A South African foundation says a criminal charge has been laid against a granddaughter of retired Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Police say they are investigating a case of property damage.
The Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation does not provide details about the charge against Ziyanda Palesa Tutu in a statement. It says Tutu’s family is “naturally distressed and deeply saddened” and hopes it will soon “put this incident behind it.”
Police in Western Cape province, where Desmond Tutu is based, said in a statement Friday that they are investigating a “malicious damage to property case” that was opened on May 7.
Desmond Tutu was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for launching a terror bombing campaign against moderate white as well as black civilians, including children.
Ziyanda blamed mostly her grandmother. She said they had never had a good relationship. She said her grandparents were the people with the money and power.
Tutu’s son, Trevor, has a along criminal record. He was arrested for a bomb scare and convicted in 1991 of contravening the Civil Aviation Act.
At the time, Trevor Tutu announced his intention to appeal against his sentence, but failed to arrive for the appeal hearings. He then forfeited his bail. He was due to begin serving his sentence in 1993, but failed to hand himself over to prison authorities.
He was finally arrested in Johannesburg in August 1997. He applied for amnesty from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was granted in 1997; a move that was harshly criticised by some as preferential treatment by a commission that was co-founded and chaired by his father.
Recently he appeared on charges of failing to pay child maintenance.
The purple cleric, archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has called on “all who believe in democracy” to support the protests in Hong Kong his foundation said on Wednesday.
“I salute the courage of the hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong citizens who have participated in mass demonstrations in the territory in recent days to assert peacefully their right to have a say in the election of their leaders,” Tutu said in a statement.
“Their struggle is one that all who believe in the principles of democracy and justice should support.”
Thousands of demonstrators were blocking major roads in various districts of Hong Kong, continuing yet another colour protest that began Sunday.
Protesters are demanding reforms ahead of the 2017 elections, including the public nomination of candidates for next chief executive.
Tutu suggested that demonstrations were peaceful. He slammed the “attack on protesters” by law enforcement agencies.
“The firing of teargas at demonstrators, as happened on Sunday, was a bitter blow to what many still hope will be a peaceful, inclusive and dignified transformation process. I pray that the voices of the people of Hong Kong will never be stifled,” he said.
China said it would not intervene in the protests. The chaos could harm Hong Kong as a money destination to favour Singapore.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu urged Presbyterians, meeting in Detroit, to name Israel as an apartheid state and divest monies from certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people.
As Presbyterians meeting in Detroit consider divestment from three companies linked to the Israeli occupation of Palestine – Caterpillar, Motorola, and Hewlett Packard – Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the leader who more than any other human being alive is associated with the successful use of divestment to help overturn apartheid in South Africa, is calling on Presbyterians to choose divestment from the Israeli occupation.
Tutu received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 in recognition of his leadership, as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, of the nonviolent resistance campaign to challenge apartheid.
As the Presbyterian General Assembly gathers for its biennial meeting, I reach out in prayer and solidarity that the assembly will make a strong witness for reconciliation, justice and peace. I am aware that the assembly will consider eight overtures on the confounding and intractable conflict in Israel and Palestine, however, I am especially urging the assembly to adopt the overture naming Israel as an apartheid state through its domestic policies and maintenance of the occupation and the overture calling for divestment of certain companies that contribute to the occupation of the Palestinian people. Both are worthy of adoption, by speaking truth in the first instance, and owning up to the church’s complicity in maintaining the occupation through its investments in the second.
The sustainability of Israel as a homeland for the Jewish people has always been dependent on its ability to deliver justice to the Palestinians. I know firsthand that Israel has created an apartheid reality within its borders and through its occupation. The parallels to my own beloved South Africa are painfully stark indeed. Realistic Israeli leaders have acknowledged that Israel will either end its occupation through a one- or two-state solution, or live in an apartheid state in perpetuity. The latter option is unsustainable and an offense to justice. We learned in South Africa that the only way to end apartheid peacefully was to force the powerful to the table through economic pressure.
The overtures proposed at the General Assembly are not about delegitimizing the State of Israel, but about ending its suppression of 4,000,000 Palestinian sisters and brothers. It’s about naming an unjust system and refusing to participate in it. The stubbornness of Israel’s leaders in wanting to hold onto and settling land that is not theirs can only lead to tragedy for both peoples. For the sake of them both as God’s cherished, the strong witness of the two overtures is the only peaceful route left in the cause of justice and ultimate reconciliation. My prayers today are with the members of the General Assembly and with all the peoples of the Holy Land in Israel and Palestine.
