Forwarded from Derrick

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Interview with South African Activist Na’eem Jeenah
Interview by Ian Rocksborough-Smith
Peak Staff
Interview conducted on Oct. 8, 2002.

How did the anti-apartheid II movement get started?

It was started by a number of us who were involved in the Palestine 
solidarity movement in South Africa and who have been anti-apartheid 
activists in the past. It was done in consultation with a few 
Palestinian organizations, and it was decided through this kind of 
process that this would be the way we would like to go.

Last year, at the end of the UN conference on racism, held in Durban, 
South Africa, it was decided that we would launch — at least 
symbolically — the international anti-apartheid movement against Israel. 
We plan to hold a conference next summer in South Africa that will give 
substance to this initiative.

What in your view are the biggest similarities between the oppression 
experienced by the Palestinian people, and the oppression experienced by 
black South Africans under Apartheid rule?

There are a number of similarities. One of the important ones, is the 
way in which black South Africans had their citizenship removed by the 
Apartheid state, and were then dumped into bantustan states, under the 
homeland system. A similar kind of thing has occurred in the Palestinian
context, except that in the Palestinian context those Palestinians that 
are now refugees from the 1948 area, have no right to exercise any kind 
of citizenship — in Israel or in any other place. So their citizenship 
simply doesn’t exist.

Another big similarity would be the repressive tactics of both Israel 
and the South African apartheid regime. We find that a number of human 
rights abuses which occurred in South Africa, are occurring with the 
Palestinians now, such as: detention without trial, tortures in prison, 
judicial and extra-judicial executions. In the Palestinian context
especially there has been a large number of extra-judicial executions 
that have taken place.

In both contexts, many of these extra-judicial executions have taken 
place outside of the borders of the countries. Palestinians have been 
targeted in places like Europe, and similarly with South Africans.

One big difference, however, was that in South Africa we never 
experienced collective punishment. Collective punishment, which is 
illegal under international law, is the daily experience of Palestinian 
people living under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It takes a
number of forms: house demolitions and the destruction of property, 
removal and relocation of people or "transfer" as it is called, 
imprisonment of family members, deportation, — all these kinds of 
collective punishments occur all the time. We can see it on television — 
and the world does nothing about it.

Full: http://www.peak.sfu.ca/the-peak/2002-3/issue8/fe-sameolbs.html
--

www.marxmail.org



~~~~~~~
PLEASE clip all extraneous text before replying to a message.