Image Credit: Reuters

Here at Malcolm-Che.com, we understand our readers have a special interest in policy brutality. We tend to focus on instances of domestic police brutality, but we never forget that this is a worldwide problem.  We’ve already said that inside the prison system, the prison guards are the biggest gang; in the outside world, the police are the biggest gang.  Along with the military, they are the biggest agents of state-sponsored violence.

Given the political turmoil in North Africa and the Middle East, there are countless examples of police brutality that rightfully inspire indignation in all human rights activists.  Here we are highlighting the police brutality in Morocco.  Yesterday, according to official figures, which we know are often grossly underestimated, approximately 20 protesters in Rabat and Casablanca Morocco were beaten by police.  This was for allegedly defying a ban on public protests.  Since the uprising began in Tunisia, several Arab governments have passed various laws which have sought to stem the revolutionary tide that is now sweeping across the region.  Morocco is no different; they recently passed a constitutional amendment that would allow for “greater democracy and more independence for the judiciary.”

However, we know that these reforms are too little, too late.  The people of Morocco live under the extreme oppression of a monarchy, where a class struggle has been developing for centuries.  Common to all monarchical states,  Morocco has a very rigid class structure.  Although poverty is most concentrated in the rural areas (Morocco Poverty), Casablanca is home to one of the largest slums in the Arab world.  It’s class structure is dominated on the one hand by a tiny elite that holds the majority of the political, economic and religious power.  The other end is dominated by the  impoverished and illiterate masses, which live in the countryside or the slum.  While these represent the majority, there is also a layer of  urban youth, which are primarily under- or unemployed.  As in many of the uprisings in the Middle East, they seem to be an important protagonist in the struggle for political, social and economic freedom.

This article highlights two different demonstrations which are very telling in their location and content.  One demonstration was dispersed when graduate students were demanding jobs from the current Monarch.  The other demonstration was in front of a secret prison, where the protesters alleged prisoners were tortured.  It is worth mentioning that these are common themes which run throughout the so-called “Arab Spring,” but which we rightfully recognize as the Arab Uprising.  Protesters are demanding jobs and an end to the repressive tactics of authoritarian regimes.

Predictably, these protests are being blamed on “leftist and religious elements,” which are seeking to destabilize the country.  We realize that the political powers are scapegoating these two groups, and these demonstrations capture the true will of the populations.  We fully support the people of Morocco in their quest for revolutionizing their social and political institutions!

See article for more info:

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/181244.html

A lot of people don’t realize the role that police brutality has played in sparking these uprisings.  By no means the only or even the main issue at hand, it is nonetheless a very important element of what sparked the initial periods of uprising.  Check for yourself:

TUNISIA

Uprisings in Sidi Bouazid erupts end of December 2010 because a youth – Mohamed Bouazizi – has attempted to kill himself (by setting himself on fire).  What caused Bouazizi to do this?  The corrupt police force had trashed his vegetable stand and roughed him up; ruining his livelihood and attempting to take any dignity Bouazizi had.

Mohamed Bouazizi

The dictator Ben Ali had the nerve to visit Mohamed Bouazizi in his dying moments.

Protestors hold up a poster of the martyr Mohamed Bouazizi.

The police officers in Tunisia may have thought they had the last laugh when they attempted to destroy Bouazizi’s life; but instead history will note that it was this young martyr who sparked regional uprisings and ended dictatorships which had reigned for decades.

EGYPT

The events that have transpired – and continue to transpire – in Egypt were certainly affected by the uprising in Tunisia (which overthrew the dictator Ben Ali).  But the original protest that began it all in Egypt (recently that is) was already scheduled before the Tunisians had rose up.  And it was scheduled because a youth in Alexandria – Khalel Said – had been beaten to death by police (in June of 2010).  When the protest came around it took on a much greater life due to events going on in Tunisia , among other factors, but we can still see the huge role played by the martyr Khalel Said.

Khaled Said RIP Murdered by Egyptian police in Alexandria June 2010

Protesters hold up portraits of Egyptian victim of torture Khaled Said during a demonstration outside the journalists syndicate in Cairo on June 19, 2010.

Although Mubarak is not out of power as of the publishing of this article, most analysts agree that his days are numbered.  We will say the number is 3 or less.

Police brutality continues to be a rampant problem across the globe (can’t forget about riots in Greece in ‘08 due to the police murder of a youth).  We don’t want to reduce the reasons for the recent uprisings to police brutality, only to point out that this issue played a part here as well that shouldn’t be glossed over.  The leaders of the world should probably be on notice at this point that the youth is getting fed up with police-oriented solutions for economic problems.

