The man suspected of shooting dead three Kurds in Paris ahead of Christmas weekend told investigators that he had set out that morning aiming to kill migrants or foreigners and then himself, according to prosecutors.

The man, 69, killed three people outside a Kurdish cultural centre on Friday and wounded three others, and was then disarmed and subdued by one of the injured victims, the Paris prosecutor’s office said onSunday.

He was detained at the scene and transferred on Saturday to psychiatric care. His name has not been released.

If he is released from psychiatric care, he could face charges of racially motivated murder, attempted murder and arms violations.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the man told investigators that a 2016 burglary at his home marked a turning point for him, sparking what he called a “hatred toward foreigners that became completely pathological”.

The shooting in a bustling Parisian neighbourhood shook and angered the Kurdish community, and stirred up concerns about hate crimes at a time when far-right voices have gained prominence in France and around Europe.

The man told investigators that on the morning of the shooting he took his weapon first to the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis with the aim of killing foreigners but changed his mind, the prosecutor’s statement said.

He then went to the Kurdish centre in Paris, which is near his parents’ home.

He opened fire on one woman and two men there, then entered a Kurdish-run hair salon across the street and fired on three men.

One of the wounded men in the hair salon managed to stop him and hold him until police arrived, the prosecutor’s statement said.

He told investigators he did not know his victims, and described all “non European foreigners” as his enemies, the statement said.

Two of the injured were still in hospital on Sunday with leg injuries.

Investigators are studying his computer and phone, but have not found any confirmed links to extremist ideology, the statement said.

On Saturday, members of France’s Kurdish community and anti-racism activists joined together in a demonstration of mourning and anger. The gathering was largely peaceful, with marchers holding portraits of the victims.

Some youths threw objects and set cars and rubbish bins on fire, and police fired tear gas to disperse the crowd.

A spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Council in France said the violence began after some people drove by waving a Turkish flag. Some of the marchers carried flags of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

In 2013, three women Kurdish activists were found shot dead at a Kurdish centre in Paris.

Turkey’s army has long been fighting Kurdish militants affiliated with the banned PKK in south-east Turkey as well as in northern Iraq. Turkey’s military also recently launched a series of strikes from the air and with artillery against Syrian Kurdish militant targets in northern Syria.

Turkey, the US and the European Union consider the PKK a terror group, but Turkey accuses some European countries of leniency toward alleged PKK members.

That frustration has been the main reason behind Turkey’s continued delay of Sweden and Finland’s Nato membership.

Turkish defence minister Hulusi Akar said on Sunday the violence in Paris was a result of lenience toward the PKK.

“The snake France fed is now biting them. Everyone should now see the real face of this terror organisation,” Akar said.

Hundreds of migrants from a burned-out tent camp in north-west Bosnia remain packed in buses where they had spent the night after an attempt to relocate them failed.

Bosnian authorities sent buses on Tuesday to transfer the migrants from the much-criticised Lipa camp to an army barracks in central Bosnia.

The mass move was cancelled after local residents organised protests to prevent the relocation.

On Wednesday morning and later in the day, migrants were still inside the buses, local media reported.

The Lipa camp near Bosnia’s border with Croatia was demolished in a fire last week and lacked basic facilities such as running water or heating.

Some 1,000 migrants were stranded there for days during a spate of snowy and windy winter weather that followed the fire.

The situation has prompted EU officials and aid groups to warn of a looming humanitarian disaster and increased pressure on Bosnia to act to move the migrants away from the camp.

The troubled Balkan country, which went through a devastating war in the 1990s, has been struggling with the influx of thousands of people seeking to reach western Europe.

Bickering among Bosnia’s ethnically divided authorities has prevented an organised response to the crisis, leaving some 3,000 migrants sleeping rough or in makeshift tents.

The head mufti of the Islamic Community of Bosnia, Husein Kavazovic, called for better treatment of migrants, describing the situation as “shameful” for both the country and the rest of Europe.

“We do not treat people in need in such a way,” he said in a statement.

Most migrants are staying in the north-west corner of Bosnia, where they hope to cross into European Union member Croatia before moving on towards wealthy EU nations.

To get to Croatia, migrants use mountainous illegal routes and often face pushbacks and alleged violence at the hands of Croatia’s police.

