Press Statement: Inhumane and unjust immigration raids continue

PRESS STATEMENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CAPE TOWN – PASSOP and Gift of the Givers jointly condemn the inhumane and unjust practices of several SAPS and Home Affairs officers committed during an immigration crackdown.  We express deep concern about the racist, xenophobic policies and attitudes towards people when investigating their documentation status. 

PASSOP fully supports and endorses the Gift of the Givers and Mr Sablay in their laying an ICD complaint with South African Police Service.  The Gift of the Givers feels strongly that no human being should be treated in such a way, whether or not they are a citizen. PASSOP and Gift of the Givers are shocked and disappointed at the manner in which immigration raids are being conducted. We will be contacting the Provincial Commissioner Lamoer about the behaviours of the SAPS in this incident and will be requesting a meeting to ask for him to intervene on this issue.

On 13 March, Jainudien Sablay was walking to shop in Rylands with his father when they were stopped by a member of the SAPS Special Task Force and Home Affairs’ Immigration Department. When they asked for identification, he provided his student card and ID number – but they rejected it, calling him Pakistani. Since their house was only five minutes away, Jainudien’s father went to retrieve another form of identification. Meanwhile, nearly forty jeering police and immigration officers physically and verbally intimidated Jainudien before violently throwing him into the back of a police van. He has said that “I feel in this new South Africa we are still treated like dirt… I am not a criminal to be treated like this.” Pass laws were a hallmark of Apartheid South Africa; their legacy should not mar the new South Africa.  Following the experience, he had to seek medical care and his whole family was traumatized by the ordeal. Mr. Sablay’s family has been in Cape Town since the 1800s. He speaks English and Afrikaans and is a student at the University of the Western Cape currently doing his honours in Industrial Psychology, if this could happen to him, it could happen to anyone.

This incident is just one example of the alarmingly frequent racist violations of constitutional and human rights by SAPS and Home Affairs officers. These unjustly-conducted immigration raids have been happening more and more around Cape Town. Is this the South Africa we dreamed of and aspired to? Do we wish to live in a society where we are all vulnerable to arrest if we forget or lose our I.D. documents? There has clearly been no respect for a human being’s constitutional rights. The fact that this person is a citizen only serves to further highlight the flaws in how the deportation process is being implemented.

Contact:

Gift of the Givers, Gawa Sayed, 083 6613035 021 638 7909

PASSOP, Braam Hanekom, 084 319 1764