Xenophobia In South Africa: State’s Complicity With Gangs And Vigilantes Is Threatening Its Ability To Govern

An anti-immigrant march in South Africa, June 2026. Screengrab/YouTube/Al Jazeera English

BY LOREN B. LANDAU AND JEAN PIERRE MISAGO

Marches, Mozambicans murdered, state-sponsored evacuations, a nationally televised presidential address. Anti-immigrant mobilisation has again drawn the world’s attention to South Africa. The continental backlash threatens tourism, trade, diplomacy and investment opportunities in Africa’s largest economy, and is derailing its constitutional democracy.

Many citizens demand the country restore its sovereignty – the state’s ability to govern itself and determine its own laws within its borders – by tightening border controls. Parties promise to deliver walls, raids and deportations.

What these popular debates over sovereignty and border control overlook is that politics is not defined on the borders. It comes from control over resources and production. In South Africa’s past, this was mines. Now it is cities, townships, and the infrastructure that connects them. This is where the country’s political future is being forged. This is where sovereignty is being lost. And the state is helping to make this happen.

Over the past 20 years, we have investigated the politics of migration and xenophobia in South Africa. Together we founded Xenowatch and the Mobility Governance Lab to document incidents of xenophobic discrimination and evaluate strategies to promote secure mobility and social cohesion.

In a paper published in 2022 we argued that xenophobic mobilisation in South Africa was not merely a grassroots phenomenon by frustrated communities. Nor is it the result of a “third force” or external actors out to embarrass the country. Rather, we argue, it is a political enterprise co-produced by vigilante groups and the state through acts of commission and omission. These include failing to censure those who exclude through violence and other forms of illegal conduct. It also includes migration policies and practices that demonise those from other countries.

This has resulted in the state consistently legitimising and rewarding the criminal conduct of vigilante groups.

Our research shows that xenophobic discrimination has become a feature of post-apartheid South Africa’s socio-political landscape. We argue that the only interventions capable of disrupting xenophobic mobilisation are those that lower, or ideally eliminate, its political, economic and social benefits. This must include holding people accountable for their actions, consistent and impartial application of the law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants, and joint efforts by the state and civil society to counter anti-migrant mobilisation.

On the ground

Our investigations show that in townships, “community development” associations run protection rackets determining who can live, build, or conduct business in their “communities”. They work in collaboration with local police to remove unwanted people.

Elected leaders often look away or embrace them to win votes. This is not about enforcing law or creating opportunities for all. It is not about immigration control. It is about using social division to extract resources and build power. There is often strong local support for these measures and those leading them. However, they are illegal and institutionalise state complicity in extractive violence that weakens, rather than enforces, the rule of law.

From mid-2025, Operation Dudula – an anti-immigrant social movement that has now registered as a political party – and March and March – a self-described “grassroots” civic organisation focused on illegal immigration – systematically blockaded public health facilities, denying migrants access to at least 53 clinics across KwaZulu-Natal, Limpopo, Mpumalanga and Gauteng provinces.

The South African Human Rights Commission found that despite engagement with the Department of Health and the National Commissioner of Police (both of which committed to intervening) vigilante conduct continued. In some instances the police refused to take statements from victims.

Despite court rulings interdicting Operation Dudula, the unlawful operations continued across the country.

Without state enforcement, court orders are only paper. Rather than being sanctioned, March and March confirmed that it had

an agreement with the SAPS (South African Police Service) and Metro Police, which don’t interfere with them.

A co-authored political enterprise

Between 2022 and 2025, Xenowatch recorded 406 verified incidents resulting in 75 deaths. This translates into an average of 102 xenophobic discrimination incidents per year.

In 2025 alone, 151 incidents were recorded. In the first five months of 2026, a further 22 verified incidents were recorded. Of the 22 incidents, 14 were violent attacks that largely followed anti-migrant protests in some parts of the country.

The recent attacks resulted in at least four people dead and hundreds displaced. Despite this, officials regularly argue this is “normal” criminality. In 2008, 2010, and again in 2026, there have been accusations of a third force determined to undermine the country’s successes or punish it for its positions on Israel and Russia.

Rather than intervene effectively, the government has addressed the rise of these political formations with a National Action Plan on Racism and Xenophobia. It contains almost no plan. Rather than marshal state resources against the anti-immigrant campaigns, it focuses on education and public events intended to foster goodwill and social cohesion. Debates and dialogues are welcome. But they do little to erode the power of gangsters and criminal networks.

