The Congress of South African Trade Unions is outraged at the violent assault of two young women pro-Palestine protesters (including the daughter of a senior COSATU official) by the notorious Jewish Community Security Organization (CSO), together with the South African Zionist Federation (SAZF) and South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD). Another Palestine protester was left in a state of concussion due to the Jewish CSO assaults.
The 250 protesters – from COSATU, SACP, YCL, SASCO, BDS South Africa and several other civil society organizations – were picketing peacefully at a concert in Gold Reef City, Johannesburg, organised by the SAZF and the SAJBD, which the protesters claimed was essentially a “celebration of murder, expulsion and continued Israeli oppression against the indigenous Palestinian people”.
In addition, young activists (mostly women students) had also bought tickets, made their way into the venue of the Israeli event and partook in a direct-action Greenpeace-like protest where they released bad smelling “stinky-bombs” and wore T-shirts that read “Israeli Apartheid Stinks” in luminous green writing.
During this protest, two young women protesters were violently assaulted by the Jewish CSO, had their hands tied with cables, their faces covered and their heads smashed into the parking lot’s concrete paving.
Other protesters were forcibly thrown down escalators and one protester was locked into a passageway where he was repeatedly and simultaneously kicked in the stomach by more than five CSO thugs. He later suffered concussion. Members of the Jewish community attending the event also punched a woman protester in the face several times resulting in a serious swelling injury.
It is absolutely outrageous that the CSO, a private security outfit, which the concert organisers had insisted on using, rather than either Gold Reef City security staff or the South African Police Service to perform the role of safety and security for the Israeli event should act in such a brutal fashion.
COSATU demands that criminal charges, which BDS South Africa has already drawn up, be brought against the CSO and the concert organisers, including Mr Zev Krengel, the President of the SAJBD, who was present and also involved in the violent assault of the two protesters.
COSATU, after this glimpse into the sort of brutality meted out to the people of Palestine on a daily basis, will not be intimidated and on the contrary will intensify its campaign of solidarity with the Palestine people’s right to full sovereignty and the end of the Israeli regime’s illegal occupation of their land.
