Yesterday a joint raid was conducted by the SAPS and JMPD in the vicinity of the Central Methodist Church (CMC) , Johannesburg. According to SAPS 39 people were arrested in Pritchard Street for the offence of "loitering". Those arrested included at least two patients who were queuing for treatment at the Medecins Sans Frontieres / Doctors Without Borders (MSF) Clinic at the CMC.

According to Dr Andreas Alga, an MSF medical doctor who visited those arrested:

"Two patients were arrested while they were queuing outside the clinic waiting to be treated. When we traced them to Johannesburg Central Police Station we found two more patients in police custody. They told us they had been arrested just after they left the clinic and they were still carrying their patient files with them. One of these two patients is on ARV treatment and he did not have his daily dose with him when he was arrested," says Dr Alga.

Dr Alga emphasised: "Police action like this victimises and intimidates vulnerable people queuing outside a medical facility and threatens to drive them away. It effectively punishes health-seeking behaviour of those in great need; people who struggle to access medical care elsewhere in the city."

The SAPS told the media that the arrests are part of crime prevention. But according to eye-witnesses the arrests resulted from an arbitrary swoop of the area with people being randomly rounded-up. Furthermore, the arrests come in the wake of previous police raids at the Church:

• In January 2008, over 1,000 people were arrested during a raid inside the Church. All were eventually released without charge.
• In July 2009, a late night raid was conducted in which over 350 people sleeping outside the Church were arrested for loitering. Again, they were released without charge.

These raids create a pattern of harassment of the homeless, predominantly refugees, from the CMC. In 2009 this prompted the CMC and human rights organisations to launch a High Court application to interdict further loitering arrests at the CMC and to strike down the loitering by-law as unconstitutional. The High Court application is pending. The latest arrests may require that the application be set down in court on an urgent basis.

Genuine crime prevention is necessary and to be lauded. But we condemn the latest raid and the unlawful arrests of people whose only crime is to be poor and homeless. We demand their immediate release and a public commitment from the government that such misuse of the loitering by-laws to ‘clean up' our streets for the World Cup cease immediately.

Issued jointly by: LEGAL RESOURCES CENTRE & AIDS LAW PROJECT