When the state has acted, it helps reinforce precisely the kind of political fragmentation and profit taking it purports to prevent. Its largest police operation to protect foreigners – Operation Fiela – resulted in police demanding additional bribes from migrants, a loss of economic activity and tax revenue, and only a small reduction in immigrant numbers.

All this was done in the name of restoring citizens’ faith in the immigration system. There were winners: not immigrants or citizens, but law enforcers who line their pockets and boost their operational budgets.

A recent meeting convened at the official seat of government, the Union Buildings, provides another example. On 25 May 2026, senior government ministers convened a high-level meeting with the leadership of March and March and other organisations “to address illegal immigration and the rise in anti-immigration protests in the country”.

In our view, granting groups like this access to the highest political office lends them legitimacy and gives them a place in the South African political system. Their words are broadcast on national television and radio stations. Their ultimatums come to represent legitimate political demands.

The state may temporarily quell crises. But it emboldens these groups to carry on. The results are a politics of fragmentation and self-made laws.

What needs to be done

Protecting South Africa’s constitutional democracy requires three things done simultaneously.

First, genuine accountability for perpetrators: not symbolic arrests, but prosecutions that result in meaningful consequences for instigators and perpetrators.

Second, consistent and impartial enforcement of the rule of law to address both illegal migration and criminal vigilante exclusion of migrants.

Third, the building of political will and muscle by the state and civil society, to hold politicians accountable when their rhetoric or conduct emboldens exclusionary violence and practices. This is not an issue of migration management and border control. It is one of sovereignty and law.

Civil society organisations are already pursuing litigation and winning cases in court. But court orders flouted with impunity are not victories; they are further evidence of the problem. Without the political muscle to hold the state accountable for its complicity, the co-creation of exclusion will continue.

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Millions Rally Against Authoritarianism, While The White House Portrays Protests As Threats – A Political Scientist Explains

Demonstrators face California National Guard members outside the Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 9, 2025. Apu Gomes/AFP via Getty Images

BY JEREMY PRESSMAN

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,

UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT

At the end of a week when President Donald Trump sent Marines and the California National Guard to Los Angeles to quell protests, Americans across the country turned out in huge numbers to protest Trump’s attempts to expand his power. In rallies on June 14, 2025, organized under the banner “No Kings,” millions of protesters decried Trump’s immigration roundups, cuts to government programs and what many described as his growing authoritarianism.

The protests were largely peaceful, with relatively few incidents of violence.

Protests and the interactions between protesters and government authorities have a long history in the United States. From the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights movement, LBGTQ Stonewall uprising, the Tea Party movement and Black Lives Matter, public protest has been a crucial aspect of efforts to advance or protect the rights of citizens.

But protests can also have other effects.

In the last few months, large numbers of anti-Trump protesters have come out in the streets across the U.S., on occasions like the April 5 Hands Off protests against safety net budget cuts and government downsizing. Many of those protesters assert they are protecting American democracy.

The Trump administration has decried these protesters and the concept of protest more generally, with the president recently calling protesters “troublemakers, agitators, insurrectionists.” A few days before the June 14 military parade in Washington, President Donald Trump said of potential protesters: “this is people that hate our country, but they will be met with very heavy force.”

Trump’s current reaction is reminiscent of his harsh condemnation of the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020. In 2022, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that Trump had asked about shooting protesters participating in demonstrations after the 2020 shooting of George Floyd.

As co-director of the Crowd Counting Consortium, which compiles information on each day’s protests in the U.S., I understand that protests sometimes can advance the goals of the protest movement. They also can shape the goals and behavior of federal or state governments and their leaders.

Opportunity for expressing or suppressing democracy

Protests are an expression of democracy, bolstered by the right to free speech and “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

At the same time, clamping down on protests is one way to rebut challenges to government policies and power.

For a president intent on the further centralization of executive power, or even establishing a dictatorship, protest suppression provides multiple opportunities and pitfalls.

Widespread, well-attended demonstrations can represent a mass movement in favor of democracy or other issues as well as serve as an opportunity to expand participation even further. Large events often lead to significant press coverage and plenty of social media posting. The protests may heighten protesters’ emotional connection to the movement and increase fundraising and membership numbers of sponsoring organizations.

Though it is not an ironclad law, research shows that when at least 3.5% of the total population is involved in a demonstration, protesters usually prevail over their governments. That included the Chilean movement in the 1980s that toppled longtime dictator Augusto Pinochet. Chileans used not only massive demonstrations but also a wide array of creative tactics like a coordinated slowdown of driving and walking, neighbors banging pots outside homes simultaneously, and singing together.

Protests are rarely only about protesting. Organizers usually seek to involve participants in many other activities, whether that is contacting their elected officials, writing letters to the editor, registering to vote or running a food drive to help vulnerable populations.