Hands off the Middle East!!  Power to the People of Tunisia!!  Power to the People of Egypt!!

South African state workers are striking over a demand for higher wages. (Reuters: Siphiwe Sibeko)

http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=22162

As the recession bites many South African workers are questioning the logic of a system that forces the vast majority of the population to live in poverty, while multinational companies make profits and take their wealth out of the country.

In South Africa the idea that workers won’t fight during a recession is being challenged.

And with these strikes workers are looking for answers on how to root out the inequality that capitalism has entrenched.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-08-20/south-africa-s-police-out-in-full-force-to-monitor-state-workers-strike.html

South African police clashed with state workers who protested outside government buildings on the third day of a wage strike that has shut schools and clinics.

Police used water cannons to disperse protesters at Johannesburg’s Helen Joseph Hospital today, video shown by Cape Town-based e News Channel showed. Officers broke up a group of strikers who blocked roads to a hospital and a courthouse in the town of Chatsworth in the eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, police said.

The government “has noted with concern the violent acts of intimidation and public violence” associated with the strike,’’ it said in an e-mailed statement today. “Steps will be taken against strikers or sympathizers who intimidate staff or members of the public, or commit acts of hooliganism, destruction of property or violence.”

While state employees are demanding an 8.6 percent pay increase and a housing allowance of 1,000 rand ($136) a month, the government says it can’t afford to raise its offer of a 7 percent increase and a 700 rand allowance. South Africa’s annual inflation rate is currently 4.2 percent.

Public Service and Administration Minister Richard Baloyi met with union officials today “to try and persuade them to understand the government offer,” Dumisani Nkwamba, Baloyi’s spokesman, said by telephone from Pretoria. Asked if the wage offer may be increased, he replied, “absolutely not.”

‘Intensifying’

Unions representing about 1.3 million state workers say their members struggle to get by on their current salaries and that the strike will continue until their demands are met.

“The strike will be intensifying all around the country,” Sizwe Pamla, a spokesman for the 250,000-member National Education, Health and Allied Workers’ Union, said today in an interview.

The rand fell for a second day against the dollar, declining as much as 1.1 percent, to 7,3731. The FTSE/JSE Africa All Share Index shed 0.6 percent to 26,989.63 for a third consecutive decline.

Government employees last struck in 2007, when schools, hospitals and immigration offices were disrupted for 29 days, the longest-ever walkout by state workers.

South African laws prevent strikes by certain categories of workers who provide essential services, accounting for about a third of state employees. Even so, many nurses have joined the labor action, said Fidel Hadebe, a Health Ministry spokesman.

‘Quite Severe’

“The impact of the strike has been quite severe in a number of facilities,” he said today by telephone from Pretoria. The provinces of “Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Kwazulu- Natal have been worst-affected.”

Police fired rubber bullets yesterday to disperse workers who entered the grounds of the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto township, south of Johannesburg, and tried to prevent patients and doctors from entering.

“We abhor the inhuman conduct of denying doctors and patients access to hospitals and teachers and pupils access to their schools,” the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference group said today in a statement issued to the South African Press Association. “Care is being denied to the weakest and most vulnerable.”

Members of the South African Defense Force were deployed to several hospitals to fill in for striking workers, while critically ill patients who were unable to access treatment at state facilities were transferred to private hospitals.

Reports of Deaths

A pregnant woman who was denied access to a state hospital in the eastern city of Durban gave birth in the parking lot of Netcare Ltd.’s St. Augustine hospital in the city, the company said in an e-mailed statement today.

Several newspapers said patients had died because they had not been treated or received medication. The health department was still investigating the reports, Hadebe said.

“As much as we offer our condolences to those families, we don’t want our members to be blackmailed when they have a legitimate right to strike,” Pamla said. “Hospitals by their nature are places that people go to get saved, but it doesn’t always happen that way” and it can’t be proven that strikers caused the deaths, he said.

The National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, representing 70,000 workers, said today that car and fuel retail-industry workers plan to strike from Sept. 1 after employers failed to meet their demands for a pay increase. Numsa members in the tire and rubber industries will begin a walkout on Aug. 30, the union said.

One clip showed a young man apparently urinating into a bowl of stew and then serving it to the housekeepers. It ended with the words: "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g674Uy93XfBaNoBRBoIgGAQexHzQ

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i8VzuRHB0aE77QptaWTriNjljkoQD9H9CMBG1

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa — Four white South Africans Wednesday faced a fine in court after pleading guilty to humiliating five black housekeepers in a video depicting racial abuse at their former university.

They made the video in 2007 as students at the University of Free State in protest at plans to integrate student housing.

One clip showed a young man apparently urinating into a bowl of stew and then serving it to the housekeepers. It ended with the words: “That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration.”

