The world is in the grip of demonstrations responding to the savage murder of George Floyd by cop Derek Chauvin and his police accomplices in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the United States.
The reaction to the murder of George Floyd unambiguously indicates that white imperialism everywhere is in deep crisis, that it cannot reverse or fix its crisis without causing deeper resistance to imperialism everywhere.
In Europe, the Caribbean, South America, Asia and throughout Africa and elsewhere, demonstrations have been organized in solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle for justice for George Floyd.
In India there were numerous protestations. On June 4, in the city of Hyderabad, an “I can’t breathe” demonstration was held outside the U.S. consulate where members of the All India Peace and Solidarity Organization held placards in silent protest.
In Kolkata in West Bengal, India, about 60 members of student and youth organizations protested outside of the American Centre against the colonial attacks in the U.S.
Oppressed people in Syria and Palestine demand justice for George Floyd
Oppressed peoples in Syria and Palestine are standing in solidarity with the struggle against colonial violence on African people in the U.S.
Syrian artist Aziz Asmar created an eight-foot mural of George Floyd and the words “I can’t breathe” on the remains of a kitchen bombed out in airstrikes in the war-torn city of Idlib. Asmar told National Public Radio, “I decided to paint George Floyd on the rubble of a building destroyed by aviation… to send a message to the world that despite the international negligence and blindness of the killing of civilians in Syria over a period of 10 years, we have a humanitarian duty to sympathize with all the oppressed in the world. Because we are advocates of peace, we hope that racism and crime will disappear and that the world will enjoy happiness.”
Nana Akufo-Addo, the neocolonial president of Ghana, tweeted an opportunist message in support of justice for George Floyd, but failed to condemn the U.S. foreign policies in Ghana and demand African self-determination for Africans in the U.S.
There was a march held in Tel Aviv, Occupied Palestine on June 6. Israeli colonizers and colonized Palestinians demonstrated in solidarity with struggles in the U.S. They were chanting “Palestinian lives matter.” They were carrying placards that said, “we can’t breathe since 1948.”
In a demonstration held in Tel Aviv four days earlier, demonstrators called for justice in the deaths of Solomon Tekah, an Ethiopian teenager killed by an Israeli cop, and Iyad Halak, an autistic Palestinian man who was killed by Israeli Border Police on May 30.
Protests against murder of George Floyd spread like wild fire across Europe
In France, a demonstration was called for on June 2 for justice for Adama Traoré, and despite the efforts of the French government to ban the demo, Africans attended. Police said 20,000 people showed up, but participants estimated there were at least 40,000.
The murder of Adama Traoré on July 19, 2016 at the hands of “French Gendarmerie,” a French armed police force, is similar to the murder of George Floyd. He has become the symbol of French colonial brutality against colonized African and Arab people.
In London there have been daily demonstrations, and weekly demonstrations in other areas of England. Millions of people were outside, joining rallies and demonstrating on the streets of London on Saturday, June 6 and Sunday, June 7.
One of the highlights of the protests in England was the dismantling and the dumping into the sea of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol. Colston was a 17th century English colonial slave trader involved in the kidnapping and enslavement of at least 84,000 Africans and the deaths of at least 19,000.
The conservative British government through its home secretary, the neocolonial Asian Priti Patel, reacted angrily. Patel called the toppling of the slave trader’s statue “utterly disgraceful” and called for police to “make sure that justice is taken with those individuals responsible.”
In Antwerp, Belgium, the government was forced to remove the statute of Leopold II, the architect of the industrial colonial genocide in Congo. Leopold was responsible for the mutilation and massacre of at least 10 to 15 million African men, women and children, cutting off their hands and genitals.
Africans demand UN investigation into police violence in the U.S.
A joint letter signed by some 600 groups calls for a special session of the UN Human Rights Council to launch an investigation into “police violence and repression of protests” in the United States. The letter that was sent to the 47 member states of the council was also endorsed by the brother and the son of George Floyd. On the other hand, the U.S. government is showing all signs of a rogue state. Even before this case, the U.S. government refused to cooperate with UN monitors, known as special rapporteurs, who investigate human rights violations regarding things such as poverty and living standards of Africans and other oppressed peoples in the U.S.
More recently, the U.S. government has abruptly withdrawn U.S. funding of the World Health Organization.
This is a struggle against colonialism and for black power
Everyone recognizes the huge participation enjoyed by these demos that the press characterized as black lives matter mobilizations.
We in the African People’s Socialist Party recognize that there are forces involved in these protests who try to forward their own agenda. Everyone is riding on this wave of protest to sort out their own beef with the British, U.S., French or German governments.
We are in it because we have been fighting tooth and nail since the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties to bring the African working class back to political life as an independent and African Internationalist force.
White people who want to join our struggle must be in solidarity with our struggle for self-determination and Black Power.
They must work under the advanced detachment of the African working class, the African People’s Socialist Party.
We must define and lead our own struggle ourselves. This is a struggle against colonialism not racism, it is about achieving power over our own lives, resources and destiny at the expense of colonizers.
The white bourgeoisies everywhere—in Europe, North America, South America, Australia or Africa—are our enemy.
There are sectors of the white bourgeoisie who are part of the anti-racism struggle. They fund it, promote it and join it because they know fighting racism is a dead end.
It does not seek to overthrow colonialism. At best, it seeks to reform it. Otherwise, it just accommodates it.
White imperialism in its last stage of neocolonialism must go. Genuine white progressive forces must join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
This is the time for the best sons and daughters of Africa to join the African People’s Socialist Party to hasten and complete the black revolution.
Black lives matter when we have our own black power.