In this way of thinking, participation in a major street protest like No Kings is a gateway into deeper activism.

Risks and opportunities

Of course, protest leaders cannot control everyone in or adjacent to the movement.

Other protesters with a different agenda, or agitators of any sort, can insert themselves into a movement and use confrontational tactics like violence against property or law enforcement.

In one prominent example from Los Angeles, someone set several self-driving cars on fire. Other Los Angeles examples included some protesters’ throwing things like water bottles at officers or engaging in vandalism. Police officers also use coercive measures such as firing chemical irritants and pepper balls at protesters.

When leaders want to concentrate executive power and establish an autocracy, where they rule with absolute power, protests against those moves could lead to a mass rejection of the leader’s plans. That is what national protest groups like 50501 and Indivisible are hoping for and why they aimed to turn out millions of people at the No Kings protests on June 14.

But while the Trump administration faces risks from protests, it also may see opportunities.
Misrepresenting and quashing dissent

Protests can serve as a justification for a nascent autocrat to further undermine democratic practices and institutions.

Take the recent demonstrations in Los Angeles protesting the Trump administration’s immigration raids conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

Autocrats seek to politicize independent institutions like the armed forces. The Los Angeles protests offered the opportunity for that. Trump sent troops from the California National Guard and Marines to Los Angeles to contain the protests. That domestic deployment of the military is rare but not unheard of in U.S. history.

And the deployment was ordered against the backdrop of the president’s partisan June 10 speech at a U.S. military base in North Carolina. The military personnel in attendance cheered and applauded many of Trump’s political statements. Both the speech and audience reactions to it appeared to violate the U.S. military norm of nonpartisanship.

This deployment of military personnel in a U.S. city also dovetails with the expansion of executive power characteristic of autocratic leaders. It is rare that presidents call up the National Guard; the Guard is traditionally under the control of the state governor.

Yet the White House disregarded that Los Angeles’ mayor and California’s governor both objected to the deployment.

The state sued the Trump administration over the deployment. The initial court decision sided with California officials, declaring the federal government action “illegal.” The Trump administration has appealed.

Autocrats seek to spread disinformation. In the case of the Los Angeles protests, the Trump administration’s narrative depicted a chaotic, gang-infested city with violence everywhere. Reports on the ground refuted those characterizations. The protests, mostly peaceful, were confined to a small part of the city, about a 10-block area.

More generally, a strong executive leader and their supporters often want to quash dissent. In the Los Angeles example, doing that has ranged from the military deployment itself to targeting journalists covering the story to arresting and charging prominent opponents like SEIU President David Huerta or shoving and handcuffing U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat.

The contrast on June 14 was striking. In Washington, D.C., Trump reviewed a parade of troops, tanks and planes, leaning into a display of American military power.

At the same time, from rainy Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to sweltering Yuma, Arizona, millions of protesters embraced their First Amendment rights to oppose the president. It perfectly illustrated the dynamic driving deep political division today: the executive concentrating power while a sizable segment of the people resist.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

US Protesters March Against Police Slayings Of Black Men

Film director Spike Lee, and others, march on Pennsylvania Avenue toward Capitol Hill in Washington, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2104, during the rally Justice for All march and rally. More than 10,000 protesters are converging on Washington in an effort to bring attention to the deaths of unarmed black men at the hands of police. Civil rights organizations are holding a march to the Capitol on Saturday with the families of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two unarmed black men who died in incidents with white police officers.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Demonstrators nationwide protesting the fatal shootings of unarmed black men killed by police chanted "I can't breathe!" ''Hands up, don't shoot!" and waved signs that read "Black lives matter!" as family members of three victims packed a stage in front of the U.S. Capitol, urging thousands of supportive marchers to keep pressing for changes to the criminal justice system.

The march in Washington on Saturday — attended by family members for Michael Brown and Eric Garner, who were killed by police in recent months, and Amadou Diallo, who was fatally shot by police more than 15 years ago — coincided with nationwide demonstrations that spanned from iconic Fifth Avenue in New York to the streets of San Francisco and the steps of the Boston Statehouse. Most were peaceful protests, although about two dozen people were arrested in the Massachusetts capital for disorderly conduct.

"My husband was a quiet man, but he's making a lot of noise right now," said Washington protest marcher Esaw Garner, widow of Eric Garner, 43, who died in July after being put in a chokehold by New York City police during an arrest for allegedly selling loose, untaxed cigarettes.

"His voice will be heard. I have five children in this world and we are fighting not just for him but for everybody's future, for everybody's past, for everybody's present, and we need to make it strong."

