Category: Africa

South African TB patients riot

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

While I’m on the subject of infectious diseases this morning, here is a frightening story from South Africa thanks to blulitespecial. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – Authorities increased security Friday at a tuberculosis hospital where patients with drug-resistant forms of the disease went on a rampage to protest prison-like conditions.

Twenty-two patients were arrested Wednesday, accused of public violence and assault after they pelted staff with stones and vandalized equipment. But the local police station and prison refused to admit them because of fears of the highly infectious disease. Instead, they were returned to the hospital.

The Jose Pearson hospital, near the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, treats about 300 patients. Many have multidrug-resistant TB and the even more dangerous extensively drug-resistant TB, which is very difficult and expensive to treat. Those with drug-resistant strains are supposed to stay in the hospital for six months to two years, living in isolated wards surrounded by barbed wire and security guards.

South African authorities have reluctantly resorted to enforced confinement of patients with drug-resistant TB because of fears that it might otherwise spread through the community. TB is an airborne bacteria and can be spread easily through coughing or sneezing.

The country is gripped by a tuberculosis crisis, which is feeding off the AIDS epidemic and striking the weakened immune system of victims. Nearly 60 percent of South African TB patients have AIDS. The emergence of drug-resistant TB strains — often the result of not sticking to the standard six-month course of treatment — has worsened patients’ chances of survival.

Why am I telling you this, because as the “rainbow nation” implodes (I wonder if that was discussed at the star-studded Mandela birthday bash this week) we are going to be pressured to take refugees newly created by the violence against immigrants in South Africa.

We are already admitting refugees with HIV and TB.  And, I will bet you a buck that the refugees that roam from city to city are not sticking with their six-month long treatment regime and that the volags are not following up on these people.    A Somali refugee died of TB in a Tyson’s plant in Emporia, KS last year.  Bet you didn’t hear that in the news.

More on the friction between Black Americans and Black African refugees

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update August 20th:  More on this subject here.

A few weeks ago I told you about how tensions are building in black communities between immigrants and American blacks.    Sometimes the tension is between Black American Muslims (BAMs) and IMMs (Immigrant Muslims who are not black).  Sometimes it’s just Black Americans (BAs) and African immigrants no matter what religion, but now comes the revelation that BAMs and BAs generally have some resentment toward Somalis (Muslims of course).   Did you get that?     Maybe not, but read on!

If this is a topic that interests you, and frankly I found it fascinating, read this blog entitled Jamerican Muslimah:  Talking it plain.   I’m not sure what the bloggers name is, maybe Jamerican, but I like her a lot.  She does ‘talk it plain’ and so well I didn’t know where to start to give you some excerpts.  Here is how she opens Part I: 

I recently read Sherri Williams’ article entitled “Uncommon Ground” in Ebony Magazine’s July 2008 issue. This article discusses the tension between Somali immigrants/refugees and African-Americans (BAs) in Columbus, Ohio. I felt compelled to share my own thoughts and experience on the subject. After all, I live in the Twin Cities which boasts the largest Somali population in the country. I can forewarn you that what I have to say is not going to be politically correct. I can admit that I’m biased on this subject. Most of the experiences I’ve had with Somalis have not been so great. Needless to say, my perspective on this subject has been tainted by the negative experiences I’ve had. But Alhamdulillah, I’m currently working on it. This is my story. 

In Part II, she says this and a whole lot more: 

It is clear to me that many BAs in the Twin Cities are affected by the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric floating around the country. On one hand, I feel like they are capitalizing on the sentiment in order to garner favor or acceptance from White conservatives (even if they don’t know that, that’s where the rhetoric originated.) On the other hand, they are upset because they believe that Somalis have been given money and other perks by the government. They see Somalis, who are for the most part refugees, driving new cars, opening businesses, and receiving some of the best housing MPHA has to offer.[Editor: refugees do get special perks and this causes resentment from Americans who are poor whether the American is white or black.]  They see Somalis taking over sectors of the job market which had been previously occupied by BAs. (Think of my cousin’s comment about Somalis at the airport). They see yet another group of immigrants coming in and gaining acceptance as the “model minority.” They see how White people in the Twin Cities often work hard to understand the predicament of Somalis, sometimes excusing their behavior or sympathizing with them because of their experience back home or in refugee camps. Meanwhile, the country and the world has dismissed BAs as being criminal, lazy, constantly crying victim and doing nothing to change their circumstances. There is no sympathy for us or our history. But should that be taken out on Somalis?

I believe that some BAs have a bias against Somalis because they are abashedly and unashamedly Muslim. (I find this to be especially true when the BA has a Christian base). They see Islam as a foreign religion with strange, primitive, stifling customs. The fact that female circumcision is practiced by Somalis- the dominant Muslim group in the Twin Cities- serves as further proof of the primitive nature of Islam and of Muslims…  [Editor:  we had heard that Somalis are practicing FGM in America]

What a revelation all this is, I bet a lot of you white folks in Emporia, KS and Shelbyville, TN have been thinking it’s just you.    Have you wondered if you are racist?  Is that why the Somalis were so hard to deal with?   You can rest easy now, you knew deep down you weren’t a racist.  It is not you!   Black Americans are being put off by Somali refugees too and because of the cancer of cultural relativism rampant in the volag resettlement agencies, no one tells the Somalis they need to fit in to America.