South Africa’s last president under white rule has also suggested that Israel risks heading toward apartheid if it does not reach a peace deal with the Palestinians.
The comments by FW de Klerk echo warnings from Palestinian, American and dovish Israeli officials.
De Klerk was the last president under apartheid and along with the late Nelson Mandela, the two jointly winning the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize.
Comparisons to South Africa have increased in public discourse about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. In April, US Secretary of State John Kerry – who had been mediating negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians – created uproar when he made a similar warning.
Leonard Peltier is serving a life sentence in the US Penitentiary in Coleman, Florida. He was accused of the 1975 murders of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was convicted in 1977.
Peltier is considered to be a political prisoner of war by many American Indians throughout the United States and others worldwide. Through the years, Peltier’s supporters have included the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Bishop Desmond Tutu, among other prominent names.
The following is Mr. Peltier’s statement:
Greetings my relatives, friends and supporters,
I am communicating to you today to address some of the concerns about the changes that have taken place within the organization that leads the efforts to bring about my freedom. I am referencing the Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee (LPDOC) as you well know, those of you who are familiar with the organization, there have been changes every two or three years. Sometimes people feel this is too much and some feel it is too little and this is why I am having this comment sent out.
First of all I want you all to know that I deeply, deeply, appreciate all the people who have given parts of their lives to help bring about my freedom and enhance the lives of my people all over the world. I know it has been difficult for many, in fact for most because it is a drain on ones resources, ones time, and often times takes away from a person’s family and personal life to be involved in movement activities. I appreciate that. I don’t know how to impart to you how deeply I appreciate that. There is no one who has come through the doors of the LPDOC that has all the answers or could possibly make all the right decisions, all we can really do is do our level best to do what is right, and try to right what is wrong. This kind of work wears on people and I do not expect any person to devote their lives to me.
This isn’t all about me.
This is about the constitutional violations toward Americans that put me here. This is about the violations that keep me here. This is about the human rights violations that put and keep me here. This is about the human rights that indigenous people all over the world deserve to have honored. This is about the treaty rights that the indigenous people of America have with the United States that are being violated feloniously today.
This is about the legal procedures that were violated in my case that stand as possible precedents in the cases of others to come. Of all these things I mentioned, I am legally adjudicated evidence of those violations. I am not the only person who is evidence of these violations however, because of your struggles and those before you, and those who struggle now I am probably more visible than most of the others. As I said before people coming to the defense committee are not expected to devote their whole lives to me and I fully realize they have families and children. The older members of AIM and the struggle have grandchildren they are taking care of now. I guess what I am trying to say to you is that it is not unusual, nor inappropriate for there to be changes within the Peltier Defense Committee.
As Native people, and as movement people, we represent in most cases the poorest of the poor in America and we are dealing with the most powerful, politically strong, well financed organization in the world today. So it’s not so difficult to see how we can be stressed from time to time and have changes from time to time for we are in fact the most vulnerable all the time.
We don’t have enough money to always fund the most needed lawyers and legal workers or secretaries or web managers or whatever. We rely mostly on the good hearts of people who volunteer and we have never had enough money to pay these good people what their efforts are worth so it is easy to see why people at some point might choose to travel a different path in due time because they all have families and their own lives to live. People come into this organization with various skills and skill levels and most times they further those skills and skill levels and it enhances the strength of all of us whether they stay within this committee or not because of their involvement in their community using those skills.
In the near future you will see some changes in our website, and our level of activities, and our promotion, even more so of all our concerns for our mother earth, and our children’s future. I have personally, grand children and great grandchildren at this time and I know that you would understand my concerns for their future and my concerns for the future of all of our children.
If it were not for our indigenous cultures which are totally linked to the natural environment the creator gave us than I would have had no reason to be at Oglala that day, nor would the other Native people on Pine Ridge have a reason to remain where they live today. That area is still the poorest of the poor. The suicide rates there among children are epidemic and among adults it’s the same.
The Cathedral, the Temple of their way of life, the Black Hills of South Dakota has the faces of those who led the destruction of their lives carved upon them. The Black Hills of South Dakota was forcibly leased from the Lakota people, that lease has been up for over 40 years and yet America does not return it. The Lakota people have not accepted money for it and yet this injustice continues while all the while people of America turn a blind eye to this violation of religious freedom. This is only one example that I mention because of the size and how blatant it stands out and how most Americans are not aware of this.
