AfriForum wants the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to investigate the “indefensible and irrational violation of civil liberties in South Africa” with the containment measures during the Covid 19 pandemic.
The organization filed the complaint Thursday.
AfriForum points out that the UN has already expressed its concern about the “toxic containment culture” and its aggressive enforcement in South Africa.
The High Court in Pretoria declared some of the measures at Level 4 and Level 3 earlier this week unconstitutional and invalid.
Ernst Roets, AfriForum’s Head of Policy and Action, said in a statement that the complaint was related to the brutality with which the police and military treat people, the irrational measures that violate the public’s most basic freedoms, as well as the fact that the government use the pandemic as an opportunity to promote “a particular racial ideology”.
Among other things, the complaint refers to specific incidents of cruelty, irrational measures such as those related to forced quarantine and the sale of tobacco products, and the government’s forced quarantine plans for all those who test positive for Covid-19 – whether or not the people themselves cannot isolate and quarantine facilities do not meet the necessary standards.
“The fact that more than 230,000 criminal cases have been filed since the beginning of the state of restraint against people who allegedly violated the restraint measures are evidence of the draconian nature of the state of restraint.”
