The French government locked down the country on March 17, supposedly to end the spread of the coronavirus.
For thousands of African and Arab people stuffed in the impoverished suburbs surrounding Paris, the lockdown is nothing more than what it sounds like—an intensification of colonial violence and repression.
The isolated and deeply impoverished colonial towns where African and Arab workers are forced to live surrounding Paris are called “suburbs” (“banlieux” in French).
Towns such as Saint Denis, Clichy sous Bois, Aubervilliers, Aulnay-Sous bois etc. are also the areas most affected by the colonial COVID-19 virus in France.
This is where we colonized people, the backbone of what the bourgeoisie call the “essential workers,” in French colonial society reside.
Macron’s war on COVID-19 means police war on colonized peoples in suburbs
French president Emmanuel Macron declared on March 16, “we are at war,” a statement that is literally true when it comes to African and Arab communities.
While the French white colonizers are enjoying their quarantine, our oppressed and colonized communities are swarming with armed French police who zealously enjoy inflicting terror and police containment on us!
Every night and every day, large, menacing police forces are patrolling our neighborhoods, violently enforcing the lockdown.
The colonial police and press know very well that the question of law and order in oppressed and exploited communities is a green light for police repression against our people.
The French colonial police are not about “fighting crime in neighborhoods,” but enforcing colonialism, which is the real crime.
The police are not here to help our communities stay healthy. The sole political function of the French police is violence against colonized peoples in France.
It is not a question of a few rotten apples in the French police force. The French police are the armed fist of the French ruling class.
They are not in the suburbs to stop the spread of COVID-19, but to consciously carry out colonial war against colonized people and to prevent the rise of colonial resistance.
French police rape colonized people with police batons
The French colonial police patrol our streets in large groups, looking for poor workers to murder and brutalize. This takes many forms, including swarming on an individual and hitting him with police batons, punching and kicking him until he is unconscious.
It is also means raping men with police batons. In February 2017, according to an article in the UK Guardian, French police “are again facing allegations of brutality after an officer was charged with the rape of a young man during a violent arrest in a suburb of Paris.
“Four officers arrived at a housing estate in Aulnay-sous-Bois, north of Paris, on Thursday evening, where they began stopping youths and asking to see identity papers. During the operation, a 22-year-old man with no criminal record, identified only by his first name, Theo, was allegedly forced to the ground and beaten.
A police officer has now been charged with anally raping the young man with a police baton. Theo suffered such serious injuries to the rectum that he needed major emergency surgery, and remains in hospital.”
The resistance of African and Arab people courageously rises up after every vicious act of colonial violence against our people.
Every year in France, new campaigns against police murder and violence are created, a testimony to the nature of the relationship that France has with Africa.
The unity of African workers and Arab workers is the cornerstone of any genuine struggle against police violence in France.
We should not allow anyone to hijack it in the name of struggle against racism or police abuses, and it is not enough to just protest. We must be organized into the Vanguard Party of the African working class to liberate Africa and African people everywhere.
African and Arab people are bound together by the continuity of the unfinished national liberation struggles that shook Guinea, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon and the whole of Africa in the 1950s and 1960s.
The only way to reconnect with the African Revolution is to join the African People’s Socialist Party.
This is the new phase of African revolution, led by the African working class, that unites all fronts of African revolution.
Our purpose is to defeat white power parasitic capitalism forever and build a united socialist Africa.
Join the African People’s Socialist Party at apspuhuru.org.
Forward to the African Revolution!
