes you on a virtual reality tour with the UN refugee agency of some of the world’s major displacement crises and the humanitarian efforts aimed at helping the victims.

The first use of this geospatial tool focuses on refugees and displaced people located in remote areas of Chad, Iraq, Colombia and Sudan’s volatile Darfur region. Sit in front of your computer and, with a few clicks, see, hear and develop an emotional understanding of what it is like to be a refugee.

Highlighted are not only the physical area of the camp and surrounding country, but key parts of daily life such as education and health in photo, text and video format. Within seconds, Google Earth brings the daily life of a refugee camp into your home thousands of kilometres away. To start your journey, click here.

Haitham of Sabbah’s blog was initially very excited over the project until he realised that “NONE of the Palestinian refugee camps within the Occupied Palestinian Territories are published there”

Haitham suggests two possibilities for ignoring the Palestinian camps: there has been an end to Israeli occupation of Palestine and they forgot to tell the world; or possibly the UNHCR doesn’t recognise the Palestinian refugee camps. I wonder if there is something bordering on a conspiracy of silence going on here between Google and the UNHCR. We all know how strong the Israeli lobby is in the US so I don’t think it is beyond belief.

It is disturbing to see such a horrible mistake (intentional or unintentional, we need to know) spread by a UN agency which claims to be taking care of refugees all around the world. The UNRWA lists the name of all the refugees camps in West Bank (19 camp) and Gaza (8 camps) and their population (West Bank 486,479, Gaza 478,272, total 964,751). Not only that, but they also have location maps for these refugees camps on their website:

A petition has been created to ask Google Earth and UNHCR to correct the mistake and to include the Palestinian camps on the map. You can sign the petition here.

Links:
Google Earth map of Darfur atrocities
Silobreaker - Google maps various

Tags:

Google Earth
Refugee Camps

Queuing to vote via Bearded Man

Kids against war

Nigeria’s most beautiful - can you guess the winner?

Padlocked fences via The Road to the Horizon

Extra

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Zimbabwe
Burundi
Nigeria