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In fact, Pretoria gave legitimacy to that country’s annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory by dispatching the ANC Youth League to monitor that charade as “international observers”.
The second obscene act is the state visit by President Cyril Ramaphosa, Naledi Pandor and a delegation of senior ANC ministers to Saudi Arabia, shortly after SA had been elected to the UN Human Rights Council. This is a country that has carried out mass executions in recent years — 47 people executed in 2016, 37 in 2019 and 81 in March this year — most executions by beheading.
Amnesty International reports that many of those were sentenced to death after unfair trials on charges of “opposition” to government and antigovernment protests, on the basis of “confessions” made under torture while in custody.
SA’s commitment to the standards of the UN Human Rights Convention is meaningless to the ANC given its close and warm relations with Russia, Iran, Cuba and other gross human rights violators. This makes a mockery of what Nelson Mandela once said — that human rights would be the guiding light of the new SA’s foreign policy.
Allan Wolman Tel Aviv, Israel
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Support our award-winning journalism. The Premium package (digital only) is R30 for the first month and thereafter you pay R129 p/m now ad-free for all subscribers.
LETTER: ANC doesn’t care about human rights
The department of international relations & co-operation went beyond merely abstaining from condemning Russia’s fake referendums in Ukraine (“Neutrality isn’t possible in Russia conflict, Ukraine says”, October 13).
In fact, Pretoria gave legitimacy to that country’s annexation of occupied Ukrainian territory by dispatching the ANC Youth League to monitor that charade as “international observers”.
The second obscene act is the state visit by President Cyril Ramaphosa, Naledi Pandor and a delegation of senior ANC ministers to Saudi Arabia, shortly after SA had been elected to the UN Human Rights Council. This is a country that has carried out mass executions in recent years — 47 people executed in 2016, 37 in 2019 and 81 in March this year — most executions by beheading.
Amnesty International reports that many of those were sentenced to death after unfair trials on charges of “opposition” to government and antigovernment protests, on the basis of “confessions” made under torture while in custody.
SA’s commitment to the standards of the UN Human Rights Convention is meaningless to the ANC given its close and warm relations with Russia, Iran, Cuba and other gross human rights violators. This makes a mockery of what Nelson Mandela once said — that human rights would be the guiding light of the new SA’s foreign policy.
Allan Wolman
Tel Aviv, Israel
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
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