LONDON – Jimmy Mubenga, a father of four who sought asylum in the UK as an Angola national, did not find the freedom nor safety he was looking for.
He violently died on board of British Airways flight 7, bound to Luanda, Angola on the night of Thursday 14 October 2010.
He was “heavily restrained” by the hands of G4 security personnel, a parasitic private capitalist company contracted by the British government to enforce their colonial deportation orders against African and other oppressed peoples.
As usual, the leaders of the oppressors tried to lie to cover this murder.
G4 company said a man “became unwell” on a flight while being deported and the government joined the lie by saying that “Mubenga had taken ill.”
The eyewitnesses on the plane were clear on what happened. Wallis, a 58-year-old oil engineer from Redcar in Cleveland, Ohio (USA) described how he heard Mubenga "moaning and groaning" as though in pain…
Mubenga complained about his breathing difficulties for at least 10 minutes, before he lost consciousness.
The Guardian wrote on Friday 15 October, 2010, “And despite the cries of distress from Mubenga that ‘he can’t breathe, he can‘t breathe,’ nobody reacted, to stop this murder on BA77.”
Another eyewitness, Ben said that “the three security guards were on top of him for 45 minutes… You could hear the guy screaming at the back of the plane. He was saying ‘they are going to kill me.’ That is what he repeatedly said.“
The airplane authorities only decided to cancel the flight when it was clear that Mubenga was dead.
This in itself shows the inhumanity of British Airways and this British society, which could not cancel the flight to save a life.
Mubenga came into the UK because the British leaders, using their monopoly of propaganda like BBC, the British Council etc., told the African youth that Britain is a land of democracy and human rights.
After 16 years in Britain and despite having four of his children born here in the UK, despite working hard to keep and raise a stable family, he has remained an undesirable alien in the eyes of the British rulers, who refused to extend his stay under the obscure and ridiculous excuse that he could not live in Britain because he had a brawl in a night club.
This is outrageous! To split up a family just because he had a brawl which could be a clash, dispute, an argument, and to kill a human being because he was refused the right to stay in the UK is not acceptable in any society by any standards!
Mubenga is not the first African to be killed by the immigration force in the UK. In July 1993, an African woman from Jamaica, Joy Gardner, was bound and gagged with 13 feet of tape before she died at the hands of British immigration police.
Are immigration policies just another word for pass law or apartheid laws? Do Africans have the right to freely travel and stay in UK, Europe, North America etc.? Or is it a right for white people only?
If you are white and a citizen of the oppressor capitalist nations, you have rights to go anywhere, with or without a visa, which Europeans can always obtain at the airport upon arrival.
There are no immigration soldiers waiting for white people for detention or harassment.
This category of people does not have to apply for refugee status in order to stay in a country.
They do not have to be smuggled in; they do not have to walk across the desert or sail on unworthy boats to cross the Mediterranean; and they are not at the mercy of visas, passports and travel documents that haunt African people who are merely trying to escape poverty.
They do not have to spend hundreds of dollars at British, French or US consulates just to introduce their application for a visa, with no guarantees that to be given one, and when given, there is no guarantee of being allowed in.
Africans’ natural riches and financial resources flow daily and freely to Europe, North America, Japan and now China. Immigration laws serve to stop the people from following our resources and reuniting with our people outside of Africa.
Mubenga is a victim of European immigration into Africa; Mubenga came here to the UK because white people from Britain and the rest of the UK went and overstayed in Africa. It is the unsolicited coming of Europeans into Africa that started the process of separating Africans from their families, land and resources. We have the right to go wherever our resources and people are located.
Because our gold, oil, coltan, cobalt, diamonds, copper, timber, arts, and our money are stolen by the IMF, World Bank, multinationals and African neocolonialist rulers here in the UK, we have the right to be here too.
If the immigration of African resources is unrestricted to England and the rest of Europe, then the immigration of Africans to Britain and the rest of Europe must also be unrestricted.
White people go unrestricted to Africa, and then Africans must also come unrestricted to Europe.
World Tribunal for Reparations to Africa and African people, a step toward building an international African state
We will never get justice on our own terms, as long as we do not build a state power capable of defending the lives of ordinary Africans all over the world. It is the absence of such international power that allows British Airways to turn their plane into a flying jail or flying abattoir.
It is the acceptance by the neocolonial Angolan government that forces Africans to be flown into Angola after being brutalized and handcuffed.
The most urgent democratic task of all oppressed African people on earth is to build the instrument to give and impose justice to over 1 billion African people on this planet.
Join the effort to build that tribunal today!
Our democratic demands are clear and simple: we want justice for Mubenga and his family.
Firstly, we want the arrest of the three officers who assaulted and killed him on the plane.
Secondly, we demand that G4, British Airways, the Angolan neocolonial and the British colonial governments pay millions of pound money in reparations to Mubenga‘s family.
Thirdly, we want the cancellation of deportation of all African immigrants and failed asylum seekers.
This is the only way to avoid killing another Mubenga, and the marginalization of all Africans who are made illegal in a country built and depending on African resources for its survival.
Fourthly, we want the abolition of all anti-African colonial immigration laws.
And finally, we want abolition of the G4 contract with the British government.
We do not pay our taxes for the government to enrich a private security company at our expense and against our democratic rights.
The African Socialist International is organizing a meeting against the genocide in Congo.
We invite all of you who want justice for Jimmy Mubenga and his family to attend this important meeting where we would also articulate our African community’s response to this outrageous murder.
The meeting is on 23 October at 4:30 pm (16:30)
Touch One! Touch All!
Build the African Socialist International!
Contacts: uhuruasi@aol.com, 020 82651731, 07862 294364
Location: Sojourner Truth Centre, 161 Summer Road, Peckham, SE156JL