Nationally, chanting demonstrators also staged "die-ins" as they lay down across intersections and in one city briefly scuffled with police blocking an onramp to a highway. New York City police said two officers were assaulted by protesters on the Brooklyn Bridge when they tried to arrest a man who was attempting to toss a garbage can onto police officers below. Some marchers then blocked traffic on the bridge for about an hour. Police said the officers were treated for bumps and bruises, including a broken nose. Police say there have been no arrests in that incident, but a backpack full of hammers and a mask was found.

Organizers had predicted 5,000 people at the Washington march, but the crowd appeared to far outnumber that. They later said they believed as many as 25,000 had shown up. It was not possible to verify the numbers; Washington police do not release crowd estimates.

Garner's mother, Gwen Carr, called the demonstrations a "history-making moment." "It's just so overwhelming to see all who have come to stand with us today," she said. "I mean, look at the masses. Black, white, all races, all religions. ... We need to stand like this at all times."

Joining the Garners in Washington were speakers from the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old killed in Ohio as he played with a pellet gun in a park, and the mother of Amadou Diallo, who in 1999 was shot and killed in the Bronx by four New York City police officers.

Diallo's mother, Kadiatou Diallo, reflected on how the same issues being debated today were debated when her son was killed more than 15 years ago. "We've been there so many times," she said. "Today we are standing still and demanding the same thing."

The Rev. Al Sharpton helped organize the marches. "Members of Congress, beware we're serious ...," Sharpton said in Washington. "When you get a ring-ding on Christmas, it might not be Santa; it may be Rev. Al coming to your house."

Several speakers asked the crowd to chant, "I can't breathe." Garner, 43, had gasped those words before his death. Some protesters also wore those words on shirts. Protests — some violent — have occurred around the nation since grand juries last month declined to indict the officers involved in the deaths of Garner and Michael Brown, 18, shot and killed by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. Before the crowd started marching, Sharpton directed, "Don't let no provocateurs get you out of line. ... We are not here to play big shot. We are here to win."

Washington, D.C., and U.S. Park Police said they had made no arrests in the capital protests, though a small group of protesters split off after the march and briefly occupied various intersections in downtown Washington. In Boston, about two dozen people were arrested for disorderly conduct after scuffling with officers blocking an Interstate 93 onramp near the Nashua Street Jail.

The noisy march through the heart of Manhattan swelled to at least 25,000 people, police said. It snarled traffic but remained peaceful, with no arrests reported by late afternoon. On Saturday night, some protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, blocking traffic in both directions.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets of San Francisco and Oakland on Saturday. Oakland police said at least 45 people were arrested for crimes such as vandalism, failure to disperse and resisting arrest following a largely peaceful protest. Meanwhile, at the University of California, Berkeley, police removed life-sized photographs of lynching victims that had been hung at the campus. Investigators believe they were connected to a smaller protest in Berkeley at noon. Berkeley protest organizers said they didn't know where they came from.

"We hope that it's someone who wanted to bring attention to the issue," said one of the organizers, Spencer Pritchard. In New York, the thousands of demonstrators included family members of people killed by New York City police going back decades.

Donna Carter, 54, marched with her boyfriend, whose teenage son was shot and killed by police in the 1990s while carrying a toy gun. "It's good to see people of all colors here to say enough is enough," said Carter, who's black. "I'm a parent and every child that's killed feels like my child."

Others were there to show their outrage, including Rich Alexandro, 47, who carried a handmade sign with dozens of names of victims of police killings in which officers were never charged. "It just seems like the cops are Teflon," Alexandro said. "There's no justice."

On the eve of Saturday's nationwide protests, demonstrators in Nashville, Tennessee, staged "die-ins" in the country music capital's honky-tonk district Friday night while tourists took their pictures.

Politicians and others have talked about the need for better police training, body cameras and changes in the grand jury process to restore faith in the legal system. Terry Baisden, 52, of Baltimore said she is "hopeful change is coming" and that the movement is not part of a fleeting flash of anger.

She said she hasn't protested before but felt compelled to because "changes in action, changes in belief, happen in numbers." D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said the Washington march was peaceful. She mingled with the crowd and said she wanted to show solidarity with the marchers.

"This is one of the most well-organized events I've seen," Lanier said. Other groups including Ferguson Action conducted "Day of Resistance" movements all around the country.

