{"id":38358,"date":"2026-06-29T16:45:57","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:45:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/?post_type=news&#038;p=38358"},"modified":"2026-06-29T16:45:57","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T14:45:57","slug":"amnesty-international-sa-warns-against-illegal-citizen-arrests-ahead-of-marches","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/news\/amnesty-international-sa-warns-against-illegal-citizen-arrests-ahead-of-marches\/","title":{"rendered":"Amnesty International SA warns against illegal citizen arrests ahead of marches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Amnesty International South Africa (SA) has called for urgent political leadership to address rising xenophobia ahead of a June 30 deadline set by civic movements for undocumented migrants to leave the country.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The human rights organisation warned that the country must avoid a repetition of the devastating 2008 xenophobic violence, which left 62 people dead. The warning comes as anti-migrant groups plan co-ordinated marches across at least seven of SA&#8217;s nine provinces tomorrow. While supporting the constitutional right to peaceful protest, Amnesty International Media and Communications Officer Genevieve Quintal stressed that private citizens have zero legal power to enforce immigration laws.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Under SA law, private individuals have no authority to demand documentation or arrest people suspected of being undocumented. Authorities clarified that citizen&#8217;s arrests under Section 42 of the Criminal Procedure Act are strictly limited to stopping serious Schedule 1 crimes like murder or sexual assault, while the Immigration Act reserves all migration-related arrest powers exclusively for authorised state immigration officers.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;ChannelAfrica&#8211;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20596,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[78,26,305],"class_list":["post-38358","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-featured","news-type-general_news","news-type-special-projects","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Amnesty International calls for calm ahead of nationwide anti-migrant protests","published_date":"2026-06-29 16:41:37","news_description":"Amnesty International calls for calm ahead of nationwide anti-migrant protests","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38359,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/38358\/revisions\/38359"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=38358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}