Tutu condemns SA, US murders

FOUNDATION: KHOSA, FLOYD KILLED BECAUSE OF RACE

‘Actions of soldiers, police reflect painful truth of inequality.’

The “distasteful truth” linking the deaths of Collins Khosa and George Floyd at the hands of security forces in South Africa and the US is that the lives of certain categories of people in our societies are considered more precious than others, according to the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation.

Khosa was allegedly beaten to death by members of the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) in Alexandra in March.

Floyd was killed in the US last Monday by police after being arrested on suspicion of using a counterfeit banknote.

A video taken by a bystander shows an officer kneeling on his neck as he is pinned to the ground. At one point, Floyd is heard saying: “I can’t breathe.”

Foundation chief executive Piyushi Kotecha said yesterday in a statement that Floyd’s last words as he was suffocated under the knee of Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin “speak for billions of human beings who are fundamentally disempowered because they are poor, because they are black, because they are women, because they are gay, because they are of ‘other’ faiths, because they are defenceless… because they fall on the wrong side of their society’s power divide, the systemic inequality gap”.

Khosa died at the end of March, soon after being strangled, slammed against a wall and hit with the butt of a machine gun by soldiers overzealously enforcing Covid-19 lockdown regulations, according to his family.

The soldiers involved in the incident have been cleared by a defence force inquiry, but a police investigation is ongoing.

“Although Khosa and Floyd technically enjoyed the same constitutional and human rights in their respective countries as their white, wealthy or otherwise privileged compatriots, the actions of the soldiers and police who punished them reflected the painful truth of seemingly different values that societies and their personnel place on different lives.”

According to Kotecha, the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the globe is a summoning call for collective action and for a new kind of leadership with the courage to focus on sustaining our humanity and earth.

“Inequality is not sustainable. It dehumanises people and profoundly limits our ability to mitigate crises,” he said.

“The tens of thousands of citizens demonstrating nonviolently against racism and injustice [in the US] deserve unequivocal applause.

“Conversely, opportunistic looting and destruction of property witnessed in the US in response to Floyd’s death must be unequivocally condemned.” – News24 Wire