Dozens of shops owned by Bangladeshis at Brandfort, in the Free State Province of South Africa, were recently vandalized in what are suspected to xenophobic attacks.
Around 50 Bangladeshi-owned shops were damaged and looted when an angry mob tore through the area on early Wednesday, according to Sumon Chowdhury, a Bangladeshi expatriate in South Africa quoted by The Daily Star.
Anisur Rahman, another Bangladeshi resident of Brandfort, said the attack had left the Bangladeshi community in the town extremely nervous that more will follow. Just last week, hundreds of shops owned by Bangladeshis were attacked in the provincial capital Bloemfontein.
Bangladeshis and other migrants in Bloemfontein previously faced xenophobic attacks in 2008, 2012, and 2019, according to The Daily Star.
The Bangladesh High Commission in Pretoria in 2019 said over 400 Bangladeshis had been murdered in South Africa since 2015.
"Approximately 95% of those who died here were murdered, mostly shot dead in their shops," a high commission official told AFP, adding that most of the deaths were over business and money disputes, extra-marital affairs, and other personal arguments.
