Afriforum Male, English Thank you Madam Chair for the opportunity also to speak here, there are many levels of discrimination against minorities in South Africa. I want focus your attention on the farmland phenomenon in South Africa. A cold reality already confronted thousand of members of minority communities. The internationally acclaimed organisation Genocide Watch put South Africa on stage 5 of the 8 stages towards genocide. I will briefly explain why. The South African Government is refusing to release any statistics on farm attacks. South Africa’s leading authority on crime statistics, the Institute for Security Studies, has estimated the level of farm murders at about 120 per 100,000 per year. This is more than twice the murder rate on South African police officials and more three times than average South African murder rate, which is already one of the highest in the world. These farmers are often tortured for hours. Renowned criminologists have described the levels of brutality as similar to terrorist attacks. Examples are provided in our report. South African farmers have unfortunately became easy targets for electioneering politicians. It has become popular in the past time for leaders of the ruling party to abuse public platforms for the purpose of launching verbal attacks on South African farmers. Popular political songs such as Kill the Poor, Kill the Farmer and Shoot the Poor are only two examples. More examples are in our report. While farmers are being killed at a rate higher than any other group in our country, the South African government is de-prioritising the problem. I will give a few examples. Under the presidency of Nelson Mandela, farm murders were in fact a government priority and various steps were taken to address the crisis. In 2003 president Thamo Mbeki unexpectedly shut down the former commander system, which protected South African farmers. Mbeki promised that an alternative structure would be established to look after the safety of farmers. A decade has passed since then and this promise was never fulfilled. In 2007 farm attacks increased by about 25% after which our government made an announcement that no further statistics on this particular crime will be released. Currently, the South African government is simply denying that farmers are being targeted. Before coming here we have collected the support of over 60,000 people in a petition who begging of some form of intervention. With our report we have also attached a video clip with CCTV footage of an attempted farm attack, where the victim was lucky enough to survive. In conclusion, we want to call on the international community to assist us by confronting the South African government about its uncaring attitude towards brutal killing of a significant part of its own citizenry. Thank you very much.