Not much news coming out of South Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

You would hardly know that South Africa’s grand experiment in multiculturalism, the “rainbow nation” myth, exploded a month or so ago.   It’s hard to find news to update our readers on the violence that erupted throughout the country—violence against refugees and asylees who local South African blacks claim are taking their jobs and bringing crime with them—that killed scores and caused the creation of makeshift refugee camps.

Here is a small portion of an ‘opinion’ piece from a universtiy professor discussing a report released for World Refugee Day last week.

First, the recent violence is but an extreme sign of how non-nationals are treated as ‘outsiders’ by various elements of South African society, from members of the public, to civil servants, service providers, and government leaders. This report outlines many of the ways non-nationals — refugees, asylum seekers, and other immigrants — are excluded from the services, welfare, and dignity they are guaranteed by South African law and Constitutional commitments.

Second, while South Africa must improve its policing practices and promote tolerance, it must also revisit and fundamentally revise the way it manages migration from the region and further afield. Let us be clear, halting migration is neither possible nor a solution. Are we prepared to follow the United State and Europe in their fruitless, deadly, and hypocritical efforts to halt immigration?

South Africa already deports close to 300 000 people a year. How much further are we willing to go? How can we speak in one breath of promoting tolerance and barricading our borders? Doing so only confirms many South African’s deep suspicion that migrants truly are a mortal threat to South African society. Yes, stop corrupt officials and criminals, but let us not further demonise and criminalise our neighbours.

The gratuitous attack on the United States was laughable especially the hypocrisy charge I’ve highlighted because we aren’t running around calling ourselves the “rainbow nation” and according to all the figures I could find we deport 200,000 illegal immigrants a year.    That figure puts tiny South Africa about 100,000 deportations ahead of us!

Oh, and as for the “deadly” part, professor,  I don’t recall any riots in the US where immigrants were targeted by mobs of citizens and beaten or set on fire.  Last I saw the South African asylee and refugee death toll was around 60.

Mess in Malta continues

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Here is a fairly lengthy discussion of the increasing illegal immigration to Mediterranean islands Malta and Cyprus.   We’ve written on previous occasions how those entering Europe illegally seek asylum and end up as refugees to the US.   Today I attended a meeting in Annapolis on immigration and a topic of discussion was that all immigration (legal and illegal) must be reformed in the US.  

As I have also said previously, critics of illegal immigration in the past have been careful to separate criticism of illegal from legal, that distinction is fading fast.

When the US takes illegal aliens from Malta, as we did recently, and transforms them into ‘legal’ refugees we encourage more “boat people” to try to reach island nations like Malta, and the State Department further blurs the line between legal and illegal.

In Malta, between 2001 and 2002 the figure of asylum seekers shot up from some 50 to nearly 2,000, and continued at a steady pace averaging some 1,500 every year since then, with a total of some 9,000 “boat people” alone so far until 2008. Most of these arrived illegally and undocumented from Libya, although very few of them were actually Libyans. For the most part, they came from sub-Saharan Africa, transiting through Libya, where several would have lived and worked sometimes for years before taking the boat to Europe.

See my earlier posts on Malta here.

Troubles pile up for the “rainbow nation”

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I would like to say more about this story but am running out of time tonight, so I’m just going to post it.  The story is from the Associated Press and is just more in the sad saga of a nation sinking under the weight of uncontrolled immigration.  South Africa, the country that was dubbed the “rainbow nation” for its welcoming stance on immigrants (come one and all they said) has seen 60 people killed in “xenophobic” riots in the last few weeks alone. 

CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — City authorities vowed Tuesday to challenge a court order to move some 3,500 immigrants living in a camp near a popular tourist destination after they were forced from their homes in a wave of xenophobic violence.

The sprawling camp on a wind-swept beach near the Cape of Good Hope has come to symbolize South Africa’s dilemma about what to do with the tens of thousands displaced by the attacks that erupted a month ago.

Cape Town’s High Court ruled late Monday that the city must open community centers to house the displaced.

But authorities said moving the immigrants would risk exacerbating tensions with native South Africans, many of whom accuse the foreigners of “stealing” scarce jobs and services. The xenophobic attacks left at least 60 people dead.

“We want to reduce tensions, not increase them,” said Robert Macdonald, spokesman for Cape Town.

Civil rights groups have charged that the “safe sites,” such as the camp at a former picnic area at Soetwater, are like internment camps.

“The conditions there are so bad,” said Patrick Chauke, the powerful head of a parliamentary Home Affairs committee. “The tents have been blown by the wind. There are women and children who are dumped there.”

The camp includes nearly 2,000 Somali refugees. They say they are too afraid to return to the communities that chased them out and looted their stores, can’t return to Somalia, and want the U.N. refugee agency to move them to another country such as Australia or the United States.

U.N. representatives over the weekend said they couldn’t be relocated, prompting the Somalis to threaten charity volunteers, trash food and begin a hunger strike. They also threatened to jump into the rough, icy waters and claimed that several had already committed suicide by drowning.