The We Are Patrice Lumumba Coalition denounces a new round of intimidations imposed on the Congolese by the Belgian government, including fines for congregating in public.
The fines, typically 60 to 250 Euros, are issued on the pretext that citizens “failed to comply with the orders of the police by the commune,” which prohibits any gathering of more than ten people.
We reject this colonial tax, which will never benefit the Congo.
We reject the Belgian abrogation of our democratic right to assemble and protest to defend our future.
We further condemn the March 6, 2012, deportation of 19 Congolese previously living in Belgium to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). These 19 were opposed to the brutal and murderous Joseph Kabila regime.
The deportations represent a violation of our democratic rights to assemble and to protest for our own interests. Simply, it is a criminal act on the part of the Belgian Government, to add to a growing list of other criminal acts that includes summary executions.
As reported by the United Nations Human Rights Council, “At least 33 people were killed, including 22 by bullets, while at least 83 were injured, including 61 shot by members of the forces of defence and security, between November 26 and December 25, 2011.”
We salute the courage and determination of the people of Congo who mobilized massively between November 2011 and January 2012 to denounce the theft of the elections in Congo, and this despite the silence by the major media of the oppressor nations.
We condemn the Belgian police forces, which systematically submitted demonstrators to the blows of truncheons, tear gas, police dogs and arbitrary arrests that did not spare even the peacefully demonstrating women, children and elderly.
The reality that Lumumba denounced on June 30, 1960, remains valid in 2012.
He said, "We have known that the law was never the same, depending on whether it is white or black, accommodating for some, cruel and inhumane for others."
We have known the horrific suffering of those who have been relegated for political opinions or religious beliefs.
The Belgian government is consistently in violation of Article 3 of the European Court of Human Rights, which "prohibits the expulsion of anyone who might be subjected to acts of torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
It is clear that Belgium is opposed to the democratic and national aspirations and interests of the African people; the Congolese leaders who collaborate to looting and genocide are welcome, but the Congolese masses who oppose this regime are expelled.
We must not accept the explanations of the bourgeois press that evictions have been made against the people only in irregular situations (e.g., people who did not have valid papers or who were so-called “illegal” immigrants).
It is pure lies; evictions are concerted and coherent policies of the oppressor nations of Europe and North America against the African masses.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela, leader of the African Socialist International, states that, "the phenomenon of migration in Europe and America is simply the effort by colonized peoples to access the resources which have been stolen from them by colonisers."
This is why colonised peoples are targeted by anti-immigration laws. Every year, rulers of the oppressor nations adopt new laws to repeal the basic democratic rights of refugees and asylum-seekers.
It was Congo’s resources that built modern Belgium, and it is therefore the right of the Congolese to come to Belgium and access our resources, to reclaim them for our own development.
It was the Belgian government, in association with the American government, that overthrew the legitimate government of Lumumba.
We would not be in Belgium in 2012, had Belgian leaders not stolen our electoral victory in 1960.
It is our duty to organize to prevent all evictions against those who have the courage to fight, including those oppressed masses of the Congo who have been expelled by the governments of South Africa and Angola.
The sole purpose of colonial borders is to separate Africans from each other while protecting the looters of Africa. It is our inalienable right to self determination and to the abolition of the colonial laws that are used to protect colonial borders.
Defend our right to protest against injustice!
We Are Patrice Lumumba Coalition
