Protests in Nigeria, South Africa in support of Palestinian rights

Nigerians and South Africans joined tens of thousands of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in commemorating the first anniversary of the Great March of Return and Palestinian Land Day on Saturday.

On Saturday, hundreds took to the streets in Iwo, in a march organised by Nigerian Friends of Palestine. “Until freedom is attained we will remain committed to the Palestinian cause,” spokesperson Daood Imran Molaasan told the Afro-Palestine Newswire Service.

Today, we are defending a just cause and we need not be Palestinians or Muslims to do so

he added.

Other Nigerian rights activists and Muslim scholars have hailed Palestinians for resisting the occupation by Israel.

“The Palestinian struggle is about the existence of a generation of people who keep fighting, and they must continue to sustain the struggle until justice is achieved,” said Nigerian author and veteran broadcast journalist, Abdur-Razaq Abdus-Salam.

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South Africans also gathered at Constitutional Hill in Johannesburg for a tree-planting ceremony and protest organised by the Palestine Solidarity Alliance to commemorate Palestinian Land Day and the anniversary of the Great March of Return on Saturday.

Over 260 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army over the last year during protests that aim to challenge Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. Palestinians are protesting calling for an end to the 12-year Israeli siege on the enclave and to return to the homes from which their families were forcibly displaced to make way for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

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