Read more: Croation Jews boycott official Holocaust memorial over rising neo-Nazism

Five people died after a Europe-bound rubber boat carrying 116 migrants and asylum-seekers fell apart in the central Mediterranean Sea, a Spanish humanitarian group said.

The Open Arms rescue ship had been searching for the boat in distress for hours before finally locating it on Wednesday morning in international waters north of Libya.

The NGO had just finished distributing life vests and masks to the passengers to begin transferring them to safety when the flimsy boat split in two, throwing them into cold waters.

Rescuers pulled out 111 people, including two infants, alive and recovered five bodies.

Open Arms spokesperson Laura Lanuza said the NGO has asked Italian and Maltese maritime authorities for the immediate evacuation of six people in serious condition, including two babies and their mothers and a pregnant woman.

Ms Lanuza said the NGO had already rescued 88 migrants the night before and was headed to a third distress call.

Wednesday’s shipwreck was the second recorded this week in waters north of Libya, a key transit point for migrants from Africa and the Middle East.

On Tuesday another 13 migrants died, including a child, the UN said.

Liberal democracy, the foundational principle of western societies, has been increasingly vulnerable. Globalisation and its fast pace has delivered undeniable benefits but brought with it unattended challenges, namely swiftly growing wealth inequalities and a deepening sense of cultural fragmentation. The atomisation of society has increasingly pushed people to the margins to rediscover a sense of belonging and meaning from a politics they feel no longer answers to them but elitist institutions, both economically and culturally.

The threat to liberal democracy today approaches from primarily two wings.

The first is the populist white nationalist right. A tide of authoritarian politics has swept across Europe and America. The political cultures of each nation-state vary meaning drawing a set of common variables, and thus a solution, is too simplistic. But arguably, a mixture of economic disillusionment in the wake of the financial crash in 2008 and imposition of austerity measures combined with cultural anxiety at fast-paced and large-scale immigration has triggered an opening for authoritarian politics to step forward. In the face of their emergence, social democratic parties have simply not been able to provide coherent answers.

Europe has witnessed a march to the populist right across a range of countries including France and Germany. In Hungary and Italy, right-wing governments who pitched their manifestos on anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric swept into power. Orban has chilling consequences possibly for Muslims and Jews living in Hungary. Italy’s various ministers have made repulsive statements around Roma immigrants. Even in France and Germany, the far-right have weakened the mainstream political settlement. In Britain, UKIP made a brief surge before melting away but not before spearing Britain towards Brexit. In America, Donald Trump ran on a campaign of building a wall to keep out Mexicans, to stop outsourcing jobs to China and ban Muslim migrants. It unfortunately worked.

So why are these politicians, who for all their deference to western political traditions and culture are attacking institutions of liberty be it a free media or judiciary as well as adopting thuggish tactics with protesters, gaining such prominence?

Asserting the primacy of economic grievances would be a mistake. Not all populist voters are unemployed or at the bottom end of the labour market. But a bleak forecast of the future and nostalgic yearning for the past exists even amongst more middle-class families. With growing inequality and dwindling resources, many feel locked out of the best opportunities and see a closed off set of elitist interests dominating them. It would be wrong to say that the financial crash created populism, or even the grounds for it, but it certainly fertilized it with the anger and resentment it needed. Desperate material conditions unanswered by politicians paved way for populists to emerge and demand a return to times when the value of nation-states and all from it was respected.

An example of this is Britain. The closing of industries that provided a sense of security, communal solidarity and identity to many towns created an economic rust and power and wealth relocated almost entirely to London. Communities became bogged down in chronic unemployment and poverty, atomised by the dearth of decent jobs and forced relocation of workers travelling south to find economic prosperity. This was before austerity rolled over the country like a black wave, squeezing public services, cutting welfare at a time when wages weren’t above the poverty line and power lay with employers and landlords. Such a climate made people regard the EU and Westminster as distant elitist institutions that did not represent them. They voted Leave to make their voices finally heard. Why after all would they vote for a continuation of the status quo governed by a party ushering in public spending cuts whilst trimming taxes for the wealthy?

