Category: Africa

Somali suicide scam: take us to America or we will kill ourselves

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

There is so much happening in South Africa since anti-immigrant riots broke out last month that I can’t possibly keep up with all the news.   This story, however, was an eyecatcher.   Seems that Somalis are migrating to a camp near Cape Town enticed by rumors of possible resettlement by the UN to a first world country.  

Conditions deteriorated and they were told that resettlement was likely not an option so many said they would jump into the sea and kill themselves.

Residents of Soetwater Camp, a shelter on the outskirts of Cape Town, have threatened to commit suicide in an attempt to draw attention to dire conditions in the camp and a growing feeling of neglect and inaction at the hands of authorities and aid agencies.

Soetwater, 30 km south of Cape Town, has become home to over 4,000 foreign nationals displaced by South Africa’s recent wave of xenophobic violence. Local media reported that about 100 people, mainly Somali nationals unhappy with their treatment at Soetwater Camp, had threatened to walk into the sea to drown themselves and said four people were already feared dead.

But according to the South African National Sea Rescue Institute (NSRI), which had deployed three boats to search the waters on June 8, the rumors proved false.

Turns out they didn’t.   But, here is the rest of the story.    A UN official concludes that the Somalis are just trying to get attention.   No, you don’t say.

In a statement released on June 8 by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a South African activist group, called for the immediate closing of the Soetwater Camp where “a tradgedy was unfolding” because the settlement fell far “below international humanitarian standards.”

“There is enormous dissatisfaction at the camp. The conditions are awful: it is cold and insufficiently sheltered – Both the [Western Cape] province and civil society have condemned these camps,” the statement said.

A meeting with UN officials on June 7 at the camp reportedly fueled the incident. “Displaced refugees had several meetings with a representative of the United Nations at the TAC and AIDS Law Project offices in Cape Town. One of these meetings broke down. Unconfirmed reports indicate that the latest crisis is a consequence of this,” the TAC statement said.

According to Yusuf Hassan Abdi, spokesman for the UN High Commission For Refugees (UNHCR), a “rumor had gone round that the UN would start registering people for resettlement in a third country – like the United States, UK, Australia or Canada.”

This was a “major pull factor,” drawing large numbers of Somali refugees to Soetwater. Abdi estimated that the camp now accommodated some 1,800 Somali’s.

But, Abdi said, given recent events and “the large number of refugees and asylum seekers affected, resettlement can not be a priority at this point in time.” He added: “There was no attempted suicide at all – they [the Somalis] used this to get attention.”

For new readers, we have resettled over 80,000 Somalis in the US in recent years.  Don’t be surprised if the State Department ultimately says, what’s a few more!

South Africa: Tensions continue as immigrants beg to be resettled

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

As perhaps the world’s most highly touted experiment in multiculturalism continues to crumble, immigrants and refugees storm humanitarian offices insisting they be resettled to first world countries.  See our coverage last week of the anti-immigrant riots in South Africa and with them the demise of the “rainbow nation” myth.

Here is the latest news, this story is from Durban:

The spotlight was thrown on the true nature of intimidation, robbery and assault that Durban’s foreign community has had to deal with, as angry yet desperate foreigners pleaded for help at the gates of the Diakonia Centre on Thursday.

Police were called in to control the furious group of foreign nationals and refugees who had barricaded the gates to the centre after demanding intervention from Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) and the Mennonite Central Committee Refugee Project (MCC).

Some women clutched babies swaddled in blankets while men waved hastily written placards in the air outside the gates, but they quickly abandoned their protest action and gathered around journalists to tell their individual stories of oppression in a country they thought they were safe in.

Their protest action was aimed directly at forcing the LHR and MCC, who act as local agents for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), to act in assuring them protection and, in some cases, repatriation.

Tensions rose as some vocal refugees shouted at LHR and MCC staff across locked gates, before police intervened and restored calm.

