Thursday, February 16, 2017

COSATU North West Support its International Relations Secretary Who Has Been Falsely Accused of Anti-Semitism and Hate Speech
15 February 2017

The Congress of South African Trade Unions in the North West fully supports our International Relations Secretary, Cde Bongani Masuku, who has been appearing in court for the last few days, after being falsely accused of anti-Semitism and hate speech by supporters of the apartheid state of Israel. This case was curiously and incidentally brought to court by the Human Rights Commission.

We are deeply perturbed that we have previously laid a series of complaints to the South African Human Rights Commission on incidents of human rights violation, for many years, but nothing has taken place.

The latest case involves workers being strip-searched by security officers at the Sun City. We have just handed the memorandum this past Saturday to the South African Human Rights Commission to take action against those, who have violated the rights of workers by stripping them naked in front of guests at Sun City. The Human Rights Commission needs to do an introspection on whether it fulfils its mandate on behalf of the weak and vulnerable or it does the bidding on behalf of the powerful and well-to-do.

We shall await to see them acting on this and other cases. We shall continue to fight and defend the rights of our people in the province with or without the support of the Human Rights Commission.

They seem to me interested in responding to the Zionist lobby groups and are not interested in addressing the problems of South African workers. We will continuously support the cause of the oppressed people of the world without fear of favour. COSATU remains unapologetic friends with the people of Palestine and no amount of intimidation will stop us from supporting them.

We reaffirm our solidarity with the people of Palestine and we are calling for an end to the evictions of the Palestinians and the building of illegal settlements. We are fully behind the call for all political prisoners and detainees to be released immediately. Our federation supports the formation of an independent Palestinian state with East-Jerusalem as its capital. The Israelis must affirm the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland.

Issued by COSATU North West

For more information contact:

Job Dliso
COSATU North West Provincial Secretary
Cell: 082 463 1840 / 071 489 1384

- See more at: http://www.cosatu.org.za/show.php?ID=12422#sthash.lIjyte5i.dpuf

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