Yet it would be too naïve to assume this alone or even primarily explains the flare in support for populist politics. Globalisation has changed communities at a fast pace, with sense of control now lost and a feeling of cultural fragmentation taking place. It doesn’t help that the sort of communal jobs were closed by Thatcher while communal hotspots like pubs and SureStart have increasingly declined either. A place where people can interact with others and feel like they belong in their local communities has been lost. The commodification of migrant workers rather than viewing them as long-term stakeholders in these communities has also weakened these social bonds. We demonised those uncomfortable by their neighbours not knowing English as racist rather than recognising that sharing a common language is the basis upon which you build social bonds in a community, and not knowing it only otherwise isolates migrants and creates loneliness. People look at their towns and feel like something is missing. These are challenges which have been ignored and need to be addressed. That we have not is partially why the far-right have grown in power and authoritarian parties have taken office.

The other side of it is that we have been inconsistent in our defence of tolerance, freedom, equality and pluralism. Migrants and refugees have been portrayed as burdens and threats rather than important facets of any society, both historically and currently, and both economically and culturally. Racism is normalised in political discourse rather than obliterated entirely. It has had corrosive impact on diverse communities and further fractured relations. The portrayal of Muslims as terrorists and extremists rather than ordinary people who are often at the forefront and the first victims of Islamic extremism must also be challenged. From the rhetoric of politicians to newspapers, discourse around Muslims has normalised a climate where it is increasingly fashionable to abuse a Muslim on the streets. Britain remains considerably better off than its European peers where the rights and protections for minorities remain considerably worse. In challenging the white nationalists, we should not let them dominate the narratives on economy and immigration by allowing immigrants and refugees to be cast as threats to national identity and security. Compassion and empathy is ingrained in us and the British society has evidently shown that years of anti-refugee headlines can be made redundant in one second by the powerful image of a dead refugee child washing up on a Turkish beach. But we must be do better in ensuring it does not reach that stage for the sake of refugees. A compassionate and empathetic politics which listens to voters’ concerns and carries out its humanitarian duties is extremely compatible.

A politics reaffirming the value of citizenship, common good, solidarity and mutual obligation can bind people together in mixed communities and ensure that different identities and cultural expressions need not necessarily result in social tensions.

The second threat to liberal democracy is one both leftists and conservatives can agree upon at least as a problem, which is Islamism. The past twenty years has seen western societies repeatedly attacked by Islamist extremists. Politicians and journalists have explored the factors behind extremism but seldom found an argument that makes sense with too much coherence. But, what is unquestionable is that Islamism is causing anxiety within many societies and presents a dangerous threat to basic British values of liberty, tolerance, democracy, human rights and rule of law. A reluctant to criticize a strand of the religion which applies a literalist interpretation of its tenets has allowed the far-right and Islamic extremists to feed off each other. On the left we have regularly made excuses for those radicalized by Islamism and then watched as evidence has repeatedly debunked these claims. Arguments of western imperialism should fall flat given how many young British Muslims were radicalized by both the Syrian conflict but also the appeal of the Caliphate. It would be a fallacy to suggest that religion itself is at fault here or the only reason, but that many young Muslims did not see Britain as their home and community, that they did not feel a sense of attachment but rather exclusion is undoubtedly a factor behind why Islamism is too dangerous to ignore. In the dystopian caliphate, their identity is central to society and their life has purpose and meaning. It is on us to find solutions to stop the few becoming radicalized by Islamist propaganda. This is a battle of integration and values, that requires fighting whether Islamism had a violent edge or not.

By Rabbil Sikdar

A French minister on Wednesday accused Italy’s anti-immigration interior minister, Matteo Salvini, of behaving “like Pontius Pilate”, the Roman official who washed his hands of the fate of Jesus Christ.

Relations between Paris and Rome have soured since Italy’s new government took office in June and immediately moved to close its ports to charity ships that pick up migrants in the sea off Libya, forcing other EU states to step in.

In the latest such incident, France, Portugal, Spain and Germany agreed on Tuesday to take in migrants from the rescue ship Aquarius, after Italy refused to let the vessel dock.

“Mr Salvini today, he’s like Pontius Pilate. It’s obscene,” Loiseau told RTL radio.

Hours earlier, French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted as telling reporters that Italy had “decided to no longer follow international law, in particular humanitarian maritime law”.

Salvini, who is head of the far-right League, accused Macron of hypocrisy on Wednesday, saying the French had turned back more than 50,000 migrants from the Italian border “in recent months”.

“We do not accept lessons on rights or humanity from Mr. Macron,” Salvini said in a statement.

Italy has taken in more than 650,000 migrants over the past five years. Under European Union regulations, asylum seekers are meant to stay in the first EU country they enter until their application has been processed — a process that can take years.

