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Tutu Pleads for End to Immigrant Attacks

Posted May 20, 08 5:03 AM CDT in Crime & Courts,  World 

(Newser) – Archbishop Desmond Tutu pleaded yesterday with his South African countrymen to end a vicious surge of anti-immigrant violence that has killed at least 22 people, AP reports. Extra police were sent to squatter camps as roaming mobs continued to stab, beat and burn immigrant workers in some of the worst bloodshed the country has seen since apartheid. "The violence is extreme," said a spokesman for Doctors Without Borders.

The rioters blame foreign workers for taking jobs and scarce resources, and making their poverty worse. "Please stop. Please stop the violence now," Tutu pleaded. "These are our sisters and brothers. We can't disgrace our struggle by these acts of violence."

Source Associated Press

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Shacks burn at a squatter camp outside Johannesburg, South Africa, Monday May, 2008. Mobs rampaged through poor suburbs of Johannesburg in a frenzy of anti-foreigner violence over the weekend.   (AP Photo/Themba Hadebe)
South Africans holding sticks and knifes shout anti-foreigner slogans as they riot in the Reiger Park informal settlement outside Johannesburg, Monday May 19, 2008.   (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
South Africans jump over a barricades as they riot in the Reiger Park informal settlement outside Johannesburg, Monday May 19, 2008.   (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
South Africans cheer as they turn over a container belonging to a foreigner as they riot in the Reiger Park informal settlement outside Johannesburg.   (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
South African police officers use rubber bullets to disperse crowds in Johannesburg, South Africa, Sunday, May 18, 2008.   (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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Africa • immigration • South Africa • riots • Desmond Tutu • Johannesburg


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