Operation Fiela by the SA Police Service was meant to eliminate criminal activities and was not a form of harassment or xenophobia, African National Congress secretary Gwede Mantashe said on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cOperation Fiela strives to apprehend and disarm those with illegal firearms in society, it is meant to discover and disarm everybody, foreign and national in the country,\u201d Mantashe told journalists in Johannesburg following a three-day ANC national executive committee meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe operation is not harassment at all. This is an effort to regulate everyone in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
The operation was started after xenophobic attacks on foreign nationals that started in Isipingo, Durban in March, before spreading to Gauteng.<\/p>\n
The massive operation, which saw police, backed by the army, raid hostels and informal settlements, especially in townships, has come under fire from human rights activists who accused government of targeting the poor.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of undocumented foreign nationals were also arrested and illegal weapons seized during the raids.<\/p>\n
Mantashe said human rights organisations should realise that illegal firearms in communities was an attack on other people\u2019s rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how human rights organisations can be opposed to that, one you have illegal firearms in communities, other people\u2019s rights in those communities are infringed upon. Every persons\u2019 human right includes the safety of others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Society would suffer from extremism if people were untouchable as far as the rule of law was concerned, he added.<\/p>\n
Source: ANA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Operation Fiela by the SA Police Service was meant to eliminate criminal activities and was not a form of harassment or xenophobia, African National Congress secretary Gwede Mantashe said on Sunday. \u201cOperation Fiela strives to apprehend and disarm those with illegal firearms in society, it is meant to discover and disarm everybody, foreign and national … Continue reading “ANC defends action against foreigners”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2961,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[6406,2363,11730,2564],"class_list":["post-18991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-immigrants","tag-operation-fiela","tag-xenophobia"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2961"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18991"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18992,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18991\/revisions\/18992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}