However, many migrants reaching Italy want to head immediately to wealthier northern countries, including France. The French have barred migrants from crossing their borders, saying EU rules have to be respected.

]]> 7959 https://www.faith-matters.org/opinion-conspiracy-theories-and-the-pied-pipers-of-hate/ Mon, 03 Sep 2018 14:06:41 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=7940

The slide into a bizarre world of believing conspiracy theories and voicing openly toxic and bigoted views took place slowly over the last decade whilst many of us were not able to fathom how quickly and extensively social media had taken charge of our lives. As the Founder and previous Director of Tell MAMA, which supports victims of anti-Muslim hate, the world that I know of today, as someone reaching his fifties, is virtually unrecognisable to the one in which I worked just a decade ago and where there was real hope that levels of racism, prejudice and intolerance were finally on a downward slope.

Today’s world is also a far cry from that in which I grew up. As a refugee from Amin’s Uganda in 1972, and having fled a second time from Africa in 1983 because of military instability in Kenya, I suffered at first hand the openly racist abuse meted out to Asians and African-Caribbean communities in Kent where I was schooled. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, that open racism existed, flourished and led to the murder of young black men such as Stephen Lawrence. Such open hatred impacted on many young men and women from BME communities, though the economic boom of that period helped to also temper some of the racist anger and bigotry. Anti-racism work, equality marches and work-based equal opportunity schemes seem to have turned the tide against division that many of us assumed would mean a country more at ease with its diversity.

Whilst the UK is in a far better place than the ’80s, the reality is that, as a country, we have slid backwards towards openly aggressive far-right marches rallying thousands of people, national political instability and a rising sense of mistrust which is acutely felt between BME communities and the two main parties. This, mixed with a recent economic crisis, has created the perfect storm for social insecurity and it is this insecurity that some have played upon in fomenting divisive and openly hostile views toward groups of people in our society. It is also within this environment of insecurity that people have sought comfort within narratives of division that blame others and which provide a sense of meaning to them, however twisted that may be.

For such individuals, conspiracy theories become reality since the world around them is unstable and frightening. Grasping onto something almost tangible, that explains the complexity of life in a simplistic fashion, fills the void that many of us currently feel in an increasingly frightening world. This is why, for example, conspiracy merchants who peddle views of an ‘Islamic takeover’ or of hordes of Muslims outbreeding other communities, manage to find a receptive audience. With less money in people’s pockets, communities aggressively vying for resources in austerity, and a sense of confusion as to where we are heading as a nation, you can see how easy it is for people to believe that there are hidden factors at play. The culprits, in their opinion, are more than likely Muslims, Jews or migrants.

Both Muslims and Jews have felt a sharp rise in hostility towards them and hate crime figures show such a rise over the last five years. Much of this is due to hate online and, furthermore, since 2012, when I founded Tell MAMA, it was clear to me that social media companies would not remove hateful and criminal material, nor would they take down far-right, neo-Nazi or Islamist extremist accounts. Their business model was based on getting traction for their technological revolutions through more accounts opening up. In doing so, they helped create the fog and smoke of disinformation and gave an amplified voice to extremist groups masquerading as ‘free speech’ martyrs. These companies, whilst levelling the playing field for more voices to be heard, also exposed people to views and opinions that would have been marginalised for a reason. Yet their platforms also legitimised toxic views by placing those views into a worldwide market of ideas where extremist groups were better equipped to promote them.

Let me explain. Marginalised, divisive and racist groups by their very nature had to be far more energetic and driven to try to win supporters. Before the advent of social media these people had to host events, print leaflets and remain active at a street level. That all took time and money and, to make it worse, they also looked pretty scary. However, such groups were always driven; they had to be to survive.

Now post their divisive messages on social media with a ‘friendly face’, remove the racist insignia and blame migrants, Muslims and foreigners, and strangely there was a more receptive audience as people’s fears and insecurities rose over the last decade. Additionally, as many of us played catch-up to try to challenge extremist and divisive views, these individuals and groups already had a head start since they were naturally driven and could see the power of the new platforms. It was a toxic, heady mix that was to have a severe impact on our society, as we are now seeing today.

