{"id":32838,"date":"2017-02-26T07:40:11","date_gmt":"2017-02-26T07:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/south-african-police-fire-rubber-bullets-at-anti\/"},"modified":"2017-02-26T07:40:02","modified_gmt":"2017-02-26T07:40:02","slug":"south-african-police-fire-rubber-bullets-at-anti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/south-african-police-fire-rubber-bullets-at-anti\/","title":{"rendered":"South African police fire rubber bullets at anti-immigrant march"},"content":{"rendered":"

{South African police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades to break up clashes between local protesters and immigrants in Pretoria on Friday at a march against foreigners.}<\/p>\n

Shops and homes owned by migrants have been looted and torched over the last two weeks, with some South Africans alleging that the properties were brothels and drug dens.<\/p>\n

Attacks against foreigners in the country have erupted regularly in recent years, fuelled by high unemployment and dire poverty.<\/p>\n

{{1,000 protesters }} <\/p>\n

Riot police in Pretoria formed lines to keep apart about 1,000 protesters.<\/p>\n

Tensions have been rising over migrants from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Somalia, Pakistan and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

“We support the police,” South African marcher Aysha Ali, 25, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“Nigerians are very bad, they are bringing drugs into our community. I support the protest.”<\/p>\n

As police struggled to impose control, Mohammed Abdi, 31, from Somalia, told AFP: “We are looking for peace. People say we foreigners are here to sell drugs? They can search our shops.”<\/p>\n

Some officers shot rubber rounds at close range at protesters lying on the ground, and police used water cannon against demonstrators who wielded rocks and machetes.<\/p>\n

{{We are not xenophobic}}<\/p>\n

President Jacob Zuma condemned the latest wave of xenophobic unrest and called for calm and restraint saying that there had been “destruction of property directed at non-nationals.”<\/p>\n

“Residents in some communities blame non-nationals for the escalating crimes especially drug trafficking,” the presidency said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Zuma called for South Africans not to use migrants as a scapegoat for the country’s widespread crime, but said the government would crack down on drug-dealing and illegal immigrants.<\/p>\n

But he said the fight against crime should not be labelled xenophobic.<\/p>\n

“We are not a xenophobic country and we would not have such a number of immigrants within our country and at our borders, many of whom have genuine reasons of fleeing their countries including economic and education opportunities, if we were a xenophobic country,” he said in a separate statement.<\/p>\n

{{We are not scared }} <\/p>\n

In the last week, more than 20 shops have been targeted in Atteridgeville, outside Pretoria, while residents in Rosettenville, south of Johannesburg, attacked at least 12 houses.<\/p>\n

“We have decided to not leave the house (during the march),” Alain Bome, a 47-year-old from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who has been in South Africa for 14 years, told AFP.<\/p>\n

“We know very well there have been attacks. We are scared.”<\/p>\n

Police said at least 136 people had been arrested over the last 24 hours in relation to the march.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian government this week called for the African Union to step in to stop “xenophobic attacks” on its citizens in South Africa, claiming 20 Nigerians were killed last year.<\/p>\n

South African authorities dismiss such numbers, saying many violent deaths in the country are due to criminal activity rather than anti-immigrant sentiment.<\/p>\n

In 2008, South Africa experienced its worst bout of xenophobic violence, which left 62 people dead.<\/p>\n

In 2015, at least seven people died in similar unrest in Johannesburg and the Indian Ocean city of Durban as African immigrants were hunted down and attacked by gangs.<\/p>\n

Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan said this week that 35 percent of the labour force was unemployed or has given up looking for work.<\/p>\n

\"South<\/figure>\n

Source:AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{South African police fired rubber bullets, tear gas and stun grenades to break up clashes between local protesters and immigrants in Pretoria on Friday at a march against foreigners.} Shops and homes owned by migrants have been looted and torched over the last two weeks, with some South Africans alleging that the properties were brothels […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[160],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-theophile-niyitegeka"],"bylines":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"contributors":[{"id":160,"name":"Th\u00e9ophile Niyitegeka","slug":"theophile-niyitegeka","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":3}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32838"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32838"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}