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A group of white South African Afrikaners have arrived in the United States as refugees after being given the status by the Trump administration.
On Monday (12 May), 59 individuals landed at an airport just outside Washington, D.C., on board a charter plane paid for by the US government following an executive order signed by US president Donald Trump in February.
The group is composed of white Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonists who first arrived in the African country in 1652.
According to NPR, the group of refugees will reside in various destinations across the US including Minnesota, Nevada and Idaho, and will be eligible for government benefits.
Their arrival comes as US president Trump claims they face discrimination in South Africa – an idea that is disputed by the South African government.
It also comes as the Trump administration has frozen all refugee admissions, including for applications from war zones.
When asked by reporters on Monday why he was prioritising white South Africans over victims of war and famine in other parts of the continent, Trump made the baseless claim that white South Africans are being killed.
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump claimed. “They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
Newly arrived Afrikaner 'refugees' greeted by US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher LandauGetty Images
Despite making up just 7 per cent of the population, whites in South Africa own around 70 per cent of commercial farmland.
Trump’s baseless claims of land grabs are based on a land reform law that was passed earlier this year, but which has seen zero land seized.
The government of South Africa has suggested that Trump has been taken in by fake news and disinformation.
“These people won’t be stopped from going, albeit under a false narrative,” government spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said. “There’s no legal or any factual basis for the executive order sanctioning this action. None of the provisions of international law on the definition of refugees are applicable in this case.”
“Disturbingly, one has to admit that our sovereignty as a country is being grossly undermined and violated by the United States,” Magwenya added.
On Monday, the Episcopal Church in the US announced it would not be assisting the federal government with refugees after it was asked to help resettle the white Afrikaners.
“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe wrote in a letter to the church’s followers.
The resettlement has also been slammed as “moral ugliness” by Richard Stengel, an ex-official under the Barack Obama administration and a former national editor of Time magazine.
“These are the descendants of the people who created the most diabolical system of white supremacy in human history, apartheid,” said Stengel on MSNBC.
“They’re not directly responsible for it, but it was a system that actually moved Black people off of the arable land. So they inherited the land that the Black people had to give up. It was called forced removal.”
He continued, arguing that white Afrikaners have become the “darling of these right-wing, white supremacist movements around the world” and called Trump’s resettlement “a farce and a sham and a moral ugliness”.
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