Do you remember the "anti-racism" conference in South Africa that
spent
most of its time ba****ng Israel? Do you remember the plans for part
2?
www.ngo-monitor.org/article/durban_conference_0
On November 22, 2006, the UN General Assembly (=93GA=94) adopted a
resolution to convene a 2009 follow-up to the World Conference Against
Racism. The NGO Forum of the 2001 conference (=93Durban Conference=94)
was used to promote virulent anti-Israel demonization. The 2009
conference is intended to focus on implementation of the 2001
resolution, which provided the blue print for the NGO "Durban
Strategy."
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It seems like God decided to send all those "anti-racism"
South African fighters a clear message, see
www.wa****ngtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/19/AR2008051900601.htm=
l
South Africans Fear Backlash of Violence
Attacks on Foreigners Leave 22 Dead
By Craig Timberg
Wa****ngton Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, May 20, 2008; Page A08
RAMAPHOSA INFORMAL SETTLEMENT, South Africa, May 19 -- Gift
Mahlakametsa, 33, leaned on a long, carved club on Monday and pointed
to the brown mountain of mine waste that p***** for a hillside in this
grim patch of South Africa. Just beyond the ridge, he warned,
Mozambicans were waiting for darkness, spears and guns at the ready.
"They want to pay revenge," Mahlakametsa said.
It was easy to see why. For nine days, attacks against foreigners have
spread uncontrollably through Johannesburg's poorest areas, leaving at
least 22 dead, hundreds injured and thousands homeless in the worst
outbreak of town****p violence since the end of apartheid. At least two
people have been seriously burned by their attackers, one fatally.
All over Ramaphosa, this ragged settlement of tin shacks and narrow,
dusty alleyways, gangs have looted and demolished homes. Occupants
have fled, or been beaten, or in several cases killed. Many of the
survivors had come to South Africa in search of op****tunity; now, they
can be seen carrying their remaining possessions in plastic bags or
loading them onto trucks bound for almost anywhere else.
Many fear that the worst is still ahead. On Monday, a police
helicopter flew low in endless looping p***** here. Officers with flak
jackets and shotguns loaded with rubber rounds made occasional forays
into Ramaphosa in armored vehicles. Residents braced themselves for
the night as the setting sun turned orange, then brown amid the smoke
of burning shacks and brush fires.
"We must fight," Mahlakametsa explained as he ****fted his weight on
his club, a traditional carved weapon that was heavy enough to break a
man's arm. "We are trying to protect our wives, our children. . . . We
are not sleeping. We are only waiting for any action."
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The violence in this country began on May 11 in the notoriously crime-
ridden town****p of Alexandra when Zimbabwean immigrants came under
attack. Since then, the assaults have grown more terrible and
widespread with almost every passing day. Police are stretched so thin
that there are growing calls to mobilize the military to patrol not
only town****ps and their poor outlying areas, known as informal
settlements, but also downtown Johannesburg, which has not been
spared.
Though police and aid groups say the violence has been mostly one-
sided, with South Africans assaulting foreigners, residents of
Ramaphosa said there have been counterattacks as well. They were
expecting more. A gang of about 100 men -- carrying sharpened sticks,
planks of wood, lengths of plastic pipe, machetes -- gathered not far
from a cluster of destroyed homes Monday afternoon.
They were preparing to protect themselves, they said, from Mozambicans
supposedly hiding on the hill of mine waste.
"They've burned our shacks here, and now they are going to rape our
wives," said Petrus Masemola, 38, a security guard who pointed to some
bent, charred sheet metal that he said had been his home.
The violence has been particularly shocking for a country that styles
itself as the "Rainbow Nation" and takes pride in its record on
democracy and human rights. Until recently, the country experienced a
peacefulness rarely seen elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yet the attacks have made plain that many of the poorest South
Africans feel left behind in the post-apartheid era. While freedoms
have expanded, many of the nation's largest employers have had to
resort to massive layoffs. Soaring prices for food and gasoline have
sharpened anger, as has the relative economic success of Zimbabwean
and Mozambican immigrants.
"When you live in abject poverty, when you feel you are forgotten,
then you cry out and you say, 'What does democracy mean to me?' when
you still don't have a home," said Christopher Barends, a Lutheran
minister tending to foreigners gathered in Reiger Park, a community
adjacent to Ramaphosa. "The same people who have fought against
apartheid, the same people who fought for liberation, they can't enjoy
that."
The mobs in many cases went house by house in Ramaphosa, demanding to
know the origins of those inside. Foreign-sounding accents often were
tip-offs, residents said.
The rampages clearly have been effective. Those foreigners who had not
yet left Ramaphosa were packing up their remaining things and plotting
their escape on Monday.
Mozambican-born Paulos Cosa, a 32-year-old house builder, loaded a
dresser and a few spare pieces of furniture onto the back of a pickup
truck. All of the rest of his possessions, including a television, a
generator and nearly $700 he had hidden beneath a mattress, were
looted from his home over the weekend, he said.
"If I come back, these people are going to kill me," said Cosa, who
has lived in South Africa since 1995.
As he loaded the truck, two men stood atop a nearby shack tearing away
the roof, made of valuable sheet metal. One shouted in isiZulu, one of
South Africa's most common languages: "Foreigners get out!"
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I wonder if Desmond Tutu will ask the killers to stop for
the couple of weeks of Durban II so he will have a better
background for his criticism of Zionism as racism.
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