The video sparked an international scandal when it landed on the Internet in February 2008.

In a sentencing hearing Wednesday, both the defence and the prosecution said the four should face only a fine as punishment, after they pleaded guilty to the charge of crimen injuria, or seriously impairing the dignity of the five housekeepers.

Defence lawyer Kemp J Kemp requested a 5,000-rand (680-dollar, 525-euro fine) fine, while prosecutor Johan Kruger sought three times that amount.

“They deliberately manipulated the five cleaners because they are illiterate,” Kruger told the court….

JOHANNESBURG — A South African court on Friday ordered four white former students to pay fines of nearly $3,000 each for a video they made that humiliated black university employees and drew global attention to entrenched racism on the campus.

The young men had pleaded guilty to charges of illegally and deliberately injuring another person’s dignity. The video, made in 2007, showed the five employees being forced to consume food and drinks that appeared to be tainted with urine. The students later described it instead as a “harmless” liquid.

In a sentence broadcast live on nationwide television, Magistrate Mziwonke Hinxa said it was “disheartening” such offenses have continued in the country.

However, he said he found imprisonment was not appropriate, and he ordered the four to pay $2,720 (20,000 South African rand) each. He also imposed a six-month jail term suspended on condition of good behavior for five years.

The four must not repeat “discrimination against any other person on grounds of race” over the next five years, Hinxa said.

Black South Africans cheer Terreblanche's killers at first trial hearing.

 We first covered this story here.

Eugene Terreblanche, a notorious white supremacist and founder of a white supremacist paramilitary organization, was murdered by two of his farm laborers because he had allegedly not paid them since December. 

Terreblanche was notoriously brutal to the workers on his farm, even being convicted of attempting to murder one of them on his farm; he was given a light sentence (he served 2/3 of a 5 year sentence!!) while his victim – Paul Motshabi – suffered brain damage, and was left paralyzed and unable to speak for months after the attack. He still walks with a limp.  Let’s hear some testimony from Motshabi :

“He shot me in the head with a firearm. I don’t have the capacity to remember what kind of bullet went through my head,” Motshabi told AP Television News, speaking in the Tswana language.

Terreblanche was also convicted of setting an attack dog on a black man in an earlier incident.  Recently Terreblanche had announced a new organizing campaign in which he and his group (the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging AKAthe AWB) would push for their own nation, one controlled entirely by whites. 

Across all the capitalist press organizations much airplay is being given to an apartheid-era song that was sung by the ANC youth leader, Julius Malema, that advocates violence against white plantation owners.  Despite the attention the capitalist media is giving to this song, the issues at stake here are MUCH BIGGER.  The following quote from the article we’ve chosen perfectly sums it all up:

The crux of the matter is that even though black Africans gained considerable political clout with the end of apartheid, they have yet to experience economic emancipation.

Exactly!  The whites still weild vast economic power in South Africa (there are reportedly 50,000 large scale white farmers to this day while the vast majority of black South Africans still live in dire poverty), and the real reason Malema is being villified is that he is in favour of nationalising the mining industry and is among those pushing for a controversial new policy to hasten the redistribution of white-owned land.

”We hear you are going straight for the mines, that is what we are going to do in South Africa,” he told a rally in Zimbabwe recently.  In fact, Malema was in Zimbabwe as part of a multi-country tour (through Zimbabwe, China, Chile, Venezuela, Brazil and Cuba) to study nationalization programs.

The bottom line is that while apartheid and the racial oppression that comes with it is gone, black South Africans are still suffering from capitalism.  Economically, they are not far away from where they were during apartheid, and only bold, revolutionary action will change that.  Freedom and equality awaits South Africans, but only at socialism’s doorstep.  To many black South Africans, the killers of Terreblanche are heroes… check out the videos below, especially when a black South African woman is asked if she fears retaliation by white paramilitaries.  She says, “I am worried, but we are ready… we are ready for them.”  Right on!

Check out this great article as well by Gamal Nkrumah:

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2010/993/in2.htm

Returning ghosts haunt South Africa. Last week, the ruling African National Congress (ANC) Youth League President Julius Malema was banned from singing the anti-apartheid battle cry liberation song Ayesaba Amagwala (The Cowards are Scared) which a regional high court ruled incited violence against whites. The ruling outraged blacks, many of whom see Malema as the “voice of the voiceless” and as articulating the anger of the underdog, the poor, disfranchised and black masses of South Africa.

