The civil rights organisation AfriForum, in addressing the United Nations' (UN) Human Rights Council conference on issues in Geneva, Switzerland, appealed to the international community to condemn, in the strongest terms, the crisis proportions that farm murders have reached in South Africa.

At the conference Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, presented the secretariat of the UN's Human Rights Council and other prominent international role-players with copies of the book Land of Sorrow. The book deals with farm attacks in South Africa.

AfriForum alerted delegates to the fact that farm murders in South Africa have reached crisis proportions; yet the ANC is continuing its attempts to defend the use of the slogan ‘Kill the Boer'. "While the ANC argues that the slogan is not to be interpreted literally, farmers as well as their wives and children are literally being murdered on their farms," Kriel said.

Delegates strongly supported AfriForum's standpoint that violence against minorities should be denounced in the strongest terms.

Kriel added that the time has come for the ruling party in South Africa to answer to the international community for its justification of hate speech towards farmers, while scores of them are being murdered each year.

Statement issued by Kallie Kriel, CEO: AfriForum, November 29 2011

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