Online:

Justice for All March http://nationalactionnetwork.net/march-police/

National Day of Resistance: http://fergusonaction.com/day-of-resistance/

HK Activists Start Bigger Protest Amid Standoff

Protesting students climb on top of electrical boxes as they occupy main streets in Hong Kong, China, Sunday, Sept. 28, 2014. Riot police in Hong Kong on Saturday arrested scores of students who stormed the government headquarters compound during a night of scuffles to protest China's refusal to allow genuine democratic reforms in the semiautonomous city.

HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong activists kicked off a long-threatened mass civil disobedience protest Sunday to challenge Beijing over restrictions on voting reforms, escalating the battle for democracy in the former British colony after police arrested dozens of student demonstrators.

The announcement by civil leaders came after a big crowd of tens of thousands turned out around midnight Saturday to support the student protesters who stormed into a courtyard of the government complex and scuffled with police wielding pepper spray. Police arrested at least 74 people, including some in their teens.

The night passed peacefully as more than 1,000 exhausted and weary protesters — most of them students — remained on the streets outside government headquarters. They slept wearing face masks and makeshift protective gear of Saran-wrapped arms, cheap plastic raincoats and goggles, as tired-looking riot police looked on. More students anxiously hurried to join them Sunday morning, some saying they didn't want to leave their friends in fear police would crack down.

Leaders of Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a broader movement fighting for democratic reform, said they were starting their mass protest by continuing the sit-in begun earlier by a separate group of student demonstrators.

The Occupy Central movement had originally planned to paralyze the Asian financial hub's central business district on Wednesday, but organizers moved up the start of their protest and changed the location in an apparent bid to harness momentum from the student rally outside the government complex in the southern Chinese city.

Democracy supporters are demanding that China's Communist leaders allow fully democratic elections in 2017. China, which took control of the former British colony in 1997, has promised that Hong Kong's top leader can be chosen through universal suffrage. But tensions over Hong Kong's political future boiled over after China's legislature last month ruled out letting the public nominate candidates, instead insisting they be screened by a committee of Beijing loyalists similar to the one that currently picks the city's leader.

Hong Kong's young people have been among the most vocal supporters of full democracy in recent years, fueled by anger over widening inequality. They also fear that Beijing's tightening grip is eroding the city's rule of law and guaranteed civil liberties unseen on the mainland such as freedom of speech.

Organizers of Occupy Central said they want Beijing to abandon its decision and the Hong Kong government to resume political reform consultations "The courage of the students and members of the public in their spontaneous decision to stay has touched many Hong Kong people," the group said in a statement. "Yet, the government has remained unmoved. As the wheel of time has reached this point, we have decided to arise and act."

The protest at the government headquarters followed a weeklong strike by thousands of students demanding China's Communist leaders allow Hong Kong fully democratic elections in 2017. University and college students who had spent the week boycotting classes were joined Friday by a smaller group of high school students.

Organizers estimated that 50,000 people had flooded the streets around the government complex at the peak of the protest. Police did not give an estimate. At least 34 people have been injured since the protest began, including four police officers and 11 government staff and guards, authorities said. One of the officers suffered a gash after being poked by one of the umbrellas the protesters have been using to deflect pepper spray.

Police issued a news release urging the protesters to leave peacefully and avoid obstructing officers, saying that otherwise they would "soon take actions to restore public order." Many young protesters appeared conflicted that their protest was morphing into Occupy Central.

"A lot of students left as soon as Occupy made the announcement they were starting their occupation," said Vito Leung, 24, a recent university graduate. "I think they were really forcing it. This was always a separate student movement with similar goals but different directions. I don't think it should be brought together like this," said Leung, who was vowing to stay until police released Joshua Wong, the 17-year-old leader of the activist group Scholarism.

Wong was among the first of the protesters to be arrested after storming the government complex, and was carried away by four officers. A recent high school graduate, he gained prominence two years ago after he organized protests that forced Hong Kong's government to back off plans to introduce a Chinese national education curriculum that some feared was a form of brainwashing.

Mexican President Faces Protest On California Trip

Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, R-Twin Peaks, calls for the release of Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, who was detained by the Mexican government for crossing the border with weapons, during a rally outside the Stanford Mansion where Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto will appear with Gov. Jerry Brown, in Sacramento, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014.

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. (AP) — Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto met Tuesday with lawmakers and swapped praise with Gov. Jerry Brown, but not all legislators rolled out the welcome mat at a luncheon held on the final day of his visit to California.

About 150 people, many waving American flags or holding signs, rallied across the street from the historic Stanford Mansion to call for the release of a Marine who is being detained in Mexico. At least three Republican lawmakers rejected the lunch invitation from Brown as a way to protest Mexico's incarceration of Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, who has been held since April after crossing the border with weapons.