Almost to prove the judge’s point, this week, while Malema was being feted in neighbouring Zimbabwe, South Africa’s most vociferous white supremacist Eugene Terre Blanche was killed by his farm hands in his own homestead. Born in 1941, Terre Blanche founded the Afrikaner Resistance Movement or Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) in 1970, proudly proclaiming the banner of hatred and segregation. His mutilated body was found symbolically with the traditional African farm tools and weapons — knobkerrie and panga machetes — next to it. Two black African suspects were detained. They were workers on Terre Blanche’s farm who had recently had an argument with the racist leader over unpaid wages.

Sometimes sordid details tell us salubrious things. People are questioning whether the white racist leader’s gory ruin was politically motivated. It comes at an inopportune moment for South Africa. The country is preparing to host the football World Cup, the first to be held on African territory. South African President Jacob Zuma urged restraint and calm.

“We are prepared to take up arms and kill for Zuma,” the controversial Malema threatened recently, much to the consternation of the country’s white minority who constitute 10 per cent of the population. Zuma is widely viewed as being at best too lenient and at worst secretly sympathetic to Malema’s sentiments. Many whites are indignant that a firebrand such as Malema could hold such high profile public office.

During his fact-finding mission to Zimbabwe Malema was greeted with thunderous applause and hailed as a “true revolutionary” and “freedom fighter”. He professed interest in Zimbabwe’s indigenisation programme and the “land grab” policy of confiscation of white-owned agricultural property. Malema expressed the wish that South Africa would emulate Zimbabwe. “We want the mines. They have been exploiting our minerals for a long time. Now it is our turn to also enjoy these minerals,” Malema, in reference to the white-owned farms and mines in South Africa, addressed cheering Zimbabwean crowds. Malema’s critics at home are systematically dismissed as “counter-revolutionaries”, “racists” and “white settler colonialists”. There are growing calls in South Africa for the ANC to emulate the “land grab” policy of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe. More than 3,000 white farmers have been killed in South Africa since the end of apartheid in the country in 1994.

Terre Blanche, the descendant of French Huguenots, had prophetically warned of his own death. “It is clear that the South African police cannot stop the rape, murder and robbery of our people,” he said recently. His optimism in championing the white cause was, however, misplaced. “We fought the British Commonwealth, we can survive the ANC,” he was quoted as saying.

“Our country is being run by criminals who murder and rob,” Terre Blanche lamented. It is perhaps not so ironic that he met his end at the hands of his own black employees, those he derisively derided as “criminals, murderers and robbers”.

Alan Paton’s classic Cry The Beloved Country was a novel that graphically depicted life in South Africa under apartheid and few could have foreseen how things would have unfolded in the post-apartheid period. The crux of the matter is that even though black Africans gained considerable political clout with the end of apartheid, they have yet to experience economic emancipation. The sad reality is that income differentials between blacks and whites in South Africa have not narrowed significantly in the post-apartheid period. This disparity of incomes between blacks and whites has led to widespread resentment among blacks and might lead to a political backlash similar to the land grab policy adopted in neighbouring Zimbabwe. In short, Terre Blanche’s assassination has a forceful topicality. So what made him so emblematic?

Dhubula Ibhunu (Shoot the White Farmer) is the rallying cry of the farm labourers and landless peasants in South Africa and Terre Blanche’s killing has brought into sharp focus the increasingly polarised perspectives regarding the country’s future. South Africans are bitterly divided as to whether Terre Blanche’s death was a farm murder, an act of political assassination or a case of class struggle. The debate has opened a Pandora’s Box in the run-up to the World Cup. This is the significant South Africa moment. It is a tortuous trial for the Rainbow nation.

Terre Blanche’s life and death, like the protagonist in Too Late The Phalarope, Paton’s contemporary Greek tragedy set in South Africa, unravels the predicament of white moral bankruptcy masquerading as moral superiority. Like Pieter van Vlaanderen, the villain of the piece, Terre Blanche failed to reconcile his fundamental character flaws with the charade of his moral uprightness in the hearts and minds of his people. In the end both fictitious hero and the slain Afrikaner martyr brought about their own destruction and that of their people whom the portended to defend.

At this point we inevitably reflect on the current controversy surrounding the demise of Terre Blanche in South Africa. He was a man incapable of deep retrospection. White racists hanged on his every eccentric pronouncement. For those white South Africans who have kept an ever hopeful eye on the revival of white supremacy and racial segregation, his cries for help had an added, poignant resonance.

Where, I wondered on first hearing it, did the years go? Terre Blanche represented the naked wickedness of white South Africa, the cruel and callous survival instinct that thrives on the obliteration of the indigene.

He looked gaunt and decrepit long before his time. He was an anachronistic political animal in every sense of the word. His political trajectory has, in many ways, run diametrically counter to that of the black Africans who now run the country. In spite of his incessant protestations, he has seen “Black Power” spiral out of control into parliament in Pretoria, into the corridors of power in Cape Town.