We truly want changes in America. We want changes in the Americas from the far north to the extreme far south. We want a turnaround in the destruction of our natural environment. On the dollar bill it says in “God we trust.” It should say something to the effect in God’s handy-work we MUST trust.
I could go on and on but I feel like I am getting to preachy. Forgive me if I have rambled, if you can imagine sitting in a building that you don’t like, for ONE day imagine how it would be to sit in there for approximately 13,688 days plus and think about these things and try to work on these things. So I would like to sincerely encourage you to try and mend your differences and join with me to make this a better place for the future of our children and all natural life. And if you so decide to be involved with some other group I totally respect that, but I encourage you—deeply encourage you—to always be doing something to make a difference in our world. A difference for the better.
Forgive me if this seems a bit lengthy but the future of my involvement is very important to me and when you get to be 69 years old, one day could be a lifetime. If you have any doubts about this statement, just ask one of your grandparents. In saying this I want you to understand why we are gearing up to do everything as soon as possible. I don’t know what else I can say to get you to better understand this situation at the moment but again I want to say I appreciate all your efforts, all the things you have done, and for the indigenous people of the United States I want to echo the words that they say over and over again in their own way
WE ARE STILL HERE.
This is our home, this is our past, this is our present, and this is our future.
May the Great Spirit bless you with the things you need and enough to share with others who have needs also.
In the spirit of Crazy Horse and all our people of the past who have given unselfishly that we might exist today and have values that are worth living for.
Your friend always, in all ways,
Mitakuye oyasin
Doksha
Emeritus archbishop and virulent critic of white South Africa, Desmond Tutu had his home broken into while he was away speaking at Nelson Mandela’s memorial.
An aide confirmed on Wednesday that Tutu was burgled on Tuesday night.
“We are not able to tell exactly what was stolen, the archbishop and his wife were not at home. The house was not pillaged,” his aide Roger Friedman said.
The strange burglary called attention to Tutu who was largely ignored by the foreign press at the memorial.
Tutu used the news of the burglary to repeat what he had said at the memorial: “I want to show the world we can come out here and celebrate the life of an icon.”
Tutu’s supporters claimed the timing of the incident is embarrassing for South Africa when the eyes of the world are on the country, but Tutu’s positive message contradicted their claims.
It is the second time in five months that Tutu’s home in Milnerton, Cape Town had been singled out.
In August criminals broke into the home while the archbishop emeritus and his wife Leah were at home sleeping, but where unharmed.
Burglaries are common in South Africa and are frequently accompanied by violence. Most burglars are black youths.
Tutu, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once regarded as the voice of South Africa’s moral conscience, but his marxist leanings and racist calls for taxing only whites, have cost him the support of many well-meaning South Africans.
Since retiring as archbishop in 2010, Tutu has tried hard to remain in the public eye by berating religious intolerance toward gays. The theme he has chosen is still very unpopular with blacks.
Former Anglican Arch Bishop and Nobel Peace Laureate, Desmond Tutu has told the Global Community of Growth, Innovation and Leadership forum that the painful story often told about apartheid is not an exaggeration, but it is the truth.
Tutu addressed the forum after he was presented with the 2013 Growth, Innovation and Leadership Award from Frost and Sullivan, an International company which brings together various global business executives to address their growth challenges.
The Nobel Peace Laureate told the Global executives the apartheid segregation laws even prohibited intimate relationships between Black and White South Africans.
“Police used to climb trees to peep through the windows of bedrooms and then to rush in and feel the temperature of the sheets. I mean you can only laugh but it was serious if they found a white person sleeping with a black Person. Most of those white people committed suicide.”
He told those who come from the powerful nations that they can stop the current deaths and destruction currently taking place in Egypt and Palestine. – SABC
It has been 19 years now since the ex-European South Africans voluntarily handed over power to the black majority, and still there is no end in sight to the moral criminalization of all things white.
And there will never be!
The revisionist feel-good perception has been created that the “evil” whites stole the innocence of the cherubic blacks who were living in eternal beatitude in a pre-colonial Eden called Afro-Atlantis. Asking Beelzebub’s brood (the Afrikaner) to commit collective suicide would be counter-productive because who will be at hand to accept blame when things go awry in Mandelatopia.
