All Press Releases
31 March 2009
Lawyers for Human Rights welcomes the judgment of the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Ulde v Minister of Home Affairs which was delivered today, 31 March 2009. The SCA unanimously upheld the appeal against the decision of the Johannesburg High Court to dismiss an application by a Pakistani immigrant to declare his detention unlawful.Lawyers for Human Rights, acting as amicus curiae in this...
23 March 2009
Lawyers for Human Rights will approach the High Court in Pretoria tomorrow, Tuesday 24 March 2009, for an urgent order declaring the immigration detention centre located on the military grounds in Musina, unlawful.
Every month, approximately 15 000 Zimbabwean nationals are deported from a detention centre located on a military base outside of the town of Musina close to the Zimbabwean border...
18 March 2009
The Forced Migration Studies Programme (FMSP) at the University of Witwatersrand held a closed door roundtable discussion with the Department of Home Affairs officials on Friday 13 March 2009. The discussion centered around recommendations contained in a newly released FMSP study assessing refugee policy and service delivery at the country's five permanent refugee reception offices. The report,...
5 March 2009
Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), the international medical humanitarian organisation, today denounced the decision by South African authorities to close the ‘showground', a large open field in Musina town near the Zimbabwe border, where 3,000 - 4,000 Zimbabweans queue to apply for asylum and seek refuge each night.
The closure of the showgrounds demonstrates a...
18 February 2009
Lawyers for Human Rights condemns the arrests of Roy Bennett, MDC Treasurer-General and deputy Minister of Agriculture designate. Bennett has apparently been charged under section 61 of the repressive Public Order and Security Act: conspiring to acquire arms with a view to disrupting essential services.
We further condemn the arrests of human rights lawyers Tawanda Zhuwarara and Rose Hanzi of ...
9 February 2009
MEDIA RELEASE - 9 FEBRUARY 2009
LHR has lodged an urgent High Court application challenging the legality and conditions of the Soutpansberg Military Grounds detention centre in Musina. Further, the application challenges the blatant violation of the constitutional provision against the detention of children.
In contravention of the Immigration Act, the detention centre, commonly known as...
6 February 2009
06 February 2009
We, the undersigned organizations, are extremely concerned about the treatment of over a thousand Rohingyas from Burma and migrants from Bangladesh who have been forcibly expelled and abandoned in international waters by the Thai security forces since December 2008.
Over the past few weeks, several boats have been rescued off the coasts of Indonesia and the Andaman Islands of...
13 January 2009
Johannesburg - Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) strongly condemns Israel's aggressive military action in Gaza and supports recent statements by the United Nations and the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) that call for independent investigations into alleged violations of international humanitarian law. The UN's Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, has...
10 December 2008
Countries around the world must uphold the human rights of the estimated 1 million people held in immigration detention around the world and work to develop community-based alternatives, the International Coalition on the Detention of Refugees, Asylum Seekers and Migrants (IDC) said today, International Human Rights Day.
The IDC call comes following the findings of their recent global survey...
10 December 2008
Lawyers for Human Rights (LHR) today launched a report on monitoring immigration detention in South Africa highlighting the serious human rights concerns in South Africa's immigration detention facilities, in particular the privately operated facility at Lindela in Krugersdorp and the detention centre operated by the SAPS in Musina.
While prisons in South Africa fall under the monitoring...