This is why we must mobilise and defend the social values we enjoy in our country, and which are under threat. It is not just those, as this paper has highlighted, who try and divide local communities, who we must challenge; it is also those beyond our shores, who support extremist groups and seek to destabilise our democracy by fomenting instability, whom we must remain vigilant against. If we take our eye off the ball in these crucial years, it is not only our values which may change – it could be our very understanding of reality. Now that truly is frightening.

Far-right groups spread “fake news” on social media to mobilise their supporters for violent protests targeting migrants after the fatal stabbing of a German man, said officials in the eastern German state of Saxony where they took place.

German police have arrested a 22-year-old Syrian man and a 21-year-old Iraqi man over Sunday’s stabbing in the town of Chemnitz, which provoked two days of protests, including clashes between far-right and leftist demonstrators.

The stabbing and the protests have exposed deep divisions in German society over the influx of more than one million migrants, mostly Muslims fleeing Middle East conflicts, after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to let them in.

On Tuesday Merkel repeated her condemnation of both the stabbing and the protests, saying scenes – depicted in amateur video clips – of migrants being chased through the streets were completely unacceptable in a state based on the rule of law.

Michael Kretschmer, the premier of Saxony and a close Merkel ally, vowed to deal firmly with extremists in his state, long a hotbed of support for far-right parties.

“We believe that at least some of the calls that were circulated online (to join the protests) were based on false information, on fake news,” he told a news conference in the state capital Dresden.

For example, a report circulated widely on social media that the 35-year-old man who was stabbed had been defending a woman from migrants, adding that there was no evidence to support the claim, Kretschmer said.

Local authorities were bracing for further demonstrations in Dresden and Chemnitz on Tuesday, and German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer said federal police stood ready to provide additional assistance if needed in Saxony.

HITLER SALUTES

Saxony’s interior minister, Roland Woeller, said the protests had drawn far-right supporters and anarchist groups from Berlin, nearby states of Brandenburg and Thuringia and as far away as North-Rhine Westphalia in northwestern Germany.

“We saw a significant mobilisation effect – that means that anarchists travelled from far beyond the region and state borders, especially right-wing violent actors … from the hooligan scene and from the football scene,” he told reporters.

At least five people are facing charges for performing the ‘Hitler salute’, which is banned in Germany, and a comprehensive investigation is continuing, police officials said.

They also said nearly 20 people had been injured in Monday’s demonstrations, where fireworks were thrown.

German security officials are monitoring the situation in close consultation with state officials at a special command centre for combating far-right activism in Cologne, security sources told Reuters.

Many far-right supporters in Chemnitz joined a small but growing party called “Third Way” after a Nazi-inspired group was banned about four years ago. The new party is also under observation by intelligence agencies, according to the latest report by the BfV domestic intelligence agency.

“The fact that we have a Syrian and an Iraqi suspect is no reason – no reason at all – for a general suspicion of all foreign residents,” said Kretschmer.

“We need a jolt in Germany and Saxony. We need broad public support to win this fight.”

More than 100 African migrants managed to force their way into the Spanish enclave of Ceuta from Morocco on Wednesday when hundreds tried to storm the highly fortified border, a Spanish police spokesman said.

Television images showed some of the migrants with bloodied arms and legs, apparently caused by the razor wire that tops the border fences, cheering as they walked towards a temporary reception centre. Most of them were young men.

“I love Spain!” shouted one. Some were draped in European Union and Spanish flags.

More than 3,800 migrants have crossed the Moroccan border into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla so far this year, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR. The route accounted for 14 percent of the total 27,600 who arrived, mainly by sea, between January and July, a 130 percent increase on the previous year.

Five migrants were injured in the jump, and seven Spanish policemen suffered burns caused by a corrosive substance thrown by the migrants, the spokesman said.

During a recent visit to Spain, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed to increase dialogue with Morocco to handle migrant inflows to Spain, which is now the main destination for people seeking a better life in Europe.

EU leaders have failed to agree a long-term plan on where to house migrants since brokering a convoluted deal in June that appeared designed to appease divergent views rather than provide concrete solutions to the crisis.

Eight days ago, five European Union countries agreed to take in 141 migrants on board the Mediterranean rescue ship Aquarius, a move that ended a four-day standoff in which Spain, Tunisia and Malta refused the ship entry.

A growing number of migrants are finding jobs in Germany, according to data released on Tuesday that will give heart to supporters of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to let in hundreds of thousands of war refugees since 2015.