From the halcyon days of the 1960s and 1970s to the uncertainties of the 1980s and the New South Africa of the 1990s, Terre Blanche was systematically losing ground to those who ultimately destroyed him and who he despised when still alive and kicking.

Then all of a sudden his political career was over. He was rudely awakened, so to speak, from his dream of white supremacy.

There is an allegory lurking here. Terre Blanche’s sorry end sounds the death knell for his ilk. Again the resilience, the bluff optimism and dogged determination disguised the true extent of his failure. His life was in shreds. The irony conceals a great deal of heartbreak for him and for his people, or at least for those whom he professed to represent. He had no conception of changing times, no regard for the contemporary. His politics epitomised the turbulence, uncertainty and the increasing pessimism of white supremacists of the times. His pronouncements sounded by turn choleric, defiant and uncompromising.

Terre Blanche tried in vain to synthesise the cataclysmic social trends challenging South Africa into a coherent political platform that exclusively serves the interests of whites. His bloody death re-opens old wounds even though it is, by the same token, a very symptom of the apartheid legacy.

How much could he get away with and still triumph? It was the madness in his method and message, the man revered by millions of racists in southern Africa and around the world, whose very name epitomises the notion of European settler colonialism.

The omens were not good. There is a moral to the grisly story of the life and death of Terre Blanche. The old cliché, who lives by the sword dies by the sword, springs to mind. Southern Africa will continue to spout the Malemas and Mugabes until the injustices of the past are redressed, and the question of social justice is seriously addressed. That is what I call a history lesson.

One of the most notorious racists in South Africa, Terreblanche was murdered in his sleep following a wage dispute with two black laborers on his plantation.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hrpMwBXkcT9U82xFm1JPNnmRqtAQD9ET25HO2

VENTERSDORP, South Africa — A 15-year-old who minded cattle for South Africa’s most notorious white supremacist told his mother that he and an older laborer bludgeoned him to death because he hadn’t paid them in months.

The confession detailed in an exclusive interview with AP Television News Monday undermines claims the killing was inspired by an apartheid-era song urging people to kill white farmers.

It was a brutal end for Eugene Terreblanche, 69, a man once convicted of beating a farm worker so badly the man was left brain damaged.

According to the 15-year-old now accused of his murder, some of Terreblanche’s last words were threatening: “I will kill you and throw you to hell.”

Terreblanche’s slaying has heightened racial tensions as South Africa prepares to host soccer’s World Cup in June and July. And it draws unwelcome attention to crime in the country with one of the world’s highest murder rates, some 50 a day in a country of 50 million people.

It also comes amid controversy over a fiery black leader’s insistence on singing the song “kill the boer.” Boer means farmer in the Afrikaans language but also is a derogatory term for whites.

Members of Terreblanche’s Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement, better known as the AWB, have blamed African National Congress Youth League leader Julius Malema, saying he spread hate speech that led to Terreblanche’s killing.

Malema led college students in the song last month, sparking a legal battle in which his governing ANC party is challenging a high court ruling that the lyrics are unconstitutional. The ANC insists the song is part of its cultural heritage and that the lyrics — which also refer to the farmers as thieves and rapists — are not intended literally.

“The death of Terreblanche has got nothing to do with the song. We know who Terreblanche was, his character and how he related with his workers,” Malema said Monday.

He again sang the song while on a weekend visit to neighboring Zimbabwe, defying a high court injunction temporarily ordering him to stop it.

In Ventersdorp, AWB member Rean Olivier said Malema needs to be killed to prevent a race war.

“I personally think Malema has to be taken out to clear the playing field,” Olivier was quoted as saying by the South African Press Association.

But leaders of the AWB, whose members wear khaki uniforms and swagger around with pistols on their hips, sounded a more conciliatory note Monday.

Provincial leader Pieter Steyn said the movement is withdrawing threats made Sunday to avenge Terreblanche’s death. He said the AWB renounces violence in any form, speaking after ANC leaders came to Ventersdorp to pay their respects to the Terreblanche family.

There has been an increasing number of attacks on farms in recent weeks, according to Johannes Moller, president of the commercial farmers’ union AgriSA.

He said there were many motives but “simply irresponsible actions, such as the singing of struggle songs (like Malema’s), may have contributed to this increase.”

Moller’s union says more than 1,700 white farmers and 1,600 black farm workers and dwellers have been killed since 1994, when elections ended racist white rule and installed a democratic government.

Black workers’ unions say many farm workers are brutalized and even killed by farmers, but they could provide no figures.