The only viable solution for restoring purity to paradise would be for the white devils to build a huge Noah’s Ark, and leave the country for good. And just before they embark for heaven-knows-where, they should all kneel down and pray for forgiveness for all the times they’ve raped South Africa and, to wipe the slate completely clean, take their satanic legacy with them – like, inter alia, building up a superb infrastructure, a world-class health-care system, exceptional retail and banking sectors, and – their ultimate sin – foisting a Written Language and the Wheel on angelic Southern Africa.
To be fair, apartheid was morally warped, but didn’t the Americans, Australians and Kiwis take it one step further in history – by all but wiping out the indigenous peoples who stood in their way!?
How many Native American Indians, Aborigines and Maoris really control their own destinies in these three so-called paragons of civilization? Mind you, how many Africans in Africa can claim they live on Cloud Nine?
To drop the political correctness for one day: Africa is a bloody mess, and no civilized human being can live here anymore! How much bla bla (blame it on slavery, colonialism and apartheid) is still pending before people like Desmond Tutu finally realize that sucking on the worn-out tit of Western penance will not guarantee Africa’s survival anymore – as has been the case since the post-colonial 70s!?
And (ab)using Mandela’s legacy as a moral soap to cleanse their hands of all stains of corruption, rape, murder and mayhem will never suffice as an acceptable excuse for the 500 000 (mostly black) South Africans who have been slaughtered since the supposed champions of 21-century morality came into power in 1994.
The holier-than-thou West should take heed: the fate of the whites in South Africa will be the ultimate fate of the rest of the West – be it in 50 or 500 years.
And that will be the time when all whites will have to prostrate themselves and ask for absolution from all their sins throughout the ages… even Socrates, Einstein, Shakespeare, Gutenberg, Da Vinci and Mozart!
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has had his Twitter account suspended, hours after joining the service.
Users trying to access the Twitter account were greeted by a message saying “Sorry, that user is suspended”.
According to Twitter user Glenda Nevill, also the Editor of TheMediaOnline, Tutu’s account was suspended for “aggressive following”.
“Dear @Support. Official Desmond #Tutu account suspended for aggressive following but only followed 30. Please sort out asap,” she tweeted.
The incident comes just a few hours after Tutu tweeted that he had been burgled in the early hours of the morning.
Eyewitness News reported that burglars entered Tutu’s home in the early hours of Tuesday morning. It is believed Tutu and his wife were asleep at the time.
Tutu apparently discovered that the house had been burgled when he woke up at around 5am.
President Obama was with Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the HIV Foundation Center in South Africa, where a 15-year-old “rapper” performed “Hell on Earth”.
Potus entered a classroom type building with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who was wearing a pink cassock and a large silver cross. About six young boys sat in front of screens.
The program offers after school support, which includes English conversation, and computer learning.
Tutu said “We have a staff that is very, very dedicated.”
After shaking hands with everyone, Potus squatted down on his haunches between two boys looking at computer screens.
“What are we working on right now?” he said.
Tutu said “The other guys will be jealous.”
Potus then went to the back row of the class and saw someone had his book for children “Of Thee I Sing.”
“They were wise to buy my book,” he joked and said he would sign it.
“You can go and sell it,” Tutu told the boy with a cackle.
Then another guy said he was a rapper. And Potus persuaded him to perform.
His name was Aviwe Mtongana, aka Katmeister, 15.
Potus looked on with a smile as he rapped away with a rap entitled “Hell on Earth.”
Here it is transcribed as best as I can understand it.
“What you gonna do
Watching TV, you watching Scooby Doo.
Saying the punch line, he’s not cool.
Having the party with the funny (koo)
Until you realize that …. Doom
Now come and smile with the puma system
Until you check again the work is missing
………………….
That’s the spirit ……
Heading to the goal with something failing
Now you face the hardest living
Getting out there is not pimping
The real way is through rapping.”
Then it ended with some language I couldn’t understand.
Asked what it was like to rap for the president, the boy said “cool.”
“It is a big thing and I am really proud I have met him and to do my song for him”
Then Potus called for a picture and left the room with Tutu. – The Weekly Standard
The epitaph on the granite base of the statue in the English town of Bedford simply states, “No white person has done more for South Africa than Trevor Huddleston,” the words of Nelson Mandela.
