A hundred refugees and asylum-seekers arrested on Wednesday during a protest at the Waldorf Arcade in the CBD were released hours later.
Before the refugees clashed with police, which continued for most of the afternoon, police had been in the area to support the Sheriff of the Court in executing a court order to evict about 300 refugees and asylum-seekers who have been occupying the Waldorf Arcade building in a sit-in protest for nearly a month.
Police spokesperson Brigadier Novela Potelwa said: “All arrested individuals on the contravention of the court order have since been released.”
The refugees and asylum-seekers have been conducting their protest for almost the entire month, and are demanding that the UN Refugee Agency take them out of South Africa to a welcoming country where they will feel safe and not fear for their safety or their lives.
They claim that xenophobic attacks against them in South Africa are an almost daily occurrence, with impunity for their attackers from the law.
Wednesday’s arrests erupted into chaos as police, law enforcement and riot police arrested protesters and fired stun grenades and water cannon.
Protesters were dragged and bundled into four trucks amid scenes of terrified and screaming babies and children, wailing women, stunned onlookers and fellow protesters’ defiant chanting at
heavily-armed officers.
Democratic Republic of Congo national Louize Kambala, who continuously wailed “no, no, no” as protesters were bundled away, said she had been in South Africa for 12 years.
“What we’re seeing here is making us very, very disappointed as Africans, because we’re running from the war in our country and came here to find a place where we thought we were going to be free and live in peace.
“Instead, we get racism and xenophobic attacks. The police here don’t respect women and children. They beat them,” said Kambala
“They are bleeding from their injuries of being dragged on the ground. Where are the women of South Africa, because we need women’s rights now? I’m very sad and scared for our lives.”