Thai women in limbo at Lindela

18 March 2016 - 03:06 By Graeme Hosken

Dozens of Thai women - rescued in an anti-trafficking raid by Johannesburg police - are being illegally imprisoned by the Department of Home Affairs in its Lindela Repatriation Centre. Nearly 50 women have spent the past four months at the centre. This is despite a court order that the department must deal with the women's cases under the Prevention of Combating of Trafficking Persons Act.Their continued detention resulted in an urgent court application being brought before the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday for the release of 10 of them. Judgment is expected today.The women's lawyer, Owen Blumberg, declined to comment until today's judgment.Wednesday's court application follows a February court order by Johannesburg High Court Judge Lebogang Modiba, after four of the women - who cannot be named - approached her seeking an urgent intervention in their detention.Modiba ordered that the four, with the women rescued in the raid, be sent to a place of safety.In her ruling Modiba said the home affairs minister had told her there was a "strong likelihood that the detainees are people who had been trafficked".Modiba said the women were arrested during a raid on a Johannesburg hotel, "which was precipitated by information that the hotel was being operated as a brothel and used as a distribution centre for trafficking and smuggling of people into South Africa".Some of the women have been in South Africa since 2012.Modiba said trafficking violated people's "constitutionally entrenched rights to human dignity, right to equality, security and freedom".She found it "astonishing" that officials undertook such a large operation but failed to apply the appropriate legislation and potentially compromised the protection of the victims, with their actions constituting a "failure" of their constitutional duty...

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