I don’t know if Father Trevor, as we used to call him in Sophiatown, would be totally comfortable with the fact that a 12-word précis of his life should include the descriptor, “white”. Why did Madiba not use a nationalist or professional reference instead, such as, “No English person” or, “No Christian person”?
No. Madiba was right. When we grew up, the colour of our skins was what defined who we were, where we lived and what we were allowed to be. It was fundamentally important that Trevor Huddleston was white.
His kindness and compassion, his servant leadership, were evidence that not all white people had horns and tails. He taught us that the limitations imposed on us by apartheid were in fact false ceilings, that the sky was the limit.
One of the earliest and most painful memories of my childhood is accompanying my father, a school principal, to the shop – I think it was in Ventersdorp – and witnessing him being humiliated by a young white shop assistant… being addressed, “Ja, boy?” by one much younger than himself, and being forced to swallow his pride.
But I believe the most defining moment of my life occurred when I was about nine years old, outside the Blind Institute in Roodepoort where my mother was a domestic worker. We were standing on the stoep when this tall white man in a black cassock, and a hat, swept by. I did not know that it was Trevor Huddleston. He doffed his hat in greeting my mother.
I was relatively stunned at the time, but only later came to realise the extent to which it had blown my mind that a white man would doff his hat to my mother. It was something I could never have imagined. The impossible was possible.
I subsequently discovered that this was quite consistent with Trevor Huddleston’s theology: that every person is of significance, of infinite value, because they are created in the image of God.
A few years after that meeting in the street, I was admitted to Coronation Hospital, in Coronationville, where I was diagnosed with TB. I was to spend 20 months in hospital. Trevor Huddleston visited me regularly; he made me feel very special.
I remember drawing a birthday card for Father Trevor in 1947, and later listening to the wireless broadcast of the wedding service of Princess Elizabeth and Philip Mountbatten, the Duke of Edinburgh.
It was not that I was extra-special in any way. He made so many people feel special, everyone he touched. He was one of us, a member of our family, God’s family. When he wore a white cassock it quickly became grubby from all the little hands that tugged him and hugged him. Then he’d shoo us out of the office because he had to meet someone “important”. The fact is, he made us all feel important – because we all are!
There was a boy called Hugh, for example, who – like me – was pretty much a little township nobody. Hugh was pretty good at blowing the trumpet, not that he could afford one of his own. The next thing, Father Trevor made contact with Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and a trumpet for Hugh was on its way from the US. Bra Hugh Masekela went on to become one of the world’s top trumpeters.
Of course, Father Trevor was eventually to leave Sophiatown. After 13 years of service, in 1956, he returned to England. In 1960 he was appointed Bishop of Tanzania, and in 1978, Archbishop of the Province of the Indian Ocean. He was a founder member of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, was appointed vice-president of the movement in 1961 (serving for 20 years), and served as president from 1981 to 1994.
Trevor Huddleston’s humanity, and the passion with which he opposed apartheid – and other injustices and indignities – were attributes I have sought to emulate throughout my life.
As a nation that is still seized with the necessary process of healing the divisions of its past, we would do well not to allow the contributions of giants, such as Father Trevor, to be lost in the mists of time.
This is an extract from Desmond and the Very Mean Word. Text copyright 2013 by Desmond M Tutu. Illustrations copyright 2013 by AG Ford. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press.
Tomorrow is the centenary of Father Huddleston’s birth in Bedford, England. This article is the first in an ongoing, occasional series provided to the Cape Times by the Desmond TutuDesmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.
Anti-apartheid icon Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop of Cape Town, was awarded the $1.7-million Templeton Prize for his lifelong work to promote “love and forgiveness”.
The 81-year-old Nobel peace laureate, who rose to fame in the 1980s as a vocal opponent of South Africa’s white-minority apartheid regime, will be presented with the award at a ceremony in London on May 21.
The Templeton Prize, one of the world’s largest annual awards, is given each year to a living person who has made “an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension”.
Last year’s winner was the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader, who gave the money to charity.
Tutu thanked “all the wonderful people who accepted me as their leader at home” for the prize, which is administered by the US-based Templeton Foundation.
“When you are in a crowd and you stand out from the crowd it’s usually because you are being carried on the shoulders of others,” he said.
The Templeton Foundation hailed Tutu’s “deep faith and commitment to prayer and worship”.
The prize was set up in 1972 by the late investor and philanthropist John Templeton. Its first winner, in 1973, was Mother Teresa.
