To mark the international Palestine Political Prisoners Day (17 April), the Palestine solidarity human rights organisation, BDS South Africa, will be holding a protest at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the world (backed by Microsoft Founder and Billionaire Bill Gates). The protest will be calling on the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to divest from the controversial security company G4S due to G4S Security's complicity in Israel's illegal detention, torture and incarceration of Palestinian political prisoners.
 
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation currently owns shares worth more than $170 million (over 1 billion rands) in the notorious security company, G4S Security. G4S, the world largest security company, has been the target of several successful international boycott actions and campaigns in recent years due to its controversial involvement in what activists term “Israeli human rights abuses and illegal detainment of Palestinian political prisoners”.
 
PALESTINIAN PRISONER DAY PROTEST - SOUTH AFRICA
Calling on Bill Gates Foundation to drop G4S complicit in Israeli prisons & torture

When: Tomorrow, Thursday (17 April)
Time: 11h00- 15h00
Where: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation House,
Corner Glenhove Road and 9th Street, Houghton/Rosebank, Johannesburg
Landmark: Diagonally across from McDonalds in Rosebank
Contact: 0849843078 / 0842119988
Speaker: Several Former Anti-Apartheid South African Political Prisoners, including Mpho Masemola (Chairperson of the Ex-political prisoners Association of South Africa)
 
Earlier this month Palestinian organizations wrote to the Gates Foundation calling on the Gates Foundation to divest from G4S (click here to see). That letter to the Gates Foundation went unanswered. Palestinian organizations (led by the Palestinian prisoner organization Addameer together with endorsements from over 150 other groups) subsequently, due to the non-response from the Gates Foundation, called on all peace-loving peoples around the world to organize protests this 17th of April (the international Palestinian Political Prisoner Day) outside the offices of the Gates Foundation in the various countries where the Gates Foundation operates. The protest in Johannesburg is one of many that will be taking place on the 17th of April.

Mthunzi Mbuli, a campaigner at BDS South Africa said: "As South Africans we painfully identify with the plight of the Palestinians in general and Palestinian prisoners in particular. When we see the Israeli imprisonment of our Palestinian comrades, we are reminded of how our mothers and fathers were imprisoned during Apartheid. We find it disturbing that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the notorious security company G4S which is complicit and is basically profiteering from Israel’s imprisonment, detention and torture of Palestinians - including children. We are disappointed that the Gates Foundation has chosen to not respond to the requests from Palestinian human rights organisation that the Foundation divest from G4S, given this non-response, we will be staging a protest."