A total of 19 Assembly Republicans who planned to attend the lunch signed a letter to Pena Nieto demanding the release of the Marine. "It's so nice to have teamwork for a change," said state Assemblyman Tim Donnelly, a former gubernatorial candidate.

Donnelly was the only lawmaker to join the protesters on the street. "The president is here and the governor could just say, 'Could you do me a favor?' But he refuses to," said protester Edward Doolin of Vacaville.

While the demonstrators were kept across the street from the mansion, their chants of "Free our Marine" could be heard at the outdoor wine-and-appetizers reception that was being held for Pena Nieto. The governor, president and lawmakers then dined under an outdoor tent on smoked chicken, locally grown tomatoes and squash, and wine from Napa Valley vineyards.

Brown and Pena Nieto gave celebratory remarks to reporters and attendees before the lunch but did not take questions. They generally repeated comments they made the day before in Los Angeles. Brown said California and Mexico hold the promise of a "brighter future" while Pena Nieto praised the Democratic governor for his policies toward immigrants "whether or not they have legal status."

Neither spoke about the protesters or addressed the Tahmooressi case. Some Republican lawmakers, however, were critical of their colleagues protesting the visit of the Mexican president. State Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, a Republican from Oceanside and a former Marine, said it did not help the process of trying to get Tahmooressi, an Afghanistan war veteran, back to the U.S.

"This is simply not the time to play politics when the well-being of this veteran's life hangs in the balance," Chavez said in a statement. He said members of Congress were working behind the scenes to resolve the matter.

Assemblyman Don Wagner of Irvine criticized Donnelly directly, saying a sidewalk protest by a member of the Legislature is not an effective strategy. "We do not need to stand on the street shouting the question when we can attend the lunch and ask the question directly," Wagner said in a statement.

Brown's lunch invitation was sent to every state lawmaker, and it appeared that a majority from the Assembly and the Senate attended. Reporters were barred from the lunch after the opening remarks, raising questions about whether it violated California's open meetings law.

"This isn't a policy meeting; it's a lunch," said Brown spokesman Evan Westrup, when asked why reporters could not attend. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger held a similar event in 2010 that also banned reporters.

Later Tuesday, Pena Nieto is scheduled to address a joint-session of the Legislature. His visit follows a trip to Mexico by Brown earlier in the summer, during which the governor discussed climate change and trade.

Mexico is California's largest export market.

A Year Later, Protest's Bloody End Divides Egypt

Wounded supporters of ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi lie on the floor of a makeshift hospital at a sit-in at Cairo's Nasr City district, Egypt. The scene on Aug. 14, 2013, was the start of the biggest massacre in modern Egyptian history, at least 624 people were killed during 12 hours of mayhem in Cairo’s Rabaah el-Adawiyah Square, though rights groups have said the toll may be several hundred higher.

CAIRO, Egypt (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Around 6:30 a.m., police armored vehicles rumbled up to the barricades at the edges of the anti-government sit-in where thousands of Islamists had camped out for weeks in a Cairo square.

First came tear gas. Then quickly, police started using machine guns. Every five minutes, student Mahmoud el-Iddrissi remembers, they swept the barricade with bullets. A friend next to him stood to throw a firecracker and immediately fell, shot in his neck and shoulder.

The scene on Aug. 14, 2013, was the start of the biggest massacre in modern Egyptian history, as security forces crushed the sit-in by Islamist supporters of Mohammed Morsi, the elected president who had been removed by the military a month earlier. At least 624 people were killed during 12 hours of mayhem in Cairo's Rabaah el-Adawiyah Square, though rights groups have said the toll may be several hundred higher.

An Associated Press investigation into the day shows that commanders gave security forces virtually carte blanche to use deadly force. Authorities contend police only responded with live ammunition on anyone who fired on them — and eight policemen were killed by gunmen in the square during the assault.

But broad orders given to the security forces, revealed to AP, emphasized crushing resistance. The orders to police were to "act according to the situation and by degrees of escalation," two generals in the Interior Ministry, which is in charge of the police, told the AP. But also, security forces were told to expect protesters to have weapons and were free to swiftly move to eliminate them, they said.

"We explained earlier to them that self-defense is legitimate and they will not be subjected to prosecution later on," one general said. Steps were taken to ensure that. One of the generals said ammunition was brought to the troops from multiple storehouses to obfuscate its origin. Release logs were covered up, he said, so they could not be used as evidence if any policemen were prosecuted, as had happened previously after the protests against Mubarak.

A few days before the assault, a top Interior Ministry official gave a fiery speech to Central Security troops vowing revenge for policemen killed by Islamic militants. "The blood of our sons in the police will not go in vain," he told them, according to the generals. The two generals spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the planning.