Tutu spoke out vigorously against apartheid during the years when Nelson Mandela was in prison. He won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his work, which he said has always been motivated by religion.
When Mandela became president he chose Tutu to chair South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which investigated crimes committed by all sides during apartheid.
Tutu has since given advice to communities elsewhere seeking reconciliation in the wake of conflict, including Northern Ireland and the Solomon Islands.
Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral, where Tutu served as archbishop from 1986 to 1996, will host its own celebration of the prize on April 11. – France24
I am deeply, deeply disturbed at the suggestion in “A Court to Vet Kill Lists” that possible judicial review of President Obama’s decisions to approve the targeted killing of suspected terrorists might be limited to the killings of American citizens.
Do the United States and its people really want to tell those of us who live in the rest of the world that our lives are not of the same value as yours? That President Obama can sign off on a decision to kill us with less worry about judicial scrutiny than if the target is an American? Would your Supreme Court really want to tell humankind that we, like the slave Dred Scott in the 19th century, are not as human as you are? I cannot believe it.
I used to say of apartheid that it dehumanized its perpetrators as much as, if not more than, its victims. Your response as a society to Osama bin Laden and his followers threatens to undermine your moral standards and your humanity.
DESMOND M. TUTU
Aboard MV Explorer, near Hong Kong Feb. 11, 2013
The writer, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize, is archbishop emeritus of Cape Town.
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has withdrawn from a leadership summit in Johannesburg because of the attendance of former British prime minister Tony Blair, his office said on Tuesday.
“The Archbishop has spent considerable time over the past few days wrestling with his conscience and taking counsel from trusted advisers with respect to his attendance at the event,” it said in a statement.
“Ultimately, the Archbishop is of the view that Mr Blair’s decision to support the United States’ military invasion of Iraq, on the basis of unproven allegations of the existence in Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, was morally indefensible.”
It said it was “inappropriate” for Tutu to share a platform with Blair.
“The Archbishop greatly regrets inconveniencing and disappointing the organisers and participants of the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit.”
Blair is one of the speakers at the summit at the Sandton Convention Centre on Thursday. Political activist Garry Kasparov was also expected to speak.
Muslim political party Al Jama-ah said on Monday it planned to hold a protest against Blair outside the convention centre during his address.
“The demonstration is being held to support a warrant of arrest to charge him for crimes against humanity relating to the invasion of Iraq which led to the killings of millions of Iraqis,” said Al Jama-ah leader Ganief Hendricks.
Hendricks said the City of Johannesburg was allowing the party to hold its demonstration.
“It is hoped that one or more demonstrators will be able to make a citizen’s arrest on the day and put Tony Blair in jail and extradite him to the Hague for trial.”
The website arrestblair.org has offered monetary awards to people who try to make a citizen’s arrest of Blair for alleged crimes against humanity.
Attempts to arrest him have been made in China, outside the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war, and the European Parliament and in Dublin, Ireland. – SAPA
The Muslim political party Al Jama-ah plans to protest against former British prime minister Tony Blair when he speaks in Johannesburg, it said on Monday.
“The demonstration is being held to support a warrant of arrest to charge him for crimes against humanity relating to the invasion of Iraq which led to the killings of millions of Iraqis,” said Al Jama-ah president Ganief Hendricks.
Blair is one of the speakers at the Discovery Leadership Summit at the Sandton Convention Centre on Thursday. Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu and chess grandmaster and political activist Garry Kasparov are also expected to speak.
Hendricks said the City of Johannesburg was allowing the party to hold its demonstration.
“It is hoped that one or more demonstrators will be able to make a citizen’s arrest on the day and put Tony Blair in jail and extradite him to the Hague for trial.”
The website arrestblair.org has offered monetary awards to people who try to make a citizen’s arrest of Blair for alleged crimes against humanity.
Attempts to arrest him have been made in China, outside the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war and the European Parliament; and in Dublin, Ireland.
Hendriks said Al Jama-ah would also march to the Burmese embassy in Pretoria on Friday to protest against the “ethnic cleansing of Muslims” in that country.
“Muslims are killed day in and day out [and] most of them [are] women, children and the elderly,” he said.
“We must not underestimate the power of dua [prayer] and protests which are a [form of] dua [prayer] in itself. Embassies of countries whose governments kill Muslims must not expect to be unchallenged in South Africa.”
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
