As public outcry against
xenophobia in South Africa takes a global dimension, a Port Harcourt-based rights group, the Citizens and Right Education Study Centre over the weekend staged a protest against killing of black foreigners in South Africa.
The protesters carried placards with the inscriptions, “Xenophobia is a Crime Against Humanity,” “South Africans should respect Right to Life,” “Xenophobia is the same as Apartheid,” “There are South African, in Nigeria,” “Everybody is a Foreigner Somewhere,” “We Demand For Justice,” “Stop Killing Foreigners in South Africa,” amongst others.
Spokesman of the centre, Comrade Enefaa Georgewill who spoke to our reporter, said the protest was part of the group’s campaign in condemning what was happening in South Africa where citizens of South Africa derived joy in killing other Africans in their land.
“We are here to protest mass killing of innocent people, to protest wickedness by Africans against Africans. They call it xenophobia, but we view it as brutal wickedness. We protest against hate speeches,” he said.
He expressed shock that South Africa could forget so soon the ‘Big Brother’ role that Nigeria played during the era of apartheid and the general support from most Africans such that they derived joy in killing them without justification.
The centre spokesperson stated that the South African Government was not doing enough to stop the killings and appealed to the Federal Government to ensure maximum protection for Nigerian citizens whose lives were in danger in South Africa.
Georgewill said it was the absence of economic empowerment and industrialisation of Nigerian society that had forced most of Nigerian youths to sojourn in such places as South Africa and urged Federal Government to take concrete steps to change the economic situation of the country.
In spite of the massacre of foreigners in South Africa, the group insisted that South African citizens living in Nigeria and other countries must not be made target of retaliation stressing that, “wickedness is the same everywhere. Innocent South Africans living in Nigeria and other countries must be loved and protected.”

Chris Oluoh

Director, Administration, Ministry of Information and Communications, Mr Hawkins Ide (left) with Director, Government Printing Press, Mr Bello Olatunde, during the familiarisation visit to the Rivers State Newspaper Corporation by the Permanent Secretary, of the mnistry in Port Harcourt, recently. Photo: Chris Monyanaga