NEW YORK—On May 19, 2011, International Monetary Fund (IMF) head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was indicted by a New York grand jury to stand trial on sexual assault and attempted rape charges stemming from a May 14 attack on 32-year-old Nafissatou Diallo, an African woman from Guinea, West Africa working as a housekeeper in the upscale Sofitel Hotel, the scene of the crime.
The rape of Nafissatou in Khan’s luxury hotel suite in New York is not a poetic symbol, but an example of the colonial reality that African and other oppressed women face every day, everywhere on the globe.
With Strauss-Kahn's trial in postponement, a coalition of housekeepers–many of whom were workers here in the U.S., after being denied the ability to make a living in their respective countries that are subject to the IMF's colonial fiats–recently converged in Harlem to demanding that the prosecution go forward.
Although the protesters are familiar with this type of colonial violence, they usually remain silent out of fear of losing their jobs.
This time, however, they came out in full force, empowered by the African woman who dared to resist white power.
It is no surprise, then, that the imperialist media has risen to the defense of Strauss-Kahn.
As usual in rape cases involving African women, the white power structure's victim-blaming reflexes have kicked in, subjecting the African woman to character assassination, even labeling her a prostitute.
In an article that ran this month in the New York Times, the woman was described as “tense, even angry” in dealing with the prosecution, and that she “collapsed in tears during questioning.”
It seems though, that this was an “interrogation” instead of a “questioning.”
The main issue the prosecution was harping on, however, was the State’s secretly taped phone conversation that made it seem “as if she hoped to profit from whatever occurred in Suite 2806.”
For imperialism, there is nothing worse than a working class African woman not only resisting rape, but using it as an opportunity to take back some of the riches that were stolen from her and her people during the initial assault on Africa, and are still being stolen today.
On the African Continent
Another way in which the oppression of African women manifests itself is the millions who have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Forty-eight thousand women are raped every month as a tactic used in the U.S . and Britain sponsored proxy war to maintain control over the Congo's coltan and other natural and human resources.
Coltan is a key mineral used in cell-phone and computers, and 80 percent of the world's supply of it is found in the Congo.
Africa is home to over 60 percent of the world's most vital minerals and resources, yet over half of Africa's more than a billion people subsist on less than one U.S. dollar a day.
Africans and other oppressed peoples are tired of living under these imposed conditions, and resistance to colonial domination is growing worldwide.
The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace, and Reparations, has declared these sorts of historical attacks against African people as being the “Other Wars” that go unnoticed by the white left and socialists such as Strauss-Khan, also leader of the Socialist Party in France.
To this end the Black is Back Coalition is calling for an International Day of Action Against the Other Wars on Africa and African people set for August 20, 2011.
For more information contact blackisbackcoalition.org
Forward the revolution! Victory to Africans and all other oppressed peoples of the world! Uhuru!