Incidentally, I think the reporter is misusing the word “repatriation” which means to be returned to one’s native country.  The gist of the article is that the immigrants do not want to go back to the country they were escaping from but want third country resettlement—code for free passage to Europe, America, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

But LHR attorney Sherylle Dass said the dreams many of the refugees had of being repatriated to other countries, let alone a first world country, were extremely slim.

The intervention of the UNHCR only resulted in about 2 percent of applications for repatriation being successful. It could take up to five years for such applications to be processed.

She said a letter outlining the frustration of Durban’s refugees and foreigners seeking repatriation and help had been sent to the UNHCR fafter the protest action and a subsequent meeting.

“The people were basically seeking protection in various ways. Some want a local refugee camp, but others want to resettle. We have had a steady stream of resettlement applications before the xenophobic attacks, but now there has been a huge influx,” Dass said.

“Some may have security risk, but there are those who are using this as an opportunity to get into a first world country.”

More on anti-immigrant riots in S.Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

Update:  May 26th from the Washington Post:

“The unrest has dented South Africa’s reputation as one of the most welcoming to immigrants and refugees.”

And from The Observer, “Is this the end of the rainbow nation?”

‘They say we take their jobs, and in a way it is true,’ said Nora Tapiwa of the Zimbabwe Diaspora Forum. ‘South Africans remain poorly educated and prefer to speak the vernacular rather than English. Employers, especially in the service industries, prefer Zimbabweans. Higher up the ladder, in banks and insurance companies, you even find many Zimbabweans benefiting from black economic empowerment. We are smart people and we are immigrants, so we don’t sit around waiting for the government to deliver.’

 

Black on black “xenophobic” violence spread in South Africa, the “rainbow nation,” Friday according to this account from CNN.   Government troops are being brought in to protect immigrants fleeing across the borders to neighboring countries, or hiding in mosques and churches.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) — The atmosphere was tense in Cape Town on Friday after xenophobic violence that has left more than 40 dead in Johannesburg spread to South Africa’s largest city.

Clashes overnight resulted in one death and 15 arrests and the evacuations of 420 foreign nationals, a police official in Cape Town said.

“Crowds of people went on a rampage, looting and carrying out acts of violence,” said Cape Town Police Superintendent Billy Jones. They were charged with public violence and are to appear in court Monday.

One foreign national, a Somali, died when he was run over by a vehicle as he tried to escape the angry crowds, Jones said. Twelve people suffered minor injuries.

He said Friday was tense but calm, with state and local police stationed throughout the area.

Jack Bloom of the opposition party Democratic Alliance told CNN on Friday that government troops were helping police ward off violence in Johannesburg.

Aid workers and volunteers were providing tents, food and supplies at the police stations. Bloom estimated that about 2,000 foreigners had sought haven at those locations.

It was the first violence in the coastal city since a wave of xenophobia began about two weeks ago in Johannesburg, resulting in at least 42 deaths.

The many articles from news sources today reference immigrants and refugees from Somalia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique as targets of the violence.  S. African blacks say the illegal immigrants are responsible for the increased crime and lack of jobs in their country. 

According to South Africa’s latest census, the country has about 45 million people. The South African Department of Human Affairs estimates that more than 4 million people reside in South Africa illegally, but that figure is based on a 10-year-old study and some feel the number of immigrants in South Africa is much higher.

Aljazeera reported S. Africa’s unemployment figures: 

The unofficial unemployment rate in South Africa is believed to be about 40 per cent.

I searched the articles to try to figure out if these were white S. Africans being racists, but figured when in no article did it say “white mobs” which it surely would have had the perpetrators been white.   No article said “black mobs” either.   Then I found this BBC report that actually films the mobs and sure enough they are black.   Imagine that, blacks are xenophobic!

The lesson to the West:  It’s not about xenophobia and racism.  No amount of multicultural indoctrination will wipe away peoples’ desires to live among those of their own culture and be able to work and care for their families.   From one end of the world to the other, governments must control their borders or subject their citizens to increasing levels of chaos.  