“When farm workers are brutalized, even to the point of murder, it is only sheer luck that the matter would be reported to police,” said Katishi Masemola, general secretary of the Food and Allied Workers Union.

Terreblanche was sentenced to six years in jail in 2001 for the attempted murder of former security guard Paul Motshabi in March 1996. Terreblanche was released in 2004. Motshabi suffered brain damage, and was left paralyzed and unable to speak for months after the attack. He still walks with a limp.

“He shot me in the head with a firearm. I don’t have the capacity to remember what kind of bullet went through my head,” Motshabi told AP Television News, speaking in the Tswana language.

The mother of the 15-year-old suspect so feared Terreblanche, even in death apparently, that she never once used his name in Monday’s interview, referring to him only as “the elder.”

She said her son told her that he and his co-workers had not been paid since he started working for Terreblanche in December.

When they asked for their money, Terreblanche told them to first make sure that all his cattle had been brought in from pasture and counted. When they did that, Terreblanche still refused to pay them.

“He (Terreblanche) said ‘I will kill you and throw you to hell,’” the mother said, speaking in Tswana, repeating what she was told by her son.

At that point the older laborer went away and came back armed.

“He came with an iron rod, the older one hit the elder four blows and the young one hit him three blows and they left the farm house to hand themselves in at the police station and they told the police that they have killed the elder,” the mother said.

She is not being named in line with South African law, under which a minor charged with a crime cannot be identified without permission from a judge.

“My son was a person who doesn’t like to be in trouble,” the mother said softly, appearing a bit bewildered and scared.

At Terreblanche’s farm Monday, a big grader was being used to dig a hole in the family graveyard, where he is to be buried after a church service in Ventersdorp on Friday.

“This was such an unnecessary thing,” Terreblanche’s brother, Andries, told the AP, as he sat on a gray marble grave. “We are not racists, we just believe in purity of race.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iBqCM8jejVUsP6ch0-ff0QglcGNw

JOHANNESBURG — South African police shot dead 556 people last year, the highest number in 12 years, media reports said Thursday, igniting fresh debate on policing tactics in the crime-plagued country.

The increase in police violence in South Africa, which sees an average 50 killings a day, brought fresh scrutiny to national police Commissioner Bheki Cele’s declaration last year that police should “shoot to kill”.

The figures were up one-third from the 420 deaths reported in 2008, according to the Independent Complaints Directorate, a government watch-dog. The numbers were reported on Talk Radio 702’s website.

A spokesman for the African Policing Civilian Oversight Forum said South Africa needed better police training and clear legislation on the use of deadly force.

“What we have been arguing for consistently is that there needs to be good training around the use of force, the legislation needs to be clear and we need to have consistent messages,” Sean Craigh told the radio.

South African police officials have been pushing for more firepower to fight one of the world’s highest crime rates.

Deputy police minister Fikile Mbalula in November drew criticism for saying officers should “shoot the bastards”, days after police fatally shot a three-year-old boy during a hunt for a murder suspect outside Johannesburg.

Mbalula said he was referring to “hard-nut-to-crack, incorrigible criminals.”

South African President Jacob Zuma has insisted that police do not have a “license to kill”.

Despite President Obama‟s declaration of his administration‟s desire to “seek a
new beginning with Cuba”, and to “learn from history, not be trapped by it” in April of
last year, Cuba has remained under attack by the U.S.

In January, new US air security policies included Cuba on a list of countries
whose air passengers would get extra security screening as they enter US territory.
And Cuba remains on the State Department‟s list of „state sponsors of terrorism‟,
notwithstanding the lack of any evidence of Cuban involvement in acts of terrorism.
Cuba has vigorously protested all of these unconscionable attacks.

In fact, Cuba‟s policies of internationalism have arguably been the most
politically advanced in the world. From the direct military intervention to help in the
defeat of Apartheid in southern Africa in 1988 (Cuito Cuanavale, Angola) to direct
medical aide and solidarity with Haiti (before the earthquake). Since the earthquake,
western media has been suspiciously silent on the exceptional role Cuba has played in
support of Haiti with more than 900 health care providers on the ground, the largest and
most organized contingent on the island.

Yet, one of the most disturbing new attacks against Cuba occurred late last year
when a host of prominent African Americans signed on to a so-called “…Declaration of
African American Support for the Civil Rights Struggle in Cuba”.
This misguided “declaration” accuses the Cuban State of racism. It cites the
imprisonment of a Dr. Darsi Ferrer, an active critic of the Cuban government, as an
example of racism in Cuba.