Interviews with more than 20 surviving protesters, security officials and diplomats also uncovered another key factor. Both the military-backed government and Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, the main force behind the protest, staunchly resisted any concessions that international mediators hoped could avert the disaster. While giving mixed signals to mediators, the military-backed government never wavered from its stance that the sit-in had to be removed, and the Brotherhood and its allies increasingly committed their cause on an all-or-nothing stand in Rabaah.

The sit-in arose in response to rallies by millions of Egyptians demanding the removal of Morsi, the Brotherhood leader who had become Egypt's first freely elected president a year earlier. After his July 3, 2013, ouster by then-army chief Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, the sit-in swelled with crowds of families camped out in hundreds of tents. From a stage at the center, prominent clerics and other figures daily told crowds they would hold out until Morsi was restored. A second, smaller sit-in was located across the capital in Nahda Square.

Tensions swelled throughout July. Security officials called Rabaah a threat, saying armed "terrorists" were among the protesters. Independent rights groups have since confirmed that there were a few carrying automatic weapons among the crowds, but that it hardly constituted an "armed camp." Twice, police opened fire on protesters in other parts of the city and killed more than 100.

Within 15 minutes of the start of the dispersal on Aug. 14, casualties started flooding into a clinic set up by protesters in the reception hall of the Rabaah Mosque: guards from the barricades on the sit-in's eastern edge with gaping wounds from heavy caliber guns, said Fatma Yahya Bayad, a surgeon in the clinic.

On the western side of the sit-in, police fired warning shots in the air for the first 20 minutes. Then they came under gunfire from nearby buildings, the two generals said. Lt. Mohammed Gouda, who was circulating with a loudspeaker to tell residents to stay indoors, was the first policeman shot and killed.

A key question about Rabaah is who shot first. A comparison of accounts does not definitively answer that because witnesses' recollection of timing is likely not exact. The generals said that when Gouda was killed, security forces panicked and let loose with heavy fire.

However, the accounts of Bayad, el-Bittar and el-Iddrissi suggest the first gunshot casualties among protesters — on the far side of the sit-in from Gouda's shooting — had already happened. Over the next 12 hours mayhem reigned. In Rabaah's reception hall clinic, bodies lined up in rooms as volunteers tried to treat the wounded. "I know I'm going to die, just give me something for the pain," one patient told Bayad. Tear gas barrages forced staff and wounded in the clinic to flee to a hospital, a few dozen yards away

Mohammed Gamal, a 21-year-old on the fifth floor of a building from which protesters were pelting police with stones, recalls seeing a man in the street below fall from a shot. "Another protester tried to crawl to him," Gamal remembered. "The minute he touched the body, he too was shot."

The final toll from Rabaah was 624 dead, according to the government's human rights agency. Gamal Abd-ul-Sattar, a senior figure in the Brotherhood-led anti-coup alliance, told the AP that the group documented names of 2,500 dead, though the highest tallies by independent rights groups are far lower, nearly 1,000.

Egyptian law allows police to use weapons to disperse assemblies that "present a danger to public security." Rights groups, however, say the issue is in proportionality, and courts tend to give wide leeway to police. "Everything today is up to who has the right and power to interpret (the law) and impose his interpretation," said prominent Egyptian rights lawyer Bahy Eddin Hassan.

Notably, the interior minister announced after the dispersal was over that weapons found in the square totaled nine automatic weapons, a pistol, five homemade guns and a large amount of ammunition. The question remains whether the day could have been averted.

A quartet of mediators stepped in — U.S. State Department official Robert Burns, EU envoy Bernadino Leon, and diplomats from Qatar, an ally of the Brotherhood, and the United Arab Emirates, an ally of Egypt's military. The mediators proposed the government release some Brotherhood leaders, while the protesters would reduce numbers in the squares and tone down rhetoric. International experts would investigate claims of weapons among the protesters and of violence on both sides.

In a prison meeting with the mediators, the Brotherhood's most powerful figure, deputy leader Khairat el-Shater, had been willing to start talks with authorities if a prominent Brotherhood member, Saad el-Katatni, were released from prison to act as a negotiator, Leon told the AP.

But Brotherhood leaders and their allies on the ground in Rabaah adhered to their stance that Morsi must be freed. "Any dialogue must be with the legitimately elected president," Abd-ul-Sattar said. And the government gave mixed signals on releasing el-Katatni, first saying charges against him were dropped, then announcing new ones that prevented his release.

In the end, each side's position on any deal was, Leon said: "It is the other side who should start first."

