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By Iskcon Pretoria<\/strong><\/p>\n Hare Krsna Dear devotees and friends,<\/p>\n On Saturday night 04 Nov. 2006, about 15 members of the Hare Krishna society in Pretoria were on a regular weekly street chanting and singing campaign in Hatfield Pretoria when a confrontation occurred and they were badly assaulted.<\/p>\n While on the regular route through Hatfield square we were accosted and physically assaulted by security while complying and attempting to leave the open air restaurant arena at their insistence. Initially we were asked to leave which we proceeded to do while singing, then members were grabbed forcefully and security including +- 4 drunk locals out of the 500 or so spectators came right up to us and began hurling vulgarities and absurdities at the devotees. I was grabbed on the hand to the point that I later realised my thumb had been sprained. Gaura das was also grabbed and Bhakta Bally (Bali) also was grabbed with force.<\/p>\n Still trying to leave we were swarmed by about 6 white security guards dressed in black uniform. They were heavily built and very belligerent. Their vulgar and disgusting words were aimed at provoking us. Devotees verbally protested and the chief guard came up to me, introduced himself but shortly hurled vulgar words in my face when I verbally expressed that they were discriminating against us. As we walked away, he called me again, while turning back he hastened and sprayed my eyes, face and mouth profusely with mace. I was instantly dazed and in excruciating pain he tried to spray me again and Shanti prabhu pushed me away and got sprayed with mace on the side of his face. Devotees started screaming and running including the ladies and my kids Radh\u00e9 (5 yrs), Tulsi, (7 yrs) and Aditi (10 yrs). Within a few seconds the other big guards attacked Bhakta Gaura and Bhakta Bally (Bali) and threw them to the ground and onto chairs of the coffee shop next to us. In my pain I attempted to defend ourselves by picking up a chair but I became blind by the mace and did not want hurt innocent people and threw the chair down.<\/p>\n Mace was prayed into Bally’s face and he was grabbed in a headlock while he was beaten. He was hit on the head badly and was bleeding and sustained injuries to his ribs. Mother Svaha attempted in vain to physically defend Bally prabhu from the guards. Bhakta Gaura was thrown and tramped on the ground. My wife Arithie was hit very hard on the arm with some object causing terrible blue bruising and swelling, my daughter Tulsi was hit with a flying whomper (large hand cymbals) on her face cutting it badly and caused large swelling. Our children and women were screaming and in a panic. Restaurant customers were yelling at the guards and said “Why are they doing this to you, you sing so nicely…” etc.<\/p>\n Devotees scrambled for shelter, I remained alone on the scene, blinded, nauseas and unable to stand, mucous poured out of my eyes and nose. The pain was very intense like liquid fire. I chanted the Nrsnga kavacha for the devotees I saw being attacked and somehow I was not attacked in my incapacitated state. Arithie came back and tore me off the scene. I was blind for about 45 minutes and was moaning in terrible pain. Devotees bought water to flush the mace out but it made things worse as I tried.<\/p>\n Gaura das ran back to the temple about 2 kilometres and brought my vehicle back to the scene to get us home to the temple. A stranger drove home and brought milk to us for me to neutralize the mace in my eyes etc. This finally worked.<\/p>\n A criminal case was opened at the Hatfield police station. We intend publicising this biased attack in the newspapers. Devotees are very disgusted and appalled by this incident. We are attempting to do our best at making a stand against the individuals and the security company itself.<\/p>\n It will be appreciated if we can have the support, help and advice of devotees and well wishers in our attempts to establish the free practice and sankirtan of the Holy Names.<\/p>\n Your servants, Devotees scrambled for shelter, I remained alone on the scene, blinded, nauseas and unable to stand, mucous poured out of my eyes and nose. The pain was very intense like liquid fire. I chanted the Nrsnga kavacha for the devotees I saw being attacked and somehow I was not attacked in my incapacitated state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-iskcon-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nISKCon Pretoria <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"Hare](\"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/DSvr57.jpg\")
By Iskcon Pretoria<\/strong><\/p>\n