South African police on Wednesday arrested several foreign nationals in efforts to end their occupation of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees offices in Cape Town, APA has learnt.
The foreign nationals camped outside the offices three weeks ago, demanding the UNHCR to give them travel documents to leave the country due to continued xenophobic attacks against them in Cape Town’s impoverished townships, they claimed.
Police arrived in several vehicles on Wednesday to break up the peaceful sit-in in the city’s central business district to remove the protesters, which included men, women and children from as far as the DR Congo, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.
The protesters said they wanted to be evacuated from the country to find safety amid fears of continued attacks against them in their settlements, where they have been facing daily threats to kill them from the locals, they told reporters.
Eyewitnesses described the situation at the UNHCR offices as “chaotic” during the arrests, with many protestors bleeding after clashing with the police, and the confrontation leaving broken possessions strewn around the street.
In early September, the country saw a wave of xenophobic violence that left 12 people killed — ten South Africans and two Zimbabweans — when local mobs descended on foreign-owned stores in and around Johannesburg, destroying foreigners’ properties and looting their properties.
While the government appealed for calm and an end to the attacks, Nigeria sent aircraft to rescue their citizens and Malawi provided buses to pick up its nationals for homey safety.
The foreigners’ Cape Town sit-in is the latest evident that there is an undercurrent to the attacks still bubbling underneath, away from the public eye, according to observers here.
NM/as/APA