Algerian Police Break Up Bouteflika Protest

Police officers detain a protester in Algiers, Saturday, March 1, 2014 during a demonstration against President Bouteflika's fourth candidacy in the presidential election. Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, 76, has not appeared in public for two years and is visibly weaker since suffering a stroke last year. Even so, he is expected to win the April 17 presidential election with the backing of the powerful state apparatus.

ALGIERS, ALGERIA (AP) — Police used clubs to break up a small demonstration Saturday by Algerians opposed to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika's decision to run for a fourth term in elections next month.

Around a hundred people waving signs reading "No to a fourth term" and "No to the humiliation of Algeria" were prevented from gathering in front of a university in the capital by police, one of the organizers, Hakim Raissi, told The Associated Press.

Bouteflika, 76, has not appeared in public for two years and is visibly weaker since suffering a stroke last year. Even so, he is expected to win the election with the backing of the powerful state apparatus.
Several opposition parties have already called for a boycott of the election, saying its results would be a foregone conclusion.

Thai Prime Minister Pleads For End To Protests

Anti-government protesters march to the Royal Thai Police headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2013. Thailand’s embattled Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra begged protesters who have staged the most sustained street rallies in Bangkok in years to call off their demonstrations Thursday and negotiate an end to the nation’s latest crisis.

BANGKOK, THAILAND (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Thailand's prime minister begged protesters Thursday to call off their sustained anti-government demonstrations and negotiate an end to the nation's latest crisis. But the protesters marched instead to new targets, including the national police headquarters, where they cut power lines.

Yingluck Shinawatra issued the plea after she easily defeated a no-confidence vote pushed by her opponents, who are heavily outnumbered in Parliament but have taken to the streets in droves to demand not only her ouster but changes that would make the country less democratic.

They say they want to uproot the political machine of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, Yingluck's brother, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006 for alleged corruption and abuse of power.

The protesters accuse Yingluck of being a puppet of her billionaire brother. "Please call off the protests for the country's peace," said Yingluck, who is facing the biggest challenge to her rule since taking office in 2011. "I'm begging you ... because this doesn't make the situation any better."

Suthep Thaugsuban, who resigned as an opposition Democrat Party lawmaker to lead the protests, has insisted he will not negotiate. The demonstrators, most of them sympathetic to the Democrat Party, have taken over or surrounded several ministry buildings, which Yingluck said failed to shut down the government but created the potential for violence.

Police spokesman Piya Uthayo said a total of about 15,000 protesters were grouped Thursday at about six locations in and around Bangkok. Yingluck has been reluctant to use force to evict the protesters for fear of escalating the conflict and sparking bloodshed, which would harm investor confidence and the lucrative tourism industry.

"The fact that the government has followed peaceful means does not mean the government cannot administer the country or cannot enforce the law to provide order," she said in a televised speech. Hordes of demonstrators marched to the police headquarters in the center of Bangkok where they cut the electrical lines to the compound. Helmeted riot police with shields remained holed up inside, but did nothing to stop them.

The police headquarters is just down the street from the site of pro-Thaksin demonstrations in 2010 that tied up business in central Bangkok for two months. Violence, capped by a military crackdown, left more than 90 people dead.

The crackdown was ordered by Suthep, who was deputy prime minister of the Democrat Party-led government at that time. On Sunday, more than 100,000 people rallied in Bangkok against Yingluck's government.

Suthep says his goal is to replace the government with a non-elected council — an apparent call for less democracy, not more. He says the change is necessary to uproot the Shinawatra political machine from Thai politics. Thaksin remains highly popular in rural areas, and parties allied with him have won every election since 2001.

Yingluck responded that a change to a non-elected council is impossible under the constitution. Thaksin, who lives in Dubai to avoid a two-year jail term for a corruption conviction he says was politically motivated, is a highly polarizing figure in Thailand. An ill-advised bid by Yingluck's ruling Pheu Thai party to push an amnesty law through Parliament that would have allowed his return sparked the latest wave of protests earlier this month.

Thaksin won over much of Thailand's rural underclass while prime minister by introducing populist policies designed to benefit the poor. His political movement became the most successful in modern Thai history.
But his opponents, largely members of the urban middle class and elite, see him as a threat to democracy and their own privileges, and have fought back hard. After the 2006 coup that ousted Thaksin, a new constitution was drafted to reduce his influence. Controversial judicial rulings removed two pro-Thaksin prime ministers, and army-backed parliamentary maneuvering allowed the Democrat Party to form a government.

Since taking office with a landslide electoral victory, Yingluck has managed a fragile detente with the military that toppled her brother, and faced major crises including floods that ravaged the country in 2011, the worst in half a century.