*Note:  See additional detail on the the meltdown of South Africa here (from the Sunday Herald).

Learn about Islam in South Africa here.

Anger at immigrants from Switzerland to South Africa

~ Ann Corcoran ~ Leave a comment

I was planning to tell you what the Swiss will vote on in about a week when blulitespecial sent me this interesting article about anti-immigrant riots in South Africa.  Two countries on separate continents with very different cultures and they are both blowing up, each in its own way, about immigrants.

According to Time, citizens of Switzerland will vote on a constitutional amendment that would leave decisions on who will become a naturalized Swiss citizen up to the local community!  Can you imagine it! The Swiss People’s Party (SVP) has collected the requisite 100,000 signatures to bring the referendum to a national vote. 

A staunch proponent of tighter immigration policies, the SVP says Switzerland naturalizes more foreigners than any other European nation, and official figures seem to support that claim. The party charges on its website that more than half of all citizenship requests — in 2006, approximately 50,000 were granted in this country of 7.5 million — go to [Muslim] immigrants from the Balkans and Turkey. The SVP claims those immigrants commit a disproportionate number of violent crimes and abuse Swiss social and welfare benefits. Some official statistics do attribute the rise in serious infractions to resident foreigners, but the numbers are not clear. For example, official statistics show that in 2007 nearly 70% of all prisoners in Switzerland were foreigners, but some experts say that is because foreigners are considered a flight risk and are more likely to be sent to prison than local criminals.

The SVP argues that in a country based on grassroots democracy where voters can challenge any legislative decision by launching a referendum, the people, not what the party considers to be lenient government authorities, must approve each citizenship request.

In Switzerland the people vote while in South Africa the response to immigrants has been violent.   

A wave of anti-immigrant violence in South Africa spread to Cape Town on Friday, even as troops and police appeared to have quelled the unrest in the hotspot of Johannesburg.

Police reported attacks against immigrants and foreign-owned shops in a slum area of picturesque Cape Town.

The southern coastal city is a major draw for tourists and had thus far been spared the mob violence seen in Johannesburg.

At least 42 have been killed, more than 500 arrested and 16,000 displaced in the province of Gauteng, which includes Johannesburg and the capital Pretoria, since unrest broke out 12 days ago.

Police spokesman for the Cape Town area Billy Jones said a public meeting to address the danger of xenophobia in the Dunoon slum area 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the city degenerated into violence on Thursday evening. 

I read the article several times to try to figure out who was killing whom and in addition to a reference to Pakistani immigrants the only other group mentioned was a vague reference to people coming from Zimbabwe.  But, who is being violent?  Surely not the majority blacks!   I didn’t think it was possible for blacks to be xenophobic, I always thought that was just a white malady. 

Foreigners in South Africa, many of whom have fled economic meltdown in neighbouring Zimbabwe, are being blamed for sky-high crime rates and depriving locals of jobs.

The violence, which has done untold damage to South African’s reputation as the “Rainbow Nation,” is also taking its toll on the country’s economy.

What is the “rainbow nation?”    I went to Wikipedia to learn more about South Africa as the “rainbow nation.”   You gotta laugh!   South Africa is run by the African National Congress which is a leftist (Marxist really) political party that has extolled the virtues of multiculturalism.   Here’s what Wikipedia said:

South Africa is often called the “Rainbow Nation”, a term coined by  Archbishop Desmond Tutu  and later adopted by then President Nelson Mandela. Mandela used the term “Rainbow Nation” as a metaphor to describe the country’s newly developing multicultural diversity after segregationist apartheid ideology.

The term was intended to encapsulate the unity of multi-culturalism and the coming-together of people of many different races, in a country once identified with the strict division of white and black.

Our elected officials (and Presidential candidates) can put their collective heads in the sand but the anger is growing about uncontrolled immigration and only time will tell how each country facing the same problem will solve the crisis— with the Swiss model or the South African model?