Dr. Ferrer was reportedly accused of attempting to establish a private medical
clinic outside of Cuba‟s world-renowned medical system, by receiving illegally obtained
construction materials. Whatever the case, Dr. Ferrer‟s situation should immediately
bring to mind the 50 year history of attempts by the US to subvert the Cuban Revolution
through internal dissent and direct attack harkening back to the Bay of Pigs invasion
and so on.

Certainly the struggle against racism anywhere in the world is of paramount
importance to all of humanity. But can this attack against Cuba under the guise of
fighting racism really be justified? We think not.
Many African Americans may not know about some of the unique features of
Cuban history even though African Americans and Cubans have a deeply rooted history
of solidarity with each other.

For example, during Cuba‟s first War for Independence from Spain in 1868,
plantation and slave owner Carlos Manual de Cespedes freed and armed the slaves on
his plantation and called on them to join the struggle for Cuba‟s independence. The
Afro-Cuban General Antoneo Maceo emerged as one of Cuba‟s most renowned
revolutionary leaders of all time. As a result of this struggle, slavery was abolished in
Cuba by 1886.

What a contrast to US history where the maintenance of slavery was a pre-
condition of unity between the colonies in the American fight for independence from
Britain. Although more than 5,000 Blacks fought in the American Revolution, legalized
slavery continued for nearly another 100 years.

And the US has historically played a role in maintaining racism in Cuba. The US
intervention and occupation of Cuba starting in 1898 during Cuba‟s second War for
Independence (1895) and where more than half the fighters were Black, re-established
institutional racism in Cuba. Under the intermittent US occupations there, Afro-Cubans
and women, as well as the poor, were barred from voting, holding elective office,
owning businesses, land, and etc. Sound familiar?

Most Cuban historians and scholars agree that the Cuban Socialist Revolution in
1959 abolished legalized institutional racism in Cuba. Cuba‟s revolutionary constitution
outlawed racial discrimination while open and public debate and education since the
revolution have tackled Cuba‟s history as an Afro-Cuban nation. However, the legacy
of 500 years of slavery, racism, and all forms of discrimination is difficult to completely
eradicate in just 50 years, especially while also under the US led attacks and blockade
against Cuba.

Even so, the conditions of all Cubans have improved under the covenant of the
socialist revolution in Cuba which has provided free education, free health care, land
for poor farmers, reduced cost rent and utilities, the elimination of unemployment, and
so on.

Racism, institutionalized or otherwise has not been abolished any place in the
world. Yet Cuba, in our view, remains a hopeful beacon in the western hemisphere that
humane societies can be constructed that provide the basis for the elimination of all
forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression.

Ashaki Binta
For the “Cuban Working Group”
Black Left Unity Network
You may contact the working group at: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
And documents from the Cuba Working Group may be viewed at:
www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm

Cuba Working Group
A Committee of the
Black Left Unity Network
Contact: cubaworkinggroup@gmail.com
View our documents at: www.blackeducator.org/cubasolidarity.htm
Press Release
Contact:
Ashaki Binta, Co-Convener 203-379-7711
March 1, 2010

National: The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) announces the formation of it’s Cuba
Working Group (CWG) today. The CWG is a national network of activists and organ-
izers who are concerned about the ongoing attacks against the nation of Cuba despite
President Obama’s proclamations of improving relations with the Cuban state in the
Spring of 2009.

Most CWG members have traveled to Cuba and/or have been active in Cuban
Solidarity work for many years and are familiar with the difficult challenges faced by
the island over the last 50 years.

One of the latest attacks against Cuba was generated in the Black community
late last year when a prominent group of African Americans signed on to a declaration
originated by anti-Cuban activists in Latin America who accused the Cuban state of
racism.

Signers of the accusatory declaration include preeminent figures such as Dr.
Julianne Malveaux, Dr. Ron Walters, actress Ruby Dee, film maker Melvin Van
Peebles, Dr. Kathleen Neal Cleaver, and Dr. Cornel West among many others.
A list of 60 notable African Americans signed on to the document.

“Our consideration is that the accusation of racism against Cuba is disingenu-
ous and is in fact intended to weaken solidarity between the African American commu-
nity and Cuba which has historically been very strong.,” said Alberto Jones, a member
of the CWG and a native Cuban residing in Miami.

“A further consequence of this attack would then be to increase the unjustified
pressure on the Cuban state to abandon its socialist character and eliminate the cru-
cial gains of the 1959 Cuban Revolution in providing education, healthcare, affordable
housing, and a healthy cultural life for the Cuban people,” the group said.

According to the CWG, the US government’s historic blockade and ongoing
programs to foment internal dissent within Cuba contribute significantly to weakening
the island nation’s ability to improve and advance the political, social, economic, and
cultural gains of the revolution including the elimination of all forms of inequality and
lingering remnants of slavery.