Figures last week also showed that German companies have managed to attract more apprentices to on-the-job training schemes due to a surge in applications from asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Syria.

The figures will feed into a running debate in Germany on the impact of Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open German borders to more than a million migrants, many of them refugees from war zones in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan.

Critics including the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party have said the new arrivals will be a burden on Germany’s welfare system and economy.

But the head of Germany’s Labour Office, Detlef Scheele, told dpa news agency there was no reason to be overly pessimistic about the country’s ability to cope with the record number of arrivals.

“This is all going pretty well,” he said, adding that the numbers were slightly better than expected. “These are good numbers, also taking into account that the people came here for humanitarian reasons and not for finding a job,” Scheele added.

The number of employed migrants from the eight countries with the biggest numbers of asylum seekers surged by more than 100,000 to 306,574 in May compared with the same month in the previous year, data from the Labour Office showed.

SKILLED LABOUR SHORTAGE

Among those, roughly three out of four had a labour contract in which the company and the employee were paying full contributions to social insurance schemes, the data showed.

There were roughly 500,000 people from the eight main asylum seeker countries who were registered as looking for work in July, the data showed. This includes people who are currently completing an integration and language course.

Among those, nearly 197,000 people were registered as unemployed which is roughly in line with the level seen a year earlier, the data showed.

Shortages of skilled labour and a lack of young people willing to commit to on-the-job training for up to 3 1/2 years have become big concerns for managers in Europe’s largest economy.

Vacancies for training positions have reached their highest level in more than 20 years with more than a third of companies unable to fill all of their training spots.

The number of new arrivals in Germany has fallen sharply this year, partly due to stricter border controls across Europe as well as tighter asylum rules in Germany and other countries.

]]> 7811 https://www.faith-matters.org/specter-xenophobic-chaos-looming-south-africa/ Mon, 27 Feb 2017 00:27:20 +0000 https://www.faith-matters.org/?p=6499

Tensions between South Africans and foreigners rose again in Pretoria and parts of Johannesburg recently.

Authorities say despite government pleas for peace, damage to property, acts of violence and looting continue to be reported in Pretoria.

The Home Affairs minister spoke out Thursday to respond to reports from the Nigerian government claiming that 116 of its citizens had been killed in South Africa over the past two years.

“I’m not privy to the figures from the Nigerian government and how they collected them. And we haven’t, I don’t think it’s a discussion we want to get into. I think it will turn out very bad. Should we start counting how many South Africans have died in South Africa at the hands of Nigerian nationals? I don’t think that’s going to end up very well, in terms of our good relations, as countries,” said Malusi Gigaba, South African Home Affairs Minister.

More than 136 people have been arrested in relation to tensions between foreigners and locals.

A march, organized by a group called Mamelodi Concerned Residents, was meant to be peaceful, but soon chaos broke out between anti-migrants South African protesters and foreign nationals.

Some South Africans demanded that illegal immigrants be deported immediately. They blamed foreigners for crime, especially the illegal drug trade. They also accused migrants of taking jobs that could be held by South Africans.

“The foreigners who are operating businesses, we need to regulate them so that when they are operating their businesses, their employees must be South Africans strictly,” said a male protester.

The foreign nationals refused to be intimidated.

“We worked so hard for South Africa to be independent. We’re not to be treated like dogs. They’re fighting us. We married their sisters; our sisters are married to them,” said a representative of foreign nationals.

“We just want peace and stability in this country. We are all Africans. We don’t have any grudge for anyone,” said another representative.

Police dispersed the crowds of protesters, expressing worries that the scenes of xenophobic attacks in 2008 might resurface.

Later in the day, protesters handed a memorandum of their grievances to authorities. They maintained that those responsible for the chaos were not part of their group.

“We are not xenophobic. We don’t want any person to be attacked, any foreign national or any person. That’s why we said that the march is to the relevant department, institutions within South Africa that are set up to deal with this way. But the idea is we are in the sense, we South Africans are frustrated, South Africans are angry,” said Makgoka Lekganyane, a Mamelodi resident.

The government has pledged to take action against anyone who commits violent acts. The presidency has also released a statement calling for restraint.

“We also caution those engaging in violent and unlawful acts that the law enforcement agencies of this country will not tolerate such conduct and will act within the confines of the law,” said Khomotso Phahlane, acting Police Commissioner of South Africa.