S.African rights watchdog slams Cape terror wave

JOHANNEBSURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- South Africa's statutory Human Rights Commission (HRC) said on Friday that crime is threatening the country's young democracy, but warned against a disproportionate response.

In a statement responding to the wave of bomb attacks in Cape Town, the country's top tourist destination, the HRC said the state should use all its resources to end the plague.

"It is simply impossible for human rights to flourish under conditions that resemble a siege and it is wholly unacceptable that nameless and faceless criminals can hold a nation to ransom," the commission said.

There have been 20 bomb attacks in the past two years in the city. The latest was on Tuesday night, narrowly missing the province's top politician, Premier Gerald Morkel.

Prominent anti-crime magistrate Pieter Theron was shot dead in the driveway of his home a week ago by a man and a woman driving a stolen car that later exploded outside a gay bar in a busy Cape Town suburb, without causing serious injury.

No one has been convicted for any of the explosions and several witnesses preparing to testify about the bombing campaign have been killed.

But Safety and Security Minister Steve Tshwete has said repeatedly the attacks are the work of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), a Muslim vigilante group opposed to abortion, homosexuality, drugs and gangs.

The HRC, the country's post-apartheid rights watchdog, said witnesses should assist the police, adding: "South Africans have a duty to assist wherever possible in this process."

State officials have raised the possibility of amending the constitution enacted after the end of white rule in 1994 to authorize tough action against bombings.

But the HRC warned: "It is important that state action, and in particular that of the law enforcement agencies, takes place within the parameters of the Constitution and the law and that the debate on the proposed anti-terror legislation happens in a rational and dispassionate environment."

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