Transfer comes as US administration largely closes refugee admissions from international locations experiencing widespread violence and poverty.
A gaggle of 59 white Afrikaners from South Africa has arrived in the USA as a part of a refugee programme arrange by the administration of US President Donald Trump to supply sanctuary from what Trump has depicted as racial discrimination in opposition to white folks.
In a press convention on Monday, Trump mirrored the claims of a fable common on the far proper that white folks in South Africa have been subjected to systematic violence because the finish of white minority rule in that nation.
“It’s a genocide that’s happening,” Trump informed reporters on the White Home, a declare that has drawn criticism from authorities officers, information media, and even some Afrikaners themselves.
The transfer comes because the Trump administration blocks practically all refugee admissions from non-white international locations and leans into rhetoric about an “invasion” of immigrants from poor international locations.
Whereas folks fleeing widespread violence and persecution in international locations akin to Haiti and Afghanistan have discovered a closed door, Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane says that the Trump administration “has made a precedence of getting these folks [white South Africans] into the USA and paying for them to get right here”.
‘Flawed finish of the stick’
The South African government has known as Trump’s claims that Afrikaners face persecution “fully false”, noting that they’ve remained among the many richest and “most economically privileged” teams, even after the top of the apartheid system that upheld white minority management of the political, financial, and navy assets of the nation and denied primary rights to the Black South African majority.
South African whites nonetheless personal about three-quarters of all personal land within the nation, and have about 20 occasions the wealth of the Black majority, in accordance with the worldwide educational journal the Overview of Political Economic system.
“We expect that the American authorities has bought the incorrect finish of the stick right here, however we’ll proceed speaking to them,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a veteran of the wrestle to finish apartheid, stated on Monday.
Tensions between the Trump administration and the federal government of South Africa have been excessive, with the US expelling South Africa’s ambassador over earlier criticism of Trump and at odds with the African nation’s distinguished place in a case earlier than the Worldwide Court docket of Justice accusing US ally Israel of genocide in Gaza.
The Trump administration provided in February to resettle Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa, stating that they face discrimination and violence in opposition to Afrikaner farmers.
“I would like you all to know that you’re actually welcome right here and that we respect what you may have needed to take care of these previous few years,” Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau informed the group of Afrikaners who arrived within the US on Monday. “We respect the lengthy custom of your folks and what you may have completed over time.”
Invoice Frelick, refugee coverage director with Human Rights Watch, stated the fast-track strategy of bringing Afrikaners into the US was unprecedented.
“These are individuals who weren’t residing in refugee camps; who hadn’t fled their nation. They have been the group that was most related to the oppression of the Black majority by way of apartheid,” stated Frelick. “It’s not like these are among the many most susceptible refugees of the world.”