Despite this, says the CWG, Cuba has abolished institutional racism and has
considerably improved the lives of all it’s citizens since the revolution including nearly
eliminating illiteracy and vastly improving infant mortality rates to levels lower than
those in the US, especially among African Americans. The Cuban nation has officially
acknowledged that more than 60 percent of its citizens are of African descent.

“We believe that those who are concerned about racism in Cuba should be in-
creasing pressure on the US government to end the blockade and other illegitimate
attacks against that country, rather than signing on to specious accusations that do
nothing to help the people of Cuba,” the group said.

The Black Left Unity Network (BLUN) was formed in May of 2008 to strengthen
and revitalize the Black Freedom Movement in the United States. The BLUN Cuba
Working Group was instituted in January this year to help educate the African Ameri-
can community about the importance of Revolutionary Cuba in the international fight
against all forms of discrimination, exploitation, and oppression and about Cuba’s
historic solidarity with the struggle for freedom of the African American people.

Israeli border police officers stand guard over Sudanese refugees who crossed into Israel illegally north of Nitzana, near the border with Egypt, August 20, 2007.

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLO92482

CAIRO, June 24 (Reuters) – Egyptian police shot dead an African migrant at the Israel border on Wednesday, as violence at the sensitive frontier resumes after a near 6-month lull, security sources said.

The migrant, who was unarmed, was shot around dawn as he tried to slip across barbed wire into the Jewish state from Egypt’s Sinai desert, the sources said. Police opened fire when the migrant ignored orders to stop and instead tried to flee. Egypt for years tolerated tens of thousands of African migrants on its territory, but its attitude hardened after it came under pressure over the past two years to halt rising numbers of Africans trying to cross the border into Israel.

Egyptian security forces shot dead at least 28 migrants at the border last year, and deported hundreds of Eritrean asylum seekers back to Asmara despite objections from the United Nations, which feared they could face torture at home.

In November, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch called on Egypt to stop the shootings. There were no killings between mid-December and mid-May, although the reason for the abrupt halt was not clear.

The migrant killed on Wednesday, thought to be in his 20s, was the third killed since mid-May at the border, a main transit route for migrants and refugees seeking work or asylum in Israel.

Security sources said the man carried no identity documents but was thought to be from an African country. Many of the migrants who have attempted to cross the border have been from Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan.

Security sources said police also detained two Ethiopian women, aged 18 and 19, as they tried to cross into Israel. A third migrant from Burkina Faso was injured by barbed wire and detained in a separate attempt to cross the border. (Writing by Cynthia Johnston)

http://allafrica.com/stories/200906230924.html

Rukungiri/Mbarara — A demonstration by students of Makobore High School in Rukungiri District over food rations took a tragic twist on Sunday after police shot dead 18-year-old Mark Mugyenyi, a Senior Four candidate.

Police said Mugyenyi sustained injuries in his abdomen as a result of bullets fired at him by two Special Police Constables (SPCs); Warren Butusi and Bernard Banyenzaki. Mugyenyi was rushed to the nearby Nyakibare Hospital, where he later died yesterday morning.

According to the headmaster, Mr Sephats Turyabahika, the two SPCs, had deployed at the school to guard the home of a teacher, Mr Geoffrey Mugisha, who also doubles as the Mess Master. Separate accounts indicate that Mr Mugisha’s troubles with the Senior Four students started when he caned their classmate who attempted to get double his daily lunch ration.

Refusing to take beating on the chin, the student mobilised his colleagues who ganged around their teacher, asking him to apologise to them for the humiliation and also tell the cooks to give them more food.

The Senior Four class at Makobore has 80 students.

Mr Turyabahika said Mr Mugisha declined to apologise or issue the order to the cooks, prompting the students to try and attack him. “When we realised danger, we asked for Police protection and withdrew our usual guards,” he said. But even the presence of the SPCs did not, according to Mr Turyabahika, stop the angry students from raiding their teacher’s home, saying they wanted to discipline him.

Students who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being reprimanded by the school authorities, said the Police fired several bullets, some of which caught Mugyenyi in the abdomen. Mr Turyabahika quoted the guards saying the students were trying to disarm them. He added that after the first shots, the students continued to descend on the two Policemen shouting, “their bullets are about to get finished”.

Daily Monitor was unable to get comprehensive, independent accounts from Senior Four students who participated in the riot but one of the students, who said he witnessed the fracas, said some aspects of the headmaster’s account were false.

The Police spokesperson for western region, Ms Polly Namaye, apologised for the shooting and said the two SPCs had already been arrested. She said investigations were ongoing to get the true account of what happened